Internationalization in Music Education in an Era of Globalization: The Kestenberg Collaboration Case Study

This study explores the rationales and motivations of music educators from the Leo Kestenberg Music School (Berlin, Germany) and the Givatayim Municipal Music Conservatory (Israel) towards the institutions’ ongoing international educational collaboration, operated since 2008. The collaboration is based on international mobility of faculty and students and bears an exceptional historical connection to the late Leo Kestenberg (1882–1962), who envisioned and sought to embed internationalism and internationalization in music education, as a tool in the formation of an imaginary international society. In the past decades, the process of globalization has been closely linked to neo liberal paradigms, in favor of decentralization, marketization, commodification, competition and privatization. As a result, public education systems worldwide have undertaken transformational reforms and changes. Within this context and although originally aimed for higher education (HE), internationalization strategies have trickled down from HE to K-12 as well as to informal education systems. Alongside the ideological rationales for internationalization such as intercultural understanding and collaboration, pragmatic aims such as individual skills enhancement and institutional competitive advantage become increasingly prominent. Mobility is a prevalent internationalization display, central in policy-making processes with extraordinary visibility in educational institutions. However, mobility based internationalization has been criticized for emphasizing pragmatic rationales. The current study is therefore located at the intersection of current practices in music education, a unique historical context, and internationalization in education.

Rationales and motivations of different stakeholders (directors, project coordinators, conductors and teachers) from both institutions towards the collaboration were examined. Semi-structured interviews were deployed and Qualitative Data Analysis (QDA) was utilized to codify and analyze the gathered data. Findings suggest three main themes outlining the rationales: (1) Institutional music education – for whom? (2) Motivations to internationalize; and – (3) Historical contexts. Initial findings reveal different rationales to collaborate evident in each faculty, caused by different philosophical approaches. These generated a set of diverse ideological and pragmatic motivations. Notwithstanding, it appears that the collaboration directly impacted institutional agenda and policies at both sides, encompassing administrative, pedagogical and departmental levels. A striking echo of Kestenberg’s philosophy regarding the objectives of institutional music education and internationalization was discovered in the overall findings schema. Findings also suggest that internationalization may serve a wide scope of rationales and simultaneously answer growing expectations from educators and administrators towards pedagogic developments through internationalism in music education. This study may contribute to the growing research of practices of internationalization in music education in a globalizing world.