Dr. Michal Hefer

Dr. Michal Hefer completed her Bachelor’s degree in Music Education at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance and continued her Master’s studies at Temple University. She earned her PhD at Tel Aviv University in the field of music cognition במסגרת the Department of Musicology. Her doctoral dissertation examined the psycho-physiological and psycho-motor responses of newborns to music, under the supervision of Veronika Cohen, Yehudit Cohen, and Zalman Weintraub. During her studies in the United States, she became certified as an instructor and teacher trainer by the Gordon Institute for Music Learning (GIML) and was among the first educators to introduce Gordon’s approach to music education in Israel.
Since 2007, Dr. Hefer has been a member of the faculty at both Bar-Ilan University and the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance. From 2018 to 2024, she served as Head of the Department of Music Education at the Academy. She developed the “Katan-Ton” curriculum, an innovative pedagogical model for developing musical skills in early childhood. The programme is based on exposure to complex and diverse music and emphasises vocal and movement interaction between adults and children as an integral part of the process of musical development.
Her research has been published in leading international academic journals, and her scholarly and educational work has been presented at conferences in Israel and abroad. As part of her international activities, she has led masterclasses, courses, and workshops in the United States, Italy, Brazil, Greece, Spain, Hungary, Korea, and China. In recent years, she has been regularly invited as a guest lecturer at the Donna Olimpia Conservatory of Music in Rome. In addition, she serves as a commissioner of the Early Childhood Music Education Commission (ECME), which operates within the framework of the International Society for Music Education (ISME).