Educating for Transformation: Leadership in Musical Conducting as a Catalyst for Innovation in Higher Arts Education
Abstract
Leadership constitutes a key competence in contemporary musical conducting, as it integrates artistic, communicative, and relational dimensions that are decisive in working with musical ensembles. This study aims to analyze the perception of leadership as a fundamental competence in musical conducting, as well as to examine the perceived need for specific training in this area. To this end, a quantitative study with a non-experimental, cross-sectional design was conducted through the administration of an ad hoc questionnaire to a sample of 312 participants (students, teachers, and musical conducting professionals) in the Spanish context. The instrument, structured with Likert-scale items, demonstrated adequate internal consistency (α = .893). Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics, employing non-parametric tests. The results reveal a high level of consensus regarding the importance of leadership as an essential competence of the musical conductor, with more than 99% of responses falling within agreement levels. Furthermore, a significantly positive evaluation of leadership training is observed, along with specific differences according to professional experience, providing a nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. Overall, the findings confirm the relevance of leadership as a competence perceived as fundamental to musical conducting and highlight the value of its systematic incorporation into higher education, although the results should be interpreted within the context of a perception-based study. The results show a broad consensus regarding the relevance of leadership as an essential competence for musical conductors, as well as a clearly positive evaluation of training in this competence as a necessary element for professional practice. In addition, inferential analysis reveals specific differences related to experience, which provide a nuanced view of leadership without calling its overall importance into question. Overall, the findings reinforce the idea of leadership as a competence that can be developed throughout the professional trajectory and highlight the value of addressing this dimension systematically in the training of musical conductors.
Downloads
-
Abstract0
-
PDF (Español (España))0
References
Adenot, P. (2015). El director de orquesta. De la figura de autoridad al orden negociado en una profesión vocacional. Transposición. Música y Ciencias Sociales, 5. https://doi.org/10.4000/transposition.1296
Bass, B. M. (1995). Theory of transformational leadership redux. The Leadership Quarterly, 6(4), 463–478. https://doi.org/10.1016/1048-9843(95)90021-7
Bass, B. M. y Bass, R. (2008). The Bass handbook of leadership: Theory, research, and managerial applications. Free Press.
Bass, B. M. y Steidlmeier, P. (1999). Ethics, character, and authentic transformational leadership behavior. The Leadership Quarterly, 10(2), 181–217. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(99)00016-8
Bolívar, A. (2010). El liderazgo educativo y su papel en la mejora: Una revisión actual de sus posibilidades y limitaciones. Psicoperspectivas. Individuo y Sociedad, 9(2), 2010, 1-20. https://acortar.link/6C56XV
Colorado-Ramírez, S. y Gairín-Sallán, J. (2022). Dirección escolar y desarrollo Ético Organizacional en escuelas de Catalunya. Educatio Siglo XXI, 40(3), 107–132. https://doi.org/10.6018/educatio.490601
Crisol-Moya, E. y Romero-López, M. A. (2020). El liderazgo inclusivo como estrategia para evitar el abandono escolar: opinión de las familias. Educatio Siglo XXI, 38(2 Jul-Oct), 45–66. https://doi.org/10.6018/educatio.414871
Day, C., Gu, Q. y Sammons, P. (2016). The impact of leadership on student outcomes: How successful school leaders use transformational and instructional strategies to make a difference. Educational Administration Quarterly, 52(2), 221-258. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013161X15616863
Durrant, C. (2009). Communicating and accentuating the aesthetic and expressive dimension in choral conducting. International Journal of Music Education, 27(4), 326–340. https://doi.org/10.1177/0255761409345449
Goleman, D. (2014). Liderazgo. El poder de la inteligencia emocional. B de Bolsillo.
Gustems, J. y Calderón, C. (2014). Empatía y estrategias de afrontamiento como predictores del bienestar en estudiantes universitarios españoles. Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology, 12(1), 129-146. https://doi.org/10.14204/ejrep.32.13117
Harris, A. y Jones, M. (2017). Leading in context: Putting international comparisons into perspective. School Leadership y Management, 37(5), 431–433. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2017.1368864
Haslam, S. A., Reicher, S. y Platow, M. J. (2020). The new psychology of leadership. Identity, influence and power. Psychology Press. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351108232
León-Guerrero, M. J. (2012). El liderazgo para y en la escuela inclusiva. Educatio Siglo XXI, 30(1), 133–160. https://revistas.um.es/educatio/article/view/149181
Navarro-Corona, C. (2016). Consideraciones teóricas sobre el concepto de liderazgo y su aplicación en la investigación educativa. Revista Educación, 40(1), 53–66. https://doi.org/10.15517/revedu.v40i1.16148
Oriola, S. y Gustems, J. (2019). La dirección musical de agrupaciones juveniles: un referente de liderazgo y competencias socioemocionales. Revista Internacional de Educación Musical, 7, 69-79. https://doi.org/10.1177/2307484119878639
Pozner, P. (2008). El directivo como gestor de aprendizajes escolares. Aique Grupo Editor.
Ritacco-Real, M. (2019). El modelo español de dirección escolar y sus implicaciones en el desarrollo del liderazgo pedagógico en Andalucía. Un estudio cualitativo. Educatio Siglo XXI, 37(1), 147–164. https://doi.org/10.6018/educatio.363441
Robbins, S. P. y Judge, T. A. (2009). Comportamiento organizacional. Pearson Educación.
Yukl, G. (2008). Liderazgo en las organizaciones. Pearson Prentice Hall.
Copyright (c) 2026 Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Murcia
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Original work publishes in this journal is subject to the following terms:
1. Murcia University Press (the publishing house) holds the copyright of the publishes work, and favours and allows their reutilization under the use license stated in point 2.
© Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Murcia, 2015
2. Work is published in the electronic edition under a license (Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-SinObraDerivada 4.0 España (legal text). They can be copied, used, disseminated, transmitted and publicly presented, as long as: i) authorship and original publication source is acknowledged (journal, publishing house and URL of the work); ii) are not used for commercial purposes; iii) the existence and specifications of this use license is stated.
3. Conditions for self-archive. Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate electronically the pre-pint (before review) and/or post-print (accepted for publication) versions of their work before their publication since that favours earlier circulation and dissemination resulting in an increased chance for the authors to be cited and for the work to reach a bigger share of the academic community. Colour: RoMEO: green.
