Abstract
The purpose of this article is to achieve greater clarification of the meaning of the word ‘intercultural’ when used in Nordic music education research, by means of a literature review. The findings suggest that ‘intercultural’ is used in different ways, sometimes without definition. A central theme that emerges is developing student teachers’ intercultural competence through disturbance. There is little research into pupils’ intercultural competence, or intercultural music education at primary level. The findings are merged with international scholarship to envisage how different understandings of ‘intercultural’ might affect music in schools. We suggest placing intercultural music education along a continuum from intercultural approaches to music education to intercultural education through inclusive music pedagogy.
Highlights
Introduction and backgroundThe need to engage with cultural diversity in music education has produced many responses around the world in the past few decades: the connections between music, education and society are a key focus area in music education research, and approaches to meeting diversity in music education have employed a wide mix of labels (Ellefsen & Karlsen, 2020; Schippers & Campbell, 2012)
Through a literature review of Nordic research and with reference to a broadly European understanding of interculturality, we have sought to develop a clearer understanding of how Nordic music education researchers engage with interculturality and what different understandings of interculturality might mean for music teaching in schools
By conceptualising these approaches along a continuum between two dimensions labelled approaches to intercultural music education and intercultural approaches through music education, we hope to contribute to a discussion of music education practices suitable for meeting cultural diversity in the classroom
Summary
Introduction and backgroundThe need to engage with cultural diversity in music education has produced many responses around the world in the past few decades: the connections between music, education and society are a key focus area in music education research, and approaches to meeting diversity in music education have employed a wide mix of labels (Ellefsen & Karlsen, 2020; Schippers & Campbell, 2012). Widespread migration and greater mobility have created new challenges for education systems. Super-diversity has only arisen in certain urban areas in recent years in the Nordic region, see for instance Huttunen and Juntunen’s (2018) ethnographic study of the urban neighbourhood Varissuo in Finland where 80% of school starters in 2015 had a mother tongue other than Finnish. As Räsänen (2010) pointed out ten years ago, school systems have only recently taken on board the need to address the changing demographic context and to take cultural diversity into account in educational planning
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