Vesna Svalina, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia, Faculty of Education
Vesna Svalina, Ph.D. (1968) is an Associate Professor of Music Education at the Faculty of Education, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek, Croatia. From 2020 to 2025, she was also engaged as an external associate at the University of Slavonski Brod, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities. During the summer semester of the 2023/24 academic year, she taught at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Teacher Education, delivering courses in Music Education Methodology I and Music Education Methodology III.
She graduated from the Music Pedagogy study programme at the Faculty of Education, University of Osijek, in 1991. She holds an M.A. in Music Education from the University of Zagreb (Academy of Music, 2009) and a Ph.D. in Early and Compulsory Education from the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb (2013).
She has published 43 scientific works, including two monographs and 41 papers in proceedings of international scientific conferences and in national and international journals, including Australian Journal of Music Education, British Journal of Music Education, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, Journal of Music, Technology and Education, International Journal of Early Childhood Learning, Life and School: Journal for the Theory and Practice of Education, Methodical Review: Journal of Philosophy of Education, Music Education Research, Napredak, Open Learning, Pedagogy, Problems of Education in the 21st Century, Školski vjesnik: Journal for Pedagogic Theory and Practice, and Tonovi. Five of her papers have been published in Q1-ranked journals, including British Journal of Music Education, Music Education Research, Open Learning, and Journal of Music, Technology and Education. She is also the editor of the proceedings volumes of the Sixth International Symposium of Music Pedagogues and the First International Conference CALT: Creative Approaches to Learning and Teaching.
Her research interests include the music education curriculum, competencies for teaching at the primary level of education, musical creativity, extracurricular music activities, education of gifted children, and online teaching. She has participated in numerous international scientific conferences in Croatia and abroad (Cambridge, UK; Paris, France; Rostock, Germany; Cetinje, Montenegro; Ljubljana and Ruše, Slovenia; Belgrade and Kragujevac, Serbia; and Dubrovnik, Osijek, Pula, Split, Zadar, and Zagreb, Croatia).
As Chair of the Organising Committee, she coordinated the Sixth International Symposium of Music Pedagogues (Osijek, 2019, Faculty of Education) and the First International Conference CALT: Creative Approaches to Learning and Teaching (Osijek, 2023, Faculty of Education). As a member of the Organising Committee, she also contributed to the organisation of the 1st Thematic ECHA Conference, Creativity Research and Innovation in Gifted Education: Social, Individual, and Educational Perspective (Dubrovnik, 2019). She also served as a member of the Organising Committee for the first, second, and third EKTe art festivals (2015, 2016, and 2017), organised by the Faculty of Education.
As a member of the Scientific Committee, she contributed to the preparation of the 5th, 7th, 8th, and 9th International Symposia of Music Pedagogues (Pula, 2017, 2021, 2023; Slavonski Brod, 2025), the symposium Perspectives of Contemporary Music Education held within the International Scientific and Artistic Conference Contemporary Topics in Education – STOO (Zagreb, 2019, Faculty of Teacher Education), and the international symposium Opening the Doors to the Art and Science of Music (Ljubljana, 2022, Academy of Music, University of Ljubljana). Additionally, she was a member of the Programme Committee for the international scientific conference 12th Days of Primary Schools: From Science to the Classroom (Split, 2021, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split), and the Third National Scientific Conference with International Participation and the International Solfeggio Competition Scientia et musica – SEM (Faculty of Philology and Arts, University of Kragujevac, 2023 and 2024).
From 2015 to 2016, she was Head of the scientific research project Listening to Music as an Important Subject Area in the Primary Music Curriculum. From 2009 to 2013, she participated in the project Development of Creativity in Lifelong Teacher Education, and from 2018 to 2021 in the project Giftedness in the Artistic Field – Analysis of the Situation Among Primary School Pupils in Terms of Artistic and Musical Giftedness. From 2015 to 2018, she served as Managing Editor of the journal Life and School. She currently serves on the editorial boards of SN Social Sciences and the Journal of Interdisciplinary Art and Education.
She is also a conductor of several vocal ensembles, with which she has won top awards at national and international competitions. She has given numerous concerts with choirs in Croatia and abroad (Italy, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and Switzerland). She has won numerous first prizes at choir competitions (11 first prizes at national competitions and 7 at international competitions), as well as three special prizes: for the best performance of the compulsory piece, for the best interpretation of a work by a Croatian composer, and for the most artistically convincing conductor.
