This article examines one-on-one teaching practices in higher music education, focusing on how global pedagogical models are adapted within Iranian institutional and cultural contexts. Drawing on the experiences of individuals who have studied composition or performance in both Iranian and Western institutions over the past two decades (N=42), the discussion considers how five key dimensions—musical knowledge, lesson management, teaching approach, preparation, and student–teacher rapport—are shaped by differing institutional, cultural, and material conditions. While Western frameworks continue to influence Iranian music education, the findings highlight how this influence is reshaped by local constraints, including limited performance opportunities, inadequate resources, high teaching loads, and entrenched teacher-centered practices. Rather than simply comparing systems, the article uses this perspective to reflect on the challenges of adapting disciplinary traditions across contexts. These reflections contribute to broader conversations about pedagogy, power, and cultural translation within the arts and humanities in higher education.



Survey results revealed that Western experiences were rated significantly higher across all five dimensions, with the widest gap in student preparation. Participants identified sporadic recital schedules and performance opportunities as critical deficiencies in Iranian institutions. Performance opportunities, which in many Western programs function as integral components of practice-based learning, remain peripheral in Iranian curricula, limiting the creative development of both performers and student composers. In contrast, the smallest differences, though still significant, appeared in teaching approach and rapport, signaling areas of gradual convergence. Faculty musical knowledge may be perceived as constrained not only or primarily by individual shortcomings but by systemic burdens: heavy teaching loads that far exceed Western norms, financial limitations, professor's educational background, and acute shortages of contemporary scores and specialized library holdings. These resource gaps compel reliance on free digital repositories that rarely include non-Western or recent repertoire, widening the distance between students and the plurality of global music practices. Teaching cultures themselves reflect a transitional hybridity: directive master-apprentice traditions persist, yet student-centered strategies are emerging, introduced in part by academics trained abroad. This shift, however, is unevenly distributed across instruments and institutions, partly because many studios depend on guest instructors who operate outside formal curriculum design processes. Lesson management scores further illuminate the interpersonal texture of instruction, with participants reporting heightened anxiety linked to limited multimodal teaching and unclear performance expectations, suggesting the need for more inclusive, learner-responsive pedagogies. A notable point of statistical parity was the shared emphasis on listening to recordings, indicating that aural transmission remains a robust feature of Iranian classical music training and represents a productive alignment between local traditions and imported models. By foregrounding the perspectives of individuals with lived experience in both systems, the study mitigates common cross-national biases and reveals how resource asymmetries, faculty working conditions, and institutional cultures together shape one-on-one music instruction in ways that extend beyond simple comparative judgments, offering a nuanced lens on the possibilities and limits of pedagogical adaptation.



Structural constraints further illuminate these disparities. Institutional teaching loads diverge sharply: Tehran University faculty typically teach ten credit hours per semester—roughly five two-hour courses, or approximately three hundred instructional hours annually at the undergraduate level—compared to two or three courses per semester common among North American faculty and often fewer than 150 annual teaching hours reported in some British institutions. This disparity constrains time available for composition, artistic development, and sustained scholarly engagement. Compounding these pressures, purchasing-power-adjusted salary data indicate that Iranian associate professors earn roughly one-fourteenth of their American counterparts' compensation, prompting many faculty to supplement income through private instruction or independent music schools, a practice reported among nearly one-third of full-time composition and performance faculty at the two universities studied. Ensemble infrastructure presents additional limitations: while many Western institutions maintain full orchestras, choirs, and wind ensembles, Iranian universities typically offer only a single, often incompletely staffed, chamber ensemble, restricting both performance exposure and compositional experimentation. Venue access is similarly constrained by shared facilities, aging infrastructure, and administrative restrictions, with political sensitivities at some institutions—including heightened security protocols following past campus unrest—further limiting external audience and performer participation. Faculty composition also shapes pedagogical orientation: approximately seventy-five percent of composition and Western classical performance faculty across the two institutions studied trained abroad, predominantly in Western or Russian conservatories, a pattern participants linked to the comparative scarcity of contemporary and non-Western scores in local libraries and the resulting dependence on limited free digital repositories. These historically rooted asymmetries can be situated within a longer trajectory of modernization discourse dating to the early twentieth century, when Western notation-based composition was institutionally elevated as "scientific," while Iranian classical music was cast as emblematic of tradition—a framing that findings suggest continues to inform institutional priorities, even as pedagogical practices gradually evolve. Taken together, these findings suggest that meaningful reform requires attention not only to individual pedagogical choices but to the material, financial, and infrastructural conditions that shape teaching capacity across both systems.