Enabling and exploiting student expertise: the case of a Norwegian centre for excellence in education

ABSTRACT

Student involvement has been advocated for and studied by educational scholars in recent years. Simultaneously, measures to increase student involvement have surfaced, such as the Norwegian Centres for Excellence in Education (CEE) initiative. This study explores how students, staff and leaders have experienced student involvement through a CEE in the Norwegian context by turning to sociological institutional theory, in which governance structures and change processes are interlinked. The Centre for Excellence in Music Performance Education (CEMPE) was run from 2014 to 2023, situated at a music academy characterised by privatised teaching culture and a master/apprentice teaching model. In this instrumental case study, primary data were collected from 18 semi-structured interviews with students and staff who had occupied management roles at CEMPE/the Academy. Interview transcripts were triangulated with secondary data in the form of strategic documents such as annual reports, action plans, minutes from steering group meetings, applications and publication lists. The data were coded with thematic narrative analysis, and four distinct narratives on student involvement were identified: (1) students as participants; (2) students as creators; (3) students as facilitators; and (4) students as consultants. The findings indicate that the involved students were both empowered and burdened through their work in the centre. The paid student positions, in particular, enabled students to develop qualifications that staff members and the Academy benefitted from and where students took the roles as facilitators and consultants. However, student expertise can be exploited if not properly supported and fostered, which makes co-creation practices crucial in higher education.

KEYWORDS:

• Student involvement
• student expertise
• governance structures
• higher music education
• students as partners

Introduction

Student involvement in higher education (HE) has gained considerable attention recently (e.g. Bovill and Woolmer 2019; Bowden, Tickle, and Naumann 2021; Gravett, Kinchin, and Winstone 2020; Klemenčič 2024; Matthews and Dollinger 2023). In an institutional perspective, HE organisations have become increasingly similar over the past century (Meyer et al. 2007; Stensaker et al. 2019), and this growing homogeneity can be linked to educational trends such as student-centredness (Ski-Berg and Røyseng 2024). Student empowerment is called for in the name of social equity (Mercer-Mapstone and Bovill 2020), employability (Skalicky et al. 2020) and even artistry (Holmgren 2022), and directive modes of teaching, in which the teacher is leading and instructing the learning process, are today commonly accompanied by student-centred practices such as peer learning, teachers acting as mentors, and student-driven projects. However, as new student roles enter the learning contexts and the established governance structures (e.g. institute boards and committees), they sometimes challenge institutional norms (Bovill et al. 2016). Further, not all students may want to or be able to participate in new measures for student involvement (Planas et al. 2013), indicating that a spectrum of student-centred activities is needed if educational institutions are to empower students of all kinds. How, then, is student involvement fostered in HE?

The research project presented here follows a Centre for Excellence in Education (CEE) in Norway that has been situated at the Norwegian Academy of Music (NMH) over a period of ten years (2014–2023). The centre in question is the Centre for Excellence in Music Performance Education (CEMPE), which was established in 2014 with a mandate to be a catalyst for generating knowledge about teaching and learning in music HE and to instigate innovation within this educational frame. The Academy belongs to what may be referred to as ‘the European conservatoire tradition’ (Jørgensen 2009, 12), characterised by ‘extensive individualisation of teaching and learning’ (Nerland 2007, 399) and a master/apprentice teaching model. CEMPE was in part initiated to challenge the individualised teaching culture through more student-centred and collaborative methods (Gies and Sætre 2019; Ski-Berg, Stabell, and Karlsen Forthcoming). Moreover, CEMPE was positioned in a national context where student involvement has been encouraged through the Norwegian CEE initiative (Helseth et al. 2019; Holen et al. 2021). Given the specific traits described above, however, student involvement in music HE may have unique repercussions.

In this article, we investigate how student involvement (including student roles such as student participants, student mentors, student leaders, student representatives and student partners) affiliated with CEMPE has been enabled by the centre, on the one hand, and how student involvement has affected the centre, on the other. We ask the following research question: How have students, staff and leaders experienced student involvement through the activities of CEMPE, and what are the implications of their experiences?

Student involvement in Norway

We approach student involvement as an umbrella term for how students involve themselves in educational activities, including the governance structures that enable or inhibit students from getting involved. Students constitute ‘a distinct social and political class’ (Klemenčič 2024, 8), and they impact HE through student politics and governance as well as through their self-formation (Klemenčič 2024, 11). Building on Astin’s (1999, 518) conceptualisation of student involvement as ‘the amount of physical and psychological energy that the student devotes to the academic experience’, we recognise that student involvement can be highly specific (i.e. when students are invested in a single activity) or more generalised (i.e. involved in several activities), and that it exists on a continuum: students can simultaneously be interested in some activities and disinterested in others. Involvement is also dependent on the activities and student roles provided by various academic disciplines and institutions. For instance, a music academy provides a variety of music performance-based activities (e.g. ensemble rehearsals) and music listening activities (e.g. concert attendance), and music students typically invest their time and resources in a wide range of musical activities (e.g. Dahlberg 2013; Jørgensen 2009). Some music students also volunteer as representatives in boards, committees and student unions, or they participate in extracurricular activities.

Student involvement has been central to the Norwegian Centre for Excellence in Education (CEE) initiative. Most HE organisations in Norway are publicly funded and tuition-free due to social-democratic values, and student representation in decision-making committees and institutional boards is regulated by law (Helseth et al. 2019, 29). In 2016 it was noted by NOKUT (the Norwegian Agency for Quality Assurance in Education) that the ‘[CEE] initiative seeks to contribute to developing new forms of student involvement and partnership’ (Nokut 2016). It has since been found that ‘different applicants [for CEEs] had very different ideas about how the partnership with students should be utilized’ (Helseth et al. 2019, 28), and that one of the main areas for student involvement in several CEEs was ‘including students in the teaching, learning and research developments’ (Holen et al. 2021, 2732). Student involvement, as noted above, differs among students and the activities they devote their time and energy to. CEMPE’s activities were both extracurricular, including debates, workshops, conferences, courses, research projects and student-led projects, and embedded in regular courses, where teachers explored novel ways of learning and teaching music performance (see PRAXIS n.d.). Through CEMPE’s activities, students were involved as participants, representatives, mentors, facilitators, creators, leaders and partners, to mention some prominent roles.

Some student roles have been discussed more than others in the literature on HE. Given that the CEE initiative has emphasised students as partners (SaP), we note that evaluators of how SaP has been approached by CEEs state that student and scholar perspectives may differ but ‘are equally important in the assessment of quality, and neither should be considered more valuable than the other’ (Helseth et al. 2019, 28). For contextualisation, we turn to Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten (2014, 6–7) and their conceptualisation of partnership as ‘a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways’. Student representatives, on the other hand, are typically expected to represent the overall student group. For students this can be a challenging task in which an ‘us vs them’ mentality between students and staff emerges, whereas partnership is ‘a process of engagement’ among parties (Matthews and Dollinger 2023, 557). Central to all student involvement is who students partner with (Gravett, Kinchin, and Winstone 2020, 2576), who they represent, who they facilitate for, and so forth. We investigate such dimensions by turning to the institutional orders within which they are situated.

Theoretical approach

We employ sociological institutional theory (Meyer et al. 2007; Meyer and Rowan 1977) to examine how students, staff and leaders have experienced student involvement through CEMPE. Sociological institutional theory arose in part from studies in the sociology of education, but whereas ‘most lines of sociological theory would predict extreme variation in the character of educational institutions … and very different trajectories of growth and change’, institutional scholars have addressed isomorphic change, noting that educational systems are ‘remarkably similar around the world’ (Meyer et al. 2007, 193). The striking similarities between HE organisations may be symptomatic of institutional isomorphism – that is, organisations’ ability to conform to and be legitimated by institutions in the surrounding environment by morphing with the field (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer and Rowan 1977). In an institutional perspective, HE is deeply affected by ‘structures whose nature and meaning have been institutionalized over many centuries and now apply throughout the world’ (Meyer et al. 2007, 187). At this macro level HE has played a significant role in the development of knowledge society, where the meaning of categories such as student and professor ‘may be locally shaped in minor ways but at the same time have very substantial historical and global standing’ (Meyer et al. 2007, 187).

Isomorphic change in HE (such as increased student involvement) is mediated by governance structures. Governance is viewed as ‘the formal mechanisms that maintain the ‘rules of the game’ within a field’ (Hinings, Logue, and Zietsma 2017, 165). To understand the rules, one must understand ‘the institutional infrastructure and its elaboration and coherency in a field’ (Hinings, Logue, and Zietsma 2017, 164), including the ‘regulations, standards, reward systems and social control agents that monitor and enforce those regulations, standards and reward systems’ (Hinings, Logue, and Zietsma 2017, 168). Such infrastructural elements overlap and reinforce one another similar to ‘separate locks on a door that acts as a barrier to institutional change’, meaning that each of the locks ‘must be unlocked before the door can be opened and institutional change can occur’ (Hinings, Logue, and Zietsma 2017, 181). Hence, institutional change is ‘unlocked’ when governing structures ‘open the door’, such as through law enforcements (e.g. enforcing student representatives in bodies of HE organisations) or as required by stakeholders (e.g. investors demand increased student involvement in specific educational activities). Through this lens, the CEE initiative served as a lock for increased student involvement (Holen et al. 2021, 2732). Organisational members (i.e. students, staff and leaders) also serve as locks in various change processes.

Identifying infrastructural locks is helpful when analysing the effects of institutional change, as various educational activities interact differently with locks depending on relevance. For instance, student representation in organisational bodies is governed by the law in Norway, while study plans are governed by stakeholders (including the state, if the organisation is publicly funded). Moreover, students and teachers govern educational activities whenever they invest themselves in educational activities (e.g. curricular development, participating in or leading projects). Governance conducted by members is often affected by prescribed meanings, as institutions condition ‘not only how we think and what actions we consider appropriate in a particular situation, they also condition how we feel about various people, events, practices and rules in our lives’ (Lok et al. 2017, 592). Change processes in HE organisations are thus affected by institutional orders which channel the emotional investment of members ‘toward fundamental institutional ideals’ (Lok et al. 2017, 603), governed by regulations, standards and reward systems (e.g. grades, credit points, study plans). Student involvement is governed by infrastructural elements as well as by ideas and emotions prescribed to various educational activities by students, staff and leaders in HE organisations. The next section accounts for the study that was conducted to investigate such governance in relation to student involvement.

Methodology

The research study is designed as an instrumental single-case study (Stake 1995), using the particular case of CEMPE to examine how student involvement was experienced by students and staff in music HE. We consider CEMPE to be ‘an unusual case’ for student involvement in HE, which could ‘maximise what we [could] learn’ (Stake 1995, 4) because of the explicit mandate of the CEEs to ‘encourage student engagement and ownership of learning’ and the position and financial possibilities that came with it (Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills n.d.). The study utilised a qualitative research approach to investigate the topic, combining semi-structured interviews (Kvale and Brinkmann 2015) with students and staff with a document analysis of institutional documents from CEMPE’s inception from 2014 to 2023 (e.g. annual reports, action plans, applications, minutes from steering group meetings, publication lists).

Informants were recruited following a purposive sampling strategy (Patton 2014), including six current or previous music students and 12 current or previous staff members who had been in management roles affiliated with CEMPE or NMH during the centre period. To ensure anonymity of the interviewees, no further information on their specific positions is provided here. All interviews were held individually, following a semi-structured interview guide, and lasted between 50 and 70 minutes. Staff interviews were conducted by one of the researchers, while a second researcher conducted the student interviews. Staff members were interviewed in their own workplace/office, whereas students chose to come into the researcher’s office. One student interview was held online on the digital platform of Zoom. All interviews were recorded and transcribed, then coded. In the analysis stage, thematic narrative analysis was employed as an analytical tool in the reading of the interview transcripts to identify the core elements within the informants’ stories. Narrative analysis is ‘both a study of a person acting in a given situation and a study of environments, cultures, and groups’ (Sandberg 2022, 16). Further, narratives play a central role ‘in the drama of organizational power and resistance’ of organisations (Czarniawska 2007, 390), and narratives on student involvement are integral to HE organisations.

Before collecting any data, the project received approval from the Norwegian Centre for Research Data, and the informants provided a written consent before taking part. There are several ethical considerations inherent in conducting research within one’s own organisation, however, particularly when the study involves interviewing individuals with whom the researchers have a pre-existing relationship. We also acknowledge the ethical complications of the situation that both researchers have had various roles within CEMPE, and that one of us was interviewed as part of the study. To remedy this bias, the staff interviews were conducted by the researcher in the group who did not hold any such roles in CEMPE, and all quotations used from the interviews have been sent to the interviewees for member check. Further, the results have been constructed from overlapping narratives identified in the 18 interview transcripts, which strengthen their validity. The narratives are presented and contextualised in the next sections.

Findings

Four narratives on student involvement were found to be particularly prominent in the material, namely students as participants, students as creators, students as facilitators and students as consultants. Some narratives were already familiar and established inside the institution, while others were novel in the context of music HE in Norway and, to our knowledge, also in the European field. Throughout CEMPE’s lifetime (2014–2023) we see a widening of possible student roles, differing in degrees of responsibility, trust, partnership modes and ownership through involvement in the centre. Moreover, many students have taken on multiple roles, sometimes first as participants and then moving on to leadership roles or roles where they facilitated for other students’ learning experiences. The narratives below are presented successively based on such trajectories.

Students as participants: being invited to experiment

The narrative of students as participants was paramount in CEMPE’s first five-year period. In these first years, students mainly became involved in projects through their teachers, as ‘it was the teachers who took part in the actual projects’ (staff 2). Even though projects were initiated by teachers in this period, they were typically aimed towards giving more agency to students through for instance group teaching projects, where students instructed each other, a workshop series on instrumental practice, where they developed their practicing strategies, or projects where staff explored coaching-oriented teaching styles. These projects appeared to change the learning and teaching practices for many of the students and teachers involved, as explained by one of the staff members:

For me personally, through the coaching project in particular, I realised that I changed a lot as a teacher […] I had been very communicative with my students all my life, but I think I might have underestimated how much authority I had in that position. Being able to give more ground to the student was a difficult and very rewarding exercise. (Staff 3)

The significant shift in authority observed in several of the initial CEMPE projects, wherein students were encouraged to assume more responsibility for their own learning and teaching practices, was also acknowledged by the participating students:

I was part of a CEMPE project as a student that was about students teaching or supervising each other. […] It was my first encounter with CEMPE and it stuck with me. I actually got emotional now, it’s a beautiful memory. […] it was something I hadn’t experienced before, where a teacher sat in a corner and just listened and the three of us gave each other feedback, it was an incredibly important experience of learning and understanding that you have a responsibility. (Student C)

Staff interviewed experienced students to be positive and willing to participate; they were ‘embracing new things’ (staff 5). Through students’ positive attitude and openness to engage in these projects, teachers developed their teaching style and knowledge while simultaneously enabling novel and more manifold learning opportunities and a greater sense of agency for their students.

Participating students were provided with novel learning opportunities, but the projects their teachers had set up ultimately determined which learning opportunities the students could access. Even though there are limitations to being a participant, it appears as both staff, the centre management and the students themselves built the necessary trust and confidence to further students’ ownership and responsibility in CEMPE’s second period.

Students as creators: a transformative journey

Halfway through CEMPE’s lifespan, a new narrative emerged where students were seen as creators. This narrative was enabled by two fresh initiatives in CEMPE: the employment of student partners in the centre management and a funding scheme for student-led projects. The idea of student-led projects originated from NOKUT, the funding body of the CEE scheme at the time, when a call for additional funding specifically for student-led projects was released. While no student project application met the set criteria of curriculum development in the first call, the annual reports of CEMPE indicate a gradual increase in quality and quantity in the applications in the subsequent years (see also PRAXIS n.d.).

On the one hand, the students as creators narrative conveys the tale of motivated, capable and agentic students. These students applied for funding and realised successful projects as a result, as exemplified by one of the students:

My first meeting with CEMPE was reading this call on a notice board, and on this board it said: ‘Do you have an idea for a project?’ […]. And I did. […] And then I immediately thought that I wanted to apply for that, and I used that opportunity to articulate some thoughts about this ensemble project that I had been thinking about. (Student A)

On the other hand, however, while some students had a clear vision for their project, others had a vaguer idea from the onset, as was the case for two students who came back from an inspiring conference with an eagerness to do ‘something’ in their own institution:

And then we sent a rather generic application to CEMPE, we didn’t know what we wanted, we had no idea what we wanted. I guess we wanted to create a platform of some kind, but it was difficult. (Student F)

The students as creators narrative therefore also involved a need for support and mentoring. As described by many of the students, the student-led projects often developed in partnership with the centre coordinators and management team and with the head teacher of the elective course Student-led projects that started up in 2021. Students who received project funding enrolled in this course to be supported in their project development. Empowering students as creators was an important shift also according to staff interviewees, who considered the shift to be of particular value to the students themselves:

[I]t’s about letting students recognise that they can shape their own professional reality to a large extent, that there is a value in having ideas, that there is a value in taking hold of their ideas and bringing them to life. (Staff 10)

Moreover, a stronger student voice was characterised as valuable in terms of ‘accommodating individual careers’, as students ‘should embark on their own journey, and that journey will often become, or should perhaps also become, different from what their professor did him or herself’ (Staff 3). It was further acknowledged that ‘students know things about the world that we as staff members do not know, so there are a lot of things that we can’t tell them how to do’ (staff 10). One of the staff members interviewed, however, also warned us that students might get too much responsibility and power, and that ‘it is actually important that teachers do feel ownership and that they have projects, because they have enormous power regarding what’s being taught and how’ (staff 4). This warning can be linked to the second period of CEMPE, where we see an increase in student-led projects while the involvement of teachers decreased. This shift corresponded with the Academy’s strategy at the time and the slogan Students in the forefront, and one staff member noted in this regard that ‘there is generally a lot of awareness around student democracy in Scandinavia’ (Staff 6).

While students who had ideas and initiative were empowered through the students as creators narrative, the responsibility and freedom they were given also presented some challenges. As project leaders, students were expected to be responsible for the totality of their projects, which included setting up rehearsals, booking concert arenas, contacting supervisors, and recruiting musicians for ensemble projects or speakers for seminars. This responsibility was key, on the one hand, to making the project a realistic experience. On the other hand, students also needed varying amounts of support, helping them ‘not fall into any of those start-up traps’ (student A).

For the student partners, the role of being a creator was sometimes challenging due to the long duration of their position (i.e. two years) and the expectation that they should generate several projects. One student described this role as fantastic when one had ‘a lot of commitment and a lot of initiative’, but burdensome at times, ‘especially during the periods when we didn’t have specific projects’ (student E):

… and towards the end, I found it difficult to know what to do with my time, and then I also got a bit worried because I had hours I was supposed to spend on CEMPE, and if I didn't use them, what then? So it was a bit of a challenge. (Student E)

Another student recalled that ‘it was difficult to define what it [the student partner role] was, and I remember feeling very guilty in the beginning that I wasn’t doing enough’ (student B). This guilt – the feeling of not doing enough – was recognised by several of the staff members who had worked closely with the student partners:

I know that many of the student partners have also struggled with the openness of their role and tasks. I have thought that it must be a huge advantage if they can influence the centre in a way that makes sense to them, and work on things they are interested in, but it is also very difficult because it requires a lot more energy compared to getting specific orders. (Staff 8)

This dilemma, between enabling the partners the agency to pursue what they considered to be meaningful activities, and providing sufficient structures and role descriptions, appeared to not have been fully resolved throughout CEMPE’s lifespan.

Students as facilitators: opening up learning possibilities

As student-led projects and student partnership evolved, students began taking on the role as facilitators. This narrative was further strengthened by the structural changes of the centre, in which students were now recruited for paid positions both as student partners and as project leaders for ongoing projects. Thus, students were expected to facilitate learning arenas or learning experiences for their peers – as facilitators. The decision to appoint student partners in paid positions was described as a ‘game changer’, as students no longer were only volunteers and representatives but partners in paid positions or project leaders responsible for a budget:

The fact that CEMPE started actively using part-time jobs for students was a game-changer, because then students can be creative and develop themselves at the same time as they develop their education, while there is something in it for them. (Student F)

With the paid positions, there was a sense of responsibility to create meaningful activities and experiences for fellow music students. One student described their engagement in a project, saying ‘I was very passionate about it […], I remember being deeply engaged and thinking it was very important work’ (student C). Another student described the role of student partner as having the potential for real impact:

Student D: I felt that I got in touch with a desire to create events and discussions that could have an impact and be of significance to students and that it was more important than just doing the job I was paid for.

Researcher: That you were working towards a bigger goal?

Student D: Yes, but also that you were working for the greater good as well, and not just your own life and progress, I found it very inspiring and I put a lot of time and commitment into it.

Students who assumed facilitator roles shared stories of profound personal investment fuelled by intrinsic motivation that was shaped by past experiences from being a music student. They were committed towards making the educational experiences more diverse, more inclusive or more pertinent. One student described a self-initiated project as ‘very important because it was an opportunity to create a space that I had wanted myself at the Academy’ (student B), another considered it ‘important to create discussion arenas or ways in which students could think about and reflect on their own health [… .] and that’s something I found to be very important and something I felt lacked in my own education’ (student D). Yet another student stated that they, after graduating from the Academy, had realised what they themselves had missed in their study programme. This became their main motivation for facilitating new and alternative arenas for future students:

The motivation was that we both had just finished our bachelor’s degrees and there were many things that we felt that the education had not provided. That there were many things we had not learned, such as having a more multifaceted picture of success. (Student F)

However, working for ‘the greater good’ (student F) was also draining for some students, especially when fellow students did not show up. One student facilitator expressed that ‘even though you need students to get students to come, it wasn’t very easy to get a lot of people to come’ (student B), another stated that ‘I didn't really feel that we were getting through to the students, which is something I've been feeling very strongly about’ (student E). It could be very demotivating if few people came to events, particularly for students who had a strong personal commitment to the activities they facilitated and to work in CEMPE:

I always felt that I wished we could reach out to more students and that more people could benefit from it and participate in the things we initiated. We did it because we thought it was important, and I think it was important for many people too, but we would have liked to reach so many more people. I felt that it probably affected how much energy I put into the centre and CEMPE after a while, that it became a little more difficult, that we didn’t get through. (Student D)

Students as consultants: the qualified student voice

A final narrative – students as consultants – emerged in the interviews when staff members described the benefits of including student voices in decision-making processes or for general advice, and when students shared their experiences with being listened to and trusted in such processes. One of the staff members explained that CEMPE’s student partners had been selectively recruited and maintained the position for a longer period of time (i.e. two years), resulting in ‘a qualified student voice in various processes’, which was valuable to staff in management roles:

The fact that you have student partners and that it is relatively easy to speak to a qualified student voice means that in many situations you get to think twice instead of doing what you assume is what the students want or what is best for a student group. (Staff 1)

Another staff member acknowledged students’ expertise with the premise that students know the totality of their education, whereas teachers and staff only know the education in bits and pieces (staff 7). It was further commented that students have ‘legitimate and valuable things to contribute, and they often have more contact with the future work life and what is required in society today’ (staff 7). One of the students affiliated with CEMPE was praised for displaying critical thinking and an understanding of how things are interconnected in the media, and it was further noted that ‘we have a number of other people [students] who have been involved in CEMPE who are of that calibre’ (staff 7). Such statements underlined another central premise: students who involve themselves in various roles over time develop an expertise based on experience and knowledge. This development also applied to the student partners, described by another of the staff members as responsible consultants who ‘served as a bridge’ (staff 12) when faced with difficult issues regarding how to best communicate with the student group.

The role of consultant was especially prominent in the student partners, who helped the centre management to shape courses and activities that could be attractive for students, and to find effective ways of communicating these. One of the staff members stated that the student partners ‘help[ed] us understand who the students are and what they’re interested in, what language they speak, and to get in touch and have that student perspective on things’ (staff 8). Another staff member explained that ‘students are obviously much better at figuring out what's good for students than staff members are’ (Staff 11):

And when we saw how effective it was to have students involved, it should also be a natural part if you do something like this again, or in all development processes really. That was an important lesson learnt. (Staff 11)

The partnership model was described as ‘invigorating’ and ‘important’ on a personal level by another staff member (staff 9). Even so, it was acknowledged that the students needed support and that ‘sometimes it [the partnership] worked well, sometimes less so. It was very fun when the student partners joined the team, but they also required a lot’ (staff 9). The model was new also to the students, and it seems that all parties needed time to figure out what being a student partner actually entailed and what it meant for the staff and the students to work with each other on equal terms. One student explained that they were ‘quite surprised at how much trust and responsibility we were given’ (student D). Another student needed time to get used to this new way of working together with staff:

I also remember that I was listened to and gradually my self-confidence grew because I realised […] it perhaps took a little time to understand that they actually wanted us, that I didn’t need to think anything clever; what they wanted from me was just to say what I was thinking as a student. (Student C)

In sum, many of the informants considered it important to have students in positions over time, not only to provide a sense of trust within the team but to provide the paid students with the support necessary to fill the position in a way that suited them.

Discussion

Student involvement has clearly developed throughout CEMPE’s lifetime (2014–2023), not only in the degree to which music students involved themselves in and through the centre but in the manifold roles and activities they increasingly engaged in, as evidenced by the four identified narratives of students as participants, creators, facilitators and consultants (see also PRAXIS n.d.). If we posit that this development is the result of isomorphic change in HE (i.e. HE organisations morphing with the field to ensure legitimacy; see DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer et al. 2007; Stensaker et al. 2019) – in which student-centredness is being ‘unlocked’ (Hinings, Logue, and Zietsma 2017) – then CEMPE has enabled such change (see Gies and Sætre 2019; Ski-Berg, Stabell, and Karlsen Forthcoming) through the CEE initiative (see Norwegian Directorate for Higher Education and Skills n.a.). However, the allocated CEEs have approached student involvement differently (Helseth et al. 2019), and when NOKUT (2016) encouraged student partnerships in the centres, this ‘political pressure’ ended up fostering ‘internal incentives’ (Holen et al. 2021, 2735). In other words, how student involvement is approached in HE will be affected not only by the changing field but also by institutional norms (Bovill et al. 2016; Gravett, Kinchin, and Winstone 2020; see also Lok et al. 2017) specific to the organisation hosting the CEE.

CEMPE was situated at a music academy, a type of HE organisation characterised by highly specialised staff and a master-apprentice relationship between music student and instrumental teacher where much of the teaching takes place individually or in small groups (e.g. Jørgensen 2009). This privatised teaching culture builds on musical traditions (e.g. classical music, jazz) that are typically presented as institutionalised silos in music HE (e.g. tradition-informed study programmes). Due to the discursive forces at play in one-to-one instrumental teaching, students ‘who share the teacher’s way of thinking … are likely to benefit more easily from the teaching’ (Nerland 2007, 413). However, the authority of the instrumental teacher has been criticised in recent years for stifling creative development in music students. To foster autonomy and artistry, it is therefore encouraged that music HE allows, supports and values ‘the development of rebellious apprentices’ (Holmgren 2022, 583; see also Gies and Sætre 2019). CEMPE challenged institutional norms by promoting more student-centred and collaborative practices, mostly through extracurricular activities which have previously been found to play a crucial role in the way music students make sense of and organise their learning (Dahlberg 2013). The identified narratives from this study all describe more autonomous student experiences as a result, but have they come at a cost?

Our findings indicate that the involved students were empowered – but also deeply troubled – by the added responsibility to initiate and enable change in their institution. On the one hand, the interviewed students experienced their roles in CEMPE as empowering: they passionately seized opportunities as project leaders, committed to creating spaces for other students. On the other hand, they also worried about whether they were doing enough for the centre, pondering how to spend their time and efforts to succeed with projects. Clearly, the amount of physical and psychological energy (Astin 1999, 518) that some students devoted to CEMPE has been substantial. Studies on student involvement share similar findings to ours, namely that student experiences with governance and co-creation are complex and nuanced, shaped by institutional culture as well as personal goals and interests (e.g. Bovill and Woolmer 2019; Mercer-Mapstone and Bovill 2020; Planas et al. 2013). Notably, we also find that some students engaged in several roles over time and consequently developed a ‘qualified student voice’ that staff benefitted from. These students were eventually approached as consultants who contributed with legitimate opinions in difficult processes through their expertise (which has become increasingly common, see e.g. Klemenčič 2024, 7).

Student expertise was undoubtedly fostered by students’ involvement in and through CEMPE. However, as Bowden, Tickle, and Naumann (2021, 1221) warn us: ‘institutions cannot simply expect students to engage themselves’. Hence, the paid student positions put in place by CEMPE could be of particular interest to the field of HE. The positions were described as ‘a game changer’, and this novel structure explains how students could assume the roles as creators, facilitators and consultants. The paid students were selectively recruited, and they helped CEMPE realise the centre’s aims of increased student involvement and an updated and more relevant education. Students offered their time and engagement, and staff members recognised that both the Academy and CEMPE benefitted from their efforts. However, considering the cost of being a change agent, we would be remiss not to underline that while student expertise was valuable to both students and the institution, students who become involved without receiving the proper support run the risk of being exploited for their expertise. To properly support student involvement, it is crucial that HE organisations take students seriously in governance structures (Matthews and Dollinger 2023) and provide quality assurance to support student engagement (Bowden, Tickle, and Naumann 2021; Skalicky et al. 2020). In essence, while students can be efficient change agents in HE, the responsibility for institutional change cannot be outsourced to our students.

Concluding remarks

Student involvement and the rebellious apprentice are not always two sides of the same coin, yet the ‘student voice’ is often presented as an opposing force to the institution. Perhaps this opposition is recognised because student empowerment has become one of the ways in which HE organisations uphold legitimacy (Meyer and Rowan 1977; Ski-Berg and Røyseng 2024). However, student-led activities and venues might easily fade out once the students graduate if not properly implemented at the institution. Similarly, when allocated resources for CEE-driven measures cease to exist, their continued impact on student involvement remains undetermined. We propose that future research could look into how student initiatives may impact HE in sustainable ways, and how institutional structures can support student involvement moving forward. As highlighted by our interviewees, student involvement was crucial in realising the centre’s goals. However, students who assume the roles as facilitators and consultants, in particular, run the risk of being exploited for a short period only. Approaching student involvement through the lens of partnership – as a reciprocal, collaborative process between parties (Cook-Sather, Bovill, and Felten 2014) – ensures that the responsibility is shared among students, staff and leaders in HE. Fostered properly, student involvement can be a crucial part of the key to unlocking institutional change.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).