ABSTRACT
To understand how music learning might support the development of higher education music students, it is important to have a clear understanding of changes and transitions experienced during the phase of development. J. J. Arnett has researched and defined an independent developmental stage that captures the transition from adolescence to adulthood called “emerging adulthood.” The transition from adolescence to adulthood is mirrored by a transition from dependence on teacher-mentors to the ability to exercise self-authorship. R. Kegan describes self-authorship as the coordination, integration, or creation of “values, beliefs, convictions, generalizations, ideals, abstractions, interpersonal loyalties, and intrapersonal states”. J. Gaff and J. Meacham describe a mission statement as “an institution’s formal, public declaration of its purposes” and “the necessary condition for many different individuals to pull together through a myriad of activities to achieve central shared purposes”. They assert that a central statement reflecting an institution’s primary goals should be specific enough to determine whether its practices are advancing those aims.
