Associate Professor of Music in the Department of Primary Education in the Faculty of Education, Professor Otukile Sindiso Phibion, has been elected to represent Africa in the International Society for Music Education (ISME) Board of Directors for the 2020-2022 term.
Professor Phibion was elected following a rigorous international competitive process that lasted about seven months. He managed to proceed to the second round of the election as one of the first 18 shortlisted candidates and went on to win the election in the third and final round to become one of only 12 members of the Board of Directors.
ISME is a professional organisation of persons involved with music education. It was founded in Brussels in 1953 during a UNESCO-sponsored conference on "The Role and Place of Music in the Education of Youth and Adults". ISME's mission is to build a worldwide network of music educators, to advocate music education globally and across the lifespan, and to foster intercultural understanding and cooperation.
Among Professor Phibion’s responsibilities in the Board is to serve as liaison officer for the ISME Community Music Activities (CMA). He will also advise the Board on Decolonising and Indigenous Music Education (DIME) programmes. In addition, he is a member of the Pan African Society of Musical Arts Education (PASMAE) which is affiliated to ISME.
Professor Phibion has been a long standing ISME member dating back to 1998. His first encounter with the organisation was when he attended an African ISME conference in South Africa (Pretoria) as a sponsored delegate in 1998. Thereafter, he attended some ISME biennial conferences which alternated between different continents.
His continuous and tireless involvement in ISME programmes afforded him an opportunity to gather a wealth of musical experiences through interaction with different international scholars from around the globe. Among his achievements, Professor Phibion developed a Bachelor of Music Education (BME) degree programme for the University of Botswana. He has been an external examiner of the University of South Africa (Unisa), North West University, University of Pretoria and the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, all at Masters and Doctoral levels respectively.
He is also External Examiner for all Botswana Colleges of Education. Through his wealth of musical experiences, Professor Phibion has managed to implement the University of Botswana’s Internationalisation and Partnerships Policy.
Thus, he established reciprocal exchange programmes with the following institutions: University of Pretoria, University of Botswana, Unisa, Kenyatta University, Africa University in Zimbabwe and the University of Jyväskylä, with the latter funding the exchange programmes. He also established an exchange programme with Chaoyang University of Technology in Taiwan in 2018.