ABSTRACT
Leadership in higher music education and practice is a dynamically contested space. It could be argued that all musician/educators are leaders with a focus on student learning, instrumental pedagogy, cultural awareness, technical development, communication, business skills and so on. But many of these areas of leadership are also predicated on the roles that individuals have inside organisations. Borrowing established ideas from psychological literature, this chapter examines the notion of “locus of control”. This useful concept enables a better understand of how musician/ educators understand and work with the affordances of their personal “internal” horizons and with those that are externally generated. The chapter asks whether academic and performance experience contribute to a persona autonomy in the exhibition of their leadership, and how far the exercise of their leadership extends.
