From Panopticon to Possibility: Rethinking Music Education Through Biesta’s World-Centered Lens

Abstract

This paper reflects on how the traditional structures of Western classical music education, long reinforced by hierarchical authority and the “expert gaze,” are increasingly unsettled in contemporary practice. Drawing on Foucault’s panopticon as a metaphor, I show how performance-centered, teacher-dominant approaches have disciplined both students and parents while leaving little room for students’ development of subject-ness. Through a real teaching story, I reveal the emerging cracks in this long-standing system, where digital technology, alternative pedagogies, and shifting cultural values have begun to erode the conservatory’s insulated authority. To interpret this change, I draw on Biesta’s three functions of education—qualification, socialization, and subjectification—and his notion of world-centered education. I suggest that music education must not only prepare students with skills and cultural knowledge but also facilitate subjectification—the capacity for agency, responsibility, and freedom. The discussion highlights implications for practice, including teacher judgment, more balanced power relations, and reflective, technology-mediated pedagogies, suggesting that the future of music education lies in creating spaces where learners encounter the world not as passive recipients but as subjects in the process of becoming with it.

1. An Everyday Story of Resistance in Western Classical Music Teaching

As a violin teacher who has received many years of Western classical music training, I am surrounded by musician friends, many of whom teach in diverse contexts. When music teachers gather, our conversations inevitably drift toward familiar topics: the “weird” or “difficult” students, the “miserable” teacher-student relationships, and the “unworthy” investments of time and energy in teaching.

During one such conversation, my violinist friend Sisi shared her frustration over a student, Chelsea, and a tense argument she had with Chelsea’s mother.

Chelsea had been studying violin with Sisi for over a year and was preparing for a certified Level 3 examination in August. According to Sisi, Chelsea had never developed effective practice habits and lacked the commitment needed for consistent daily work. Her mother, however, was highly result-oriented—expecting notable achievements from her daughter, yet unable to provide consistent supervision or guidance at home.

If you are a music teacher, you may recognize this dilemma: an adolescent with little intrinsic motivation to practice, paired with a parent who has high expectations but limited involvement. In this case, Sisi assumed the responsibility of guiding Chelsea toward exam success. She created detailed practice schedules, offered extra lessons, and even monitored the mother’s supervision. Sisi, in effect, became a “second parent”. However, when she discovered that Chelsea had spent much time on the summer camping instead of preparing for the exam, her frustration boiled over. She criticized the mother for neglecting the importance of the exam and suggested postponing it until Chelsea was ready. The mother refused, citing the non-refundable registration fee and insisting that “there’s no harm in trying.” Sisi disagreed, believing Chelsea needed an experience of success rather than the discouragement of failure. The disagreement escalated into a serious conflict.

Sisi was left feeling hurt and resentful as she had invested significant time and energy for what she believed was Chelsea’s benefit, only to be blamed for the situation.

In practice, this relationship revealed subtler dynamics. While Sisi invested considerable time and care in Chelsea’s lessons, she expected complete adherence to her instructions. Chelsea’s mother, however, did not fully adopt the role as a disciplined stakeholder within the parent-pupil-teacher triangle (Creech, 2009, 2010). Given that she did not fully understand how behavioural and emotional support shape a child’s learning, she sometimes questioned Sisi’s authority. These moments of resistance, small as they were, hinted at a shift: the willingness to challenge the teacher’s expert dominance.

Sisi is not the only teacher who has encountered such resistance. Many of my music teacher friends often share similar frustrations, reflecting that their authority feels diluted compared to that of their own teachers. They describe how students today are less likely to fully follow teachers’ guidance, making the teaching process more complex and uncertain. At the same time, parents often place heavy demands on teachers or openly question their pedagogical choices. In the previous generation, teachers were regarded as the primary authority who directed students’ learning paths, while parents acted as supportive partners who reinforced the teacher’s expectations at home. Today, however, this power structure is far less stable, giving rise to frequent conflicts and misunderstandings in the teaching process.

Sisi’s single case reflects a broader transformation in music education. This paper introduces the concept of the collapsing panopticon as a way of theorizing contemporary challenges in music education. Drawing on Foucault’s metaphor of panopticism, I argue that the hierarchical and surveillance-based structures of Western classical music culture are losing their former stability. These structures, long sustained through the studio model, performance-oriented ethos, and expert authority (Kingsbury, 1988; Nettl, 1995; Burwell, 2005; Westerlund & Odendaal, 2025), can no longer function with the same coherence or control. In the digital era of networked communication and open information flows, the mechanisms that once secured compliance and reproduced professional homogeneity are increasingly fragile. Teachers, students, and even parents now encounter alternative pedagogies, peer-generated content, and diverse cultural value systems that destabilize the expert gaze (Westerlund & Odendaal, 2025). By naming this phenomenon as a collapsing panopticon, I highlight not only the erosion of traditional structures but also the urgent need to rethink the purposes of music education in light of Biesta’s (2020, 2022, 2025) framework of qualification, socialization, and subjectification. This conceptual lens allows us to see the current turbulence not simply as a breakdown, but as an opening for world-centered music education—one in which students encounter themselves, others, and the world in new ways.

This story is not shared to assign blame or to judge who was right or wrong. Instead, it serves as an entry point into a broader reflection on how structures of authority and responsibility have been shaped and are now being challenged within the field of Western classical music education. To explore this, I approach the issue through philosophical inquiry supported by narrative illustration.

2. Methodological Orientation

This paper adopts a philosophical inquiry approach, aiming not to present empirical findings but to illuminate contemporary issues in music education through theoretical reflection. Following Regelski and Gates’s (2010) view of teaching as a reflective and ethical practice, the discussion seeks to question taken-for-granted assumptions about pedagogy, power, and learning in Western classical traditions. The inquiry is interpretive in nature, guided by Foucault’s (1977) concept of the panopticon and Biesta’s (2020, 2022) ideas of subjectification and world-centered education. These frameworks are used not as external theories to be tested, but as conceptual lenses for understanding how power and freedom coexist in teaching.

A short teaching narrative, which is based on real classroom experience, serves as a narrative illustration (Barone & Eisner, 2012) to situate abstract ideas in the everyday reality of instrumental teaching. The story is not treated as empirical data but as an interpretive vignette that reveals tensions between discipline, autonomy, and agency within teacher–student–parent relationships. Through philosophical analysis, the narrative is examined for moments that reflect Biesta’s (2020) components of subjectification: interruption, suspension, and sustenance.

This methodological stance values conceptual clarity and reflective depth over generalization. Its rigor lies in the transparency of interpretation and in its capacity to provoke rethinking of what education might mean when viewed not as control or instruction, but as a shared encounter with the world.

3. Panopticism and the Expert Gaze

At the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower. This tower is pierced with wide windows opening onto the inner side of the ring; the peripheral building is divided into cells, each extending the entire width of the structure … All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in the central tower and to shut up in each cell a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker, or a schoolboy.

(Foucault, 1977, p. 200)

In the panopticon, the tower is brightly lit, allowing the supervisor’s gaze to reach into every cell. Once a person’s missteps are visible, discipline and punishment can follow. Over time, individuals internalize the surveillance; they begin to behave as though they are always being watched, regulating themselves to avoid consequences. As Foucault (1977) notes, once “the surveillance is permanent in its effects” (p. 201), it no longer matters whether supervision is continuous—its possibility is enough to produce obedience. In this way, the panopticon becomes not only a physical structure but also a metaphor for systems of control that exist in institutions, organizations, and communities. The individuals in the cells may be prisoners, patients, workers or, in the case of education, students.

In music education, Westerlund and Odendaal (2025) use the metaphor of the panopticon to describe the historic concert hall, illustrating how it produces a hierarchical expert gaze—a dominant professional ethos that enforces homogeneity, consensus, and the preservation of institutional status quo. In this paper, I extend their insight by applying the panopticon metaphor to the entire system of traditional Western classical music training, where the expert gaze and professional ethos function as the surveillance from the tower. This gaze is not incidental but deeply embedded in the traditions of Western classical music. As Kingsbury (1988) observed, “conservatory life is about talent” and privileges the “artistry individuality” of instrumental teachers (p. 59). Nettl (1995) further demonstrates how this logic shapes higher music education, noting that music schools continue to serve the great masters, such as Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Wagner, meanwhile keeping performance at the very heart of institutional life.

This admiration for virtuosity reinforces the dominance of the apprenticeship model. Instruction typically takes place in the isolation of the studio, a one-on-one setting where the teacher’s authority is central and unquestioned (Burwell et al., 2017). Literature often highlights the advantages of this model: the ability to tailor instruction to a student’s specific needs, to progress at an individual pace, and to focus deeply on technical refinement (Gaunt, 2009; Burwell et al., 2017). However, the same model has been criticized for its embedded discourse of control. Studio teaching can easily foster passivity; students may become recipients of knowledge rather than active participants in its creation (Burwell, 2005; Sørbø, 2023). This dynamic can limit the development of independence, self-motivation, and critical thinking.

The studio setting also reinforces the narrow values of Western classical performance. As Bauer and Berg (2001) note, instrumental teachers often focus on preparing students for the next performance rather than teaching music through varied activities. This performance-first philosophy is further entrenched by the separation of practical and theoretical studies in university music departments (Cox, 2007; Triantafyllaki, 2010). Although theory and performance are intended to complement each other, theory is often undervalued in studio teaching, where technical skill and tone production dominate.

Pedagogically, modelling and imitation remain central. Carey et al. (2013) call this “transfer-style” teaching, in which knowledge flows from teacher to student with an emphasis on performative outcomes rather than transformative learning (p. 362). Without opportunities for active engagement, students risk becoming dependent on the teacher’s authority, perpetuating the cycle of passive reception.

As Westerlund and Odendaal (2025) argue,

“The ocularcentric expert gaze keeps the profession on the already existing professional path; not only does it create the needed control and diminish heterogeneity, but it also prevents the professionals from seeing beyond what is traditionally thought to be worth seeing and of most value”.

(p. 31)

This performance-oriented, teacher-dominant, transfer-style approach imposes a form of self-discipline not only on students but also on teachers, and even on families within the classical music system. Its professional ethos is continuously reinforced, generation after generation.

Returning to Sisi’s story, as a classically trained violinist, her thinking and actions are shaped by these traditions and discourses. She employed conventional pedagogical strategies and aimed at maximizing performance outcomes, believing that her expert guidance would ensure student’s success. In her view, Chelsea and her mother should prioritize the exam, follow her plan, and align their efforts with the goal she had set. If everyone in this metaphorical panopticon fulfilled their role, the professional order would remain intact, its values transmitted without disruption.

But in this case, something disrupted the order. Who or what was the destabilizing force that shook the structure?

4. Cracks in the Panopticon: Shifting Power in Music Education

Viewed through the lens of the panoptic expert gaze, Sisi’s actions were entirely consistent with what she believed to be right. Chelsea’s mother, meanwhile, entered the world of Western classical music education with the expectation that an expert would take full responsibility for her daughter’s progress. This expectation mirrors the logic of the apprenticeship model, where the teacher holds primary authority over a student’s learning path.

Chelsea’s mother, however, was not or had not yet become a fully disciplined stakeholder in this panopticon. As Creech (2010) argues, the “parent–pupil–teacher trios” rely on parents’ behavioral, cognitive, and personal support for successful instrumental learning (p. 18). In this case, Chelsea’s mother resisted Sisi’s suggestion to cancel the exam, partly because of the non-refundable fee and partly because she believed there was no harm in trying. Her response showed that she did not fully comply with the authority of the master teacher. Saying “no” to Sisi in that moment was, in fact, a small act of rebellion, revealing a crack in the panoptic structure that had long held firm in Western classical music teaching.

From a Foucauldian perspective, this resistance is not an isolated incident but a symptom of larger shifts in the cultural and technological landscape. The panopticon of Western classical music—once tightly sealed—no longer keeps its walls intact. In earlier generations, students and parents often accepted the teacher’s authority without question, partly because access to alternative perspectives was limited. Today, however, the development of digital technology, the explosion of online resources, and the ease of global information sharing have disrupted that insulation. A parent like Chelsea’s mother can, within minutes, search for other teaching philosophies, compare examination requirements, or find online communities that validate her stance.

The collapse, therefore, is not merely a matter of individual rebellion but of systemic vulnerability. The hierarchical structure of Western classical music training which has long sustained by its isolated, master-apprentice framework is increasingly exposed to competing values, pedagogies, and interpretations of success. Information once controlled within the cells of the panopticon now circulates freely, undermining the invisibility of the supervisor’s authority. As a result, participants in the system, including students, parents, even teachers, are less likely to follow established routines without question.

And when the routines are disrupted, conflict becomes almost inevitable. What Sisi experienced was not simply a clash of personalities but a moment in which the traditional architecture of authority met the unpredictable agency of individuals navigating a more open, connected world.

At the same time, Chelsea’s mother’s response is not only evidence of expanded agency in a connected world, it also reflects broader neoliberal shifts shaping contemporary education. Her insistence on pursuing the examination was framed through the language of “non-refundable fees,” online comparisons, and a clear expectation of service delivery, illustrating how parents are increasingly positioned as consumers. In this logic, learning becomes a product, and teachers are expected to meet predefined outcomes to justify educational investments. This aligns with Biesta’s (2022) critique of learnification, where discourses of choice, efficiency, and customer satisfaction overshadow deeper questions of purpose, meaning, and subjectification. Seen this way, the moment of tension in Sisi’s story exposes not only the erosion of traditional authority but also the intensification of consumerist demands placed on teachers. These two forces of technological openness and market-driven expectations, together complicate the stability of Western classical music pedagogy and shape the cracks now visible in its longstanding structures.

Technology as a Force of Disruption

The traditional architecture of Western classical music education has long depended on its relative insulation from external scrutiny. The master–apprentice relationship functioned within a contained space—both physically, in the private studio, and culturally, in the shared assumptions of the field (Burwell et al., 2017). However, the digital era has transformed the conditions under which this relationship operates. Information and materials that were once scarce, and accessible only through specialist networks, are now freely available online (Leong, 2017; Lum, 2017). Students and parents can watch masterclasses on YouTube, download fingerings and bowings from blogs, compare interpretations from multiple artists on streaming platforms, use AI tools to monitor their practice and obtain feedback, or join social media groups dedicated to specific examination boards (Sánchez-Jara et al., 2024).

This abundance of perspectives challenges the exclusivity of the expert gaze. Where once the authority of the teacher was reinforced by the student’s lack of alternative reference points, now every pedagogical choice can be measured against a wider and more diverse range of examples. Authority becomes negotiable; the studio is no longer the sole site of learning (Wright, 2017). For many, this democratization offers welcome access to knowledge and fosters autonomy in learning. However, for others, it destabilizes the hierarchies and rituals that have traditionally underpinned the craft. Furthermore, digital technology enables a culture of sharing that is fundamentally at odds with the logic of the panopticon. In Foucault’s metaphor, the supervisor’s power rests on controlling the visibility and flow of information. But in an era where performances, teaching demonstrations, and even private lessons can be recorded, shared, and critiqued in public forums, control over information is no longer centralized. The cells of the panopticon are now connected to one another, bypassing the central tower entirely.

The result is a cultural environment in which norms and practices are more readily questioned. Students may adopt hybrid learning strategies that combine traditional lessons with self-directed exploration; parents may weigh the teacher’s advice against peer recommendations from online communities. Even teachers, exposed to an ever-widening range of methodologies, may find themselves re-evaluating long-held beliefs about their craft.

Returning to Sisi’s story, Chelsea’s mother’s hesitation to follow the teacher’s guidance was not simply a personal preference. It reflects a broader cultural shift in which parents and students actively seek online information, compare alternative viewpoints, and construct their own interpretations. In doing so, the exclusivity of the teacher’s authority becomes less stable than it once was.

For Western classical music education, this shift is not merely technological—it is philosophical. The erosion of the panopticon creates space for rethinking the purposes and processes of education. As Biesta (2015) reminds us, when established systems no longer operate unquestioned, there is an opportunity to move toward forms of education that are more world-centered, where the goal is not simply to reproduce the tradition but to engage with the broader world in all its complexity. In this sense, technology’s disruption may be seen not only as a threat to tradition but as an opening for more plural, dialogic, and world-centered pedagogies.

5. From Disruption to Possibility: A Philosophical Reorientation

The fractures in the panoptic structure of Western classical music education signal not only instability but also possibility. Digital technologies, global networks, and shifting cultural expectations have disrupted inherited hierarchies, yet disruption alone is not transformation. If unexamined, these forces risk reproducing new forms of surveillance—platform logics and consumerist learning—in place of teacher authority.

The challenge, then, is to move beyond critique and ask how disruption can serve as an opening for rethinking teaching practices. Rather than restoring the authority of the master teacher, the task is to imagine education as a space where freedom, responsibility, and subject-ness can emerge. Biesta’s (2015, 2022) framework of qualification, socialization, and subjectification provides a guide. While skill and cultural transmission remain important, neglecting subjectification reduces education to training. Cultivating it, by contrast, makes education an encounter with both the world and the self (Dong, 2025).

Seen this way, the collapse of the panoptic model is not only a loss but an invitation: to rebalance the three functions of education and to reimagine the teacher’s role as one who opens the world while leaving space for students to appear as subjects.

Three Functions of Education

Biesta (2012, 2015, 2020, 2022, 2024a, 2024b, 2025) identifies three core functions of education: qualification, socialization, and subjectification.

In music education, much research has focused on the first two domains. Qualification is “one of the major functions of organized education and is an important rationale for having state-funded education in the first place” (Biesta, 2009, p. 40). Within music, this function often centers on preparing students for professional or vocational roles. Research in this area examines professional training, skill acquisition, musical competency, curriculum design, pedagogical methods, and the transition to the workforce. Emphasis is typically placed on performance outcomes, formal assessments, and credentialing, all of those frame qualification as a central.

Socialization, by contrast, concerns how individuals are brought into relationships with broader social and cultural contexts. In music education, this often means the reproduction of particular traditions, values, and practices (Applebaum, 2009; Giroux, 2018; Nieto, 2018; Oakes & Oakes, 2018). Research explores how students adopt musician identities, internalize traditions, and conform to norms within settings like schools, conservatories, and ensembles (Kingsbury, 1988; Perkins, 2013). Socialization fosters community and continuity, making students “members of and part of particular social, cultural and political ‘orders’” (Biesta, 2009, p. 40). In addition, scholars also note that it can reinforce hierarchies and marginalize those who do not fit dominant norms, raising critical questions about power, inclusion, and identity (Allsup & Benedict, 2008; Bradley, 2006; Fredriksen et al., 2023; Green, 2014a, 2014b; Kingsbury, 1988).

Subjectification, according to Biesta (2015, 2020, 2025), involves awakening a desire in individuals to become subjects of their own lives, to encounter and exercise their own freedom. Freedom here is “fundamentally an existential matter” (Biesta, 2022, p. 45). If qualification is about what we learn and socialization is about why we learn in certain ways, subjectification is about how we exist and act in the world. It is “a first-person matter… about how I exist as subject of my own life, not as object of what other people want from me” (p. 45).

In this view, subjectification resists treating education as merely producing skilled performers or compliant students. Instead, it calls for conditions in which learners come into presence as unique subjects, encountering the world in ways that demand ethical and responsible action. Yet within the panoptic expert gaze of Western classical music teaching, qualification and socialization dominate, leaving little space for subjectification (Fredriksen et al., 2023). Indeed, there may be an implicit resistance to fostering subject-ness, since it could unsettle the hierarchical structures that sustain the tradition.

In the collapsing panoptic system, students like Chelsea often find themselves positioned as objects of instruction rather than as subjects of learning. From their perspective, subjectification is not an abstract philosophical process but a deeply personal negotiation between dependence and autonomy. It may begin with small acts, such as hesitation, questioning, or resistance, they signal a shift from compliance toward self-awareness (Onsrud et al., 2023). In such moments, education moves beyond skill acquisition to become an encounter with one’s own freedom and responsibility. For students, this is where learning becomes lived rather than imposed.

Chelsea’s story illustrates this absence. Nowhere is her voice heard; what we hear instead are her mother’s expectations and Sisi’s insistence that both mother and daughter follow her lead toward performance success. Chelsea is positioned not as an active participant but as a passive recipient, expected to comply rather than to shape her own learning journey. For Biesta (2020), this is precisely why subjectification is the most vital of the three domains in education. This is not to dismiss the value of qualification and socialization, but to emphasize that without subjectification, education risks collapsing into mere training: educators do things to students, treating them as objects rather than engaging with them as subjects. True education, in contrast, grows with students: approaching them as persons who can act, decide, and respond.

6. Toward a World-Centered Music Education

Before the advocacy of world-centered education, several other concepts are more well-known: teacher-centered education, student-centered education and curriculum-centered education (Dewey, 1916/2007; Freire, 1970; Rogers, 1983; Pinar, 2012). Apparently, those concepts suggest different understandings on the power dynamics in education: teacher, student or curriculum represents different dominant power, and such power defines the values and rules of related teaching practice, students’ behaviour and learning outcome assessment. For example, in the traditional Western classical music education, teacher-centered teaching model legitimizes teachers’ dominance on knowledge and skills transferring, teacher-student relationship and performance evaluation from expert gaze. In sum, whatever-centered education encompasses discourses and discursive practices that whatever asks for.

World-centered education, simply saying, is about what the world asks for. Within such philosophy, teacher, student and curriculum are no longer the ones in charge. Instead, we all need to listen to, feel about and learn what the world needs from us. As addressed above, the development of technology is reconstructing people’s perception of music and music learning, including Western classical music which has long been structured by the panoptic expert gaze. The turbulence and instability within Western classical world—which I metaphorized as cracks on the wall of panopticon—are actually reminders for us to reflect on our understanding of music education and listen to the calling from the changing world.

Why Subjectification Matters

What does subjectification have to do with the world-centered education? Or why does world-centered education need subjectification?

The idea of world-centred education is first of all meant to highlight that educational questions are fundamentally existential questions, that is, questions about our existence “in” and “with” the world, natural and social, and not just our existence with ourselves.

(Biesta, 2022, pp. 90–91)

Biesta’s advocacy on subjectification and world-centered education both ask the existential questions: how do we exist? And how do we exist in and with the world? Apparently, subjectification and world-centered education share the same existential essence. If one does not have the awareness of self-existence, how can they explore their existence in and with the world? Furthermore, the changing world is drawing our attention to diverse and complex social, cultural, ethical and political situations, thus we should be equipped with critical, independent and creative mindsets and capabilities to encounter complexity. With subjectification, learners will be able to recognize that there are always choices in how one uses their skills, voice, and position, and can question, reinterpret, and even reshape the worlds they inhabit through their practice.

Such existence in one’s own right does not mean that one can do everything they want to, Biesta (2022) does not suggest unlimited freedom. Instead, subjectification requires people to recognize limits and limitations in the natural and social world and in themselves, thus acknowledge that not all desires and initiatives that can be achieved. Therefore, it is not only people that take actions and make decisions to learn whatever from the world, but also the world that asks people to understand and learn something from it by keeping “being taught by” (p. 91).

When Western classical music education emphasizes the dominance of performers’ craftsmanship, the market is calling for transformative musicians with interdisciplinary knowledge and scopes, and critical perspectives to investigate diverse topics, such as music learning in AI era, music and psychology, music and sociology, and music and neuroscience (Dromey & Haferkorn, 2018). At the same time, musicians are expected to reflect on and practically address global challenges such as sustainable development and environmental responsibility, which shape cultural institutions and creative practices worldwide. For the traditional performance market, the gradual aging audiences in the concert hall implies the shift in the needs of the world (Smith & Peters, 2024). Young musicians find it hard to find jobs as traditional performers as the market does not provide that many positions (Bennett, 2008; Burland & Pitts, 2007; Coulson, 2010). That is the reality about the world that music students should be aware of, and that is the lesson the world teaches them. Therefore, the neglect of subjectification in music education will risk young generation lose the connection with the real world, thus prelude them to gain comprehensive capabilities to respond the world’s call.

In conclusion, world-centered education entails subjectification as the only unchanging feature of the world is the essence of constant changes, which requires people to genuinely respond to the world rather than operating within it. With critical awareness and creative endeavors, individuals will be able to navigate the complexity and diversity of the changing world.

7. Implications for Music Education Practice

As the panoptic and hierarchical framework of the expert gaze becomes increasingly unstable and new challenges in teaching and learning emerge, it is imperative for music educators and researchers to reconsider long-standing practices that may have been taken for granted. Biesta’s concepts of world-centered education and subjectification—which place students’ subject-ness and their engagement with the real world at the center—offer a fresh perspective, inviting music educators and researchers to critically reexamine and challenge prevailing philosophical and pedagogical approaches. This section explores implications for the field of music education, focusing on the teacher’s role, teacher’s judging and balancing, and practical considerations for pedagogy.

7.1. The Teacher’s Role in Subjectification

Biesta (2022) critiques the growing emphasis on learnification, which he defines as the shift in educational discourse, policy, and practice toward prioritizing learners and their learning at the expense of teachers, teaching, and curriculum. He argues that this perspective reduces education to observable learning behaviors while overlooking deeper questions of what students learn, why they learn, and how they learn. These dimensions are central to understanding education as a practice that extends beyond learning to encompass teaching. This distinction is particularly important in music education, where technique, artistry, and interpretive insight cannot be reduced to observable learning behaviours.

Similarly, Biesta (2012) challenges the reduction of teachers to mere facilitators, suggesting that such a description fails to capture the complexities of learning and the relational dynamics of education. As Biesta (2024b) explains:

“I teach because I have intentions, ambitions, and hopes for my students, and without these, I would no longer be teaching. And students are also ‘there’ with expectations and anticipations. They are not there just to have a good time or a nice conversation, but expect something from the teacher, first and foremost something that they themselves do not (yet) have”.

(p. 190)

Thus, teachers do not merely enable learning but actively guide, challenge, and support students as they confront questions of purpose, meaning, and value. The question, then, is how such guidance, challenge, and support interact with the processes of subjectification and world-centered education. Biesta’s (2020) articulation of interruption, suspension, and sustenance provides insight into this question.

7.1.1. Interruption

Every learner brings their own desires and initiatives. However, not all desires can be realized. The material and social realities of the world inevitably impose limits. Marginson (2024) emphasizes that the conditions for subjectification depend on factors such as the degree of immersion in higher education, opportunities for agency, access to resources and support, institutional arrangements, and existential challenges. These limits interrupt the flow of a learner’s intentions, revealing that some goals require reconsideration or are unattainable in their current form. Education, therefore, has an inherently interruptive quality (Biesta, 2020). In music learning, such interruptions occur when students confront technical limits, repertoire demands, or performance realities that challenge their initial intentions.

7.1.2. Suspension

Meeting the world and adjusting one’s desires to its realities takes time. For subjectification to occur, students must have opportunities to pause, reflect, struggle, and try again. Biesta (2022) calls this the principle of suspension, which means the slowing down of the learning process so that students can meaningfully engage with the realities they meet. This stands in contrast to conventional educational models that prioritize efficiency and measurable outcomes. In music education, this tension often appears when assessment deadlines or exam structures override the slower, reflective processes that musical growth requires.

Chelsea’s story illustrates this tension. She was expected to meet a fixed examination goal without being given time to meaningfully confront her own reality. Sisi, her teacher, valued outcomes and efficiency over process, overlooking the developmental value of failure and struggle. If Chelsea had been allowed time to experience suspension, she could have learned that meaningful progress requires greater investment, or alternatively, that violin learning was not a priority for her life. Either way, these realizations would have been hers to make.

7.1.3. Sustenance

Since subjectification often disrupts students’ intentions and requires time to align with reality, education must also sustain students through these processes. Sustenance ensures that learners endure difficulty without succumbing to frustration or helplessness. By offering care, encouragement, and relational support, teachers help students remain engaged in the ongoing, non-linear process of subjectification. For musicians, this includes supporting students through plateaus, frustrations in practice, and the emotional demands of performance preparation.

7.1.4. Persistence

Building on Biesta’s (2020) triad, Dong (2025) suggests a further component: persistence. Her idea resonates with Biesta’s (2024a) framing of selfhood as a lifelong “balancing act” (p. 16) and Marginson’s (2024) emphasis on the uneven and incomplete process of subjectification shaped by both internal and external factors. Without persistence, students may disengage from the lifelong and often difficult journey of becoming subjects within a complex and unpredictable world.

These reflections highlight the complexity of the teacher’s role within subjectification and world-centered education. Teachers are not merely companions on a student’s journey; they are active participants who must decide when to intervene, when to suspend, and when to sustain. Such decisions are rarely straightforward. They demand careful judgment, especially as teachers navigate the three educational domains that often sit in tension with one another. It is to this question of judgment and balance, and how teachers make these choices in practice, that I now turn.

7.2. Teachers’ Judgement and Balancing

7.2.1. Balancing the Three Functions

As discussed earlier, teachers play a multifaceted role in subjectification—guiding, supporting, and sometimes interrupting students’ initiatives. However, this role also demands constant negotiation. Biesta (2015) emphasizes that teachers must exercise judgment in determining how the three educational domains—qualification, socialization, and subjectification—are balanced in practice. Because these domains can be in tension, teachers must decide which purpose to prioritize at a given moment and how to navigate the trade-offs that follow. In this sense, judgment is not a peripheral skill but the core of pedagogical responsibility. In music education, such judgment shapes decisions about repertoire selection, pacing, technique instruction, and the degree of interpretive freedom offered to students.

Dong’s (2025) study of university students’ subjectification in violin learning illustrates this point. In working with the beginners, she prioritized qualification—selecting appropriate content, designing lessons, and introducing basic technical and theoretical foundations—because she found that insufficient knowledge limited students’ ability to engage in reflective activities. Without a basic level of competence, students struggled to explore autonomy or meaningfully direct their own learning. This echoes Biesta’s (2022) argument that teachers bear responsibility for giving students not only what they ask for but also what they cannot yet imagine needing. As Dong (2025) notes, “teachers should not abandon their role as conveyors of knowledge and critical thinking. Teachers’ power, when applied with care, can serve as a positive force in education” (p. 189).

7.2.2. Curriculum and Pedagogy

Judgment also extends to curriculum design, pedagogy, and classroom organization. Keys and Heck (2024), for example, propose that opposition, cooperation, and participation provide a practical framework for fostering generative dialogue in educational settings. Their model highlights how careful design can create spaces for students to try out positions, encounter challenges, and practice acting as subjects—now and in the future. Similarly, Dong (2025) highlights the importance of tailoring pedagogical strategies to learners’ diverse habits and preferences. In her study, she offered multiple forms of reflection: while one student thrived with video-based self-reflection, another found writing a more effective way to articulate thoughts. By respecting these differences, she enabled both students to deepen their reflective practice.

7.2.3. Teacher-Student Relationships

Finally, judgment is essential in navigating teacher–student relationships, particularly with regard to power dynamics. From the perspective of world-centered education, authority should not reside permanently on one side; rather, it should shift like a seesaw, depending on context. This mirrors musical learning itself, where teachers sometimes lead technical and stylistic decisions, and at other times step back to let students experiment with phrasing, tone, and artistic intent. Yet discerning when to step back and when to intervene requires close observation and ongoing dialogue. Teachers must pay attention not only to technical progress but also to how students experience and interpret their learning. Dong’s (2025) example again illustrates this complexity: one student embraced self-direction, while another preferred clear structure and teacher guidance. Recognizing these differences, she concluded that “teachers sometimes lead, but they must also step back to allow space for autonomy” (p. 189). Striking this balance is rarely straightforward. It requires experimentation, ongoing self-reflection, and careful adjustment.

In conclusion, teachers’ judgments about balancing domains, designing curriculum, selecting pedagogy, and calibrating relationships are not abstract philosophical questions but lived decisions that shape educational encounters. They determine not only what is taught but how students come to see themselves in relation to the world and their own possibilities within it.

7.3. Practical Considerations

If world-centered education and subjectification demand constant teacher judgment, then the next question becomes: how can these ideas be enacted in practice? Philosophical insights are only meaningful if they shape the everyday realities of music teaching and learning. In light of the cracks emerging in the panoptic structure of Western classical education and the call for more world-centered approaches, educators need strategies that are both philosophically grounded and pragmatically useful. In this section, I outline three interrelated considerations: reflective practice, technology-involved learning, and double-truth giving. They illustrate how teachers can translate Biesta’s ideas into concrete pedagogical action.

7.3.1. Reflective Practice

Reflection remains one of the most accessible yet powerful tools for destabilizing inherited routines and cultivating subjectification. Schön’s (1983) distinction between reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action offers a concrete framework. For teachers, reflective practice can serve as a way of noticing biases, adjusting pedagogy in real time, and making space for students’ own voices (Dong, 2025; Moon, 2006). For students, journaling, dialogue, and self-assessment can help shift their position from passive receivers to active participants in meaning-making (Jorgensen, 2008; Hallam, 2001). What matters here is not only the act of reflecting, but the creation of dialogic spaces where both teacher and student learn to examine assumptions and reframe their relationships to music, authority, and the world. In music learning contexts, reflective strategies help students connect bodily sensations, technical goals, and interpretive choices, fostering deeper musical agency.

7.3.2. Technology-Involved Learning

The cracks in the panopticon are widened by digital technologies. Platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, AI tools and online forums already allow students to access alternative pedagogies and communities beyond the studio. Instead of resisting these shifts, educators might actively incorporate them into their practice: guiding or learning with students the technology tools, reflecting on current practice (Dong & Younker, 2025), inviting students to compare online tutorials with studio instruction, analyzing peer performances as critical listeners, or even producing collaborative digital projects. Technology, when framed carefully, can move beyond distraction or imitation, becoming instead a site of agency and critical engagement (Ruthmann & Mantie, 2017; Partti & Westerlund, 2012). It challenges the exclusivity of the studio while expanding the boundaries of what counts as legitimate learning.

7.3.3. Double-Truth Giving

Finally, Kierkegaard’s notion of double-truth giving, as interpreted by Biesta (2022), reminds us that teaching is not simply about passing on knowledge and skills but also about providing the interpretive frame through which knowledge becomes meaningful. Teachers can model this by being transparent about their own decision-making: why a particular bowing matters, how a phrasing choice relates to broader musical values, or why practicing slowly might be more productive than chasing speed. When supporting students in the middle ground, teachers can clarify their suggestions on directing students’ future path, sharing their thinking process. In doing so, teachers offer not only content but also an orientation toward thinking critically about content. This practice honors both qualification and subjectification, reminding students that meaning arises not from blind compliance but from thoughtful participation in a tradition that is itself open to reinterpretation.

Together, these practical considerations point toward a pedagogy that neither restores the walls of the panopticon nor celebrates its collapse uncritically. Instead, they sketch possibilities for a music education that is world-centered—responsive to tradition, technology, and the lived subject-ness of students—while still recognizing the irreplaceable role of teachers in guiding the process.

8. Conclusions and Discussion: Rebalancing Music Education in a Post-Panoptic Era

This paper has examined the cracks in the panoptic structures of Western classical music education and argued for reorienting practice toward world-centered education and subjectification. Using Biesta’s framework, I have suggested that qualification and socialization remain essential but insufficient if they are not complemented by opportunities for students to encounter themselves as subjects—free, responsible, and responsive to the world. When teaching is reduced to transfer of skills or reproduction of tradition, education risks becoming training; when subjectification is foregrounded, it opens space for students’ voices, struggles, and desires to matter.

While this discussion centers on Western classical music, the idea of world-centered education resonates more widely. Many musical settings, such as popular, communal, and culturally specific also require teachers to balance structure, autonomy, and judgment. The forms may differ, but the underlying questions of how learners meet the world through music remain relevant across contexts.

The disruption caused by technology and cultural change has made this need more urgent. As authority diffuses across digital platforms and alternative pedagogies, teachers can no longer rely on inherited hierarchies to command compliance. Instead, they must develop practices that balance interruption, suspension, sustenance, and persistence, exercising judgment in how to navigate the trade-offs among qualification, socialization, and subjectification. Reflective practice, technology-involved learning, and the principle of double-truth giving illustrate practical directions for such a reorientation.

Returning to Sisi’s story brings these ideas into sharper focus. Her frustration with Chelsea and her mother was not simply a matter of poor discipline or miscommunication but a sign that the older framework of unquestioned teacher authority is no longer stable. In a panoptic system, both student and parent were expected to comply with the master teacher’s gaze; today, multiple perspectives and competing values disrupt that order. World-centered education does not offer Sisi a formula for success but a new orientation: to see her task less as ensuring outcomes and more as creating spaces where Chelsea can encounter the world—including its limits—and come to her own decisions about music learning.

Looking forward, future research could explore how world-centered education might reshape music education in diverse contexts, such as community music programs, digital learning platforms, or cross-cultural collaborations. Comparative studies could investigate how subjectification unfolds in different musical traditions beyond Western classical frameworks. In addition, empirical work with larger and more varied participant groups could shed light on how teachers navigate the tension between maintaining professional expertise and creating space for students’ subject-ness. Such directions would not only deepen theoretical understanding but also provide practical insights for reimagining music education in a rapidly changing world.

In this way, the story that opened the paper circles back as both caution and possibility. The collapse of the old order is not the end of music education but an invitation to reimagine its purposes. By foregrounding subjectification alongside qualification and socialization, music educators can begin to rebuild practices that prepare students not only to perform with skill but to exist in and with the world as subjects of their own lives.