In the previous issue of mdw Magazine, readers could learn quite a bit about emergent tendencies in music education research and how the mdw’s Department of Music Education Research and Practice (IMP) is positioning itself in this regard. Here, we continue our music education research series with a more detailed look at research on music teaching in schools, showing how IMP’s activities in this regard are unfolding internationally. IMP is currently leading the large-scale Erasmus+ project “TEAM – Teacher Education Academy for Music” and will also be hosting the international conference of the EAS (European Association for Music in Schools) at the mdw Campus from 8 to 11 April.
Music Education Research: A Field on the Move
Research pertaining to music as a teaching subject in schools engages closely with the societal challenges presently affecting education and music teaching at large—challenges that are being quite keenly felt. While recent times have seen attention paid overwhelmingly to the clearer positioning of music education research and its nuanced focuses on various thematic areas and methodologies along with investigating and further developing core areas such as specialised didactics for making music in school classes, the past few years have introduced entirely new challenges both substantive and structural: a shortage of teachers (no longer just for music but for nearly all subjects, both in Austria and worldwide) points to a need for concise contributions by researchers who look at processes of professionalisation. School students’ rapidly increasing diversity (along with increasing awareness thereof) has dynamised the realm of specialised didactic concepts and necessitates research on professional teams, group dynamics in music-making, well-being, governance, and inclusive pedagogy. Migration entails a need for work on broad musical repertoire and linguistically sensitive or even non-verbal music-making instruction. The need for future-readiness, digitality, and self-efficacy on the part of young people facing the world of tomorrow is driving the development and overall discussion of schoolteachers’ training and further education toward a focus on music teaching concepts that are sustainable and nourish democracy while continuously posing questions as to the sensible use of digital media and artificial intelligence. All this is occurring with impressive rapidity—a rapidity that makes teaching materials, school textbooks, and curricula (not to mention teacher training concepts!) along with the associated research seem obsolete sooner than later. And against this backdrop, something else has also changed: while schools and teacher training have always been decidedly national in character, recent years have witnessed a palpable internationalisation of research on education and subject-specific didactics. We are now seeing more transnational research, greater ease in locating research findings across linguistic and national boundaries, increased cooperation between researchers, and international meta-studies on schools and music teaching.
TEAM – Future-Making, Networking and Mobility in Europe
IMP plays a central role in the TEAM project, whose leadership it assumed in October 2024. TEAM – Teacher Education Academy for Music. Future-Making, Mobility and Networking in Europe is a pan-European research and development project that collaborates closely with the European Association for Music in School (EAS).
TEAM aims to reconceive both school music teacher training and the teaching subject of music in schools of general education. Doing so includes addressing current challenges inherent in music teachers’ professional development such as digitalisation, intercultural learning, societal transformation, sustainability, and social cohesion. To this end, TEAM develops and disseminates open educational resources and conducts research on their use. Moreover, programmes to improve student mobility are being conceived with a special emphasis on high-quality school internships abroad that include mentoring from a transnational perspective. A comparative portrayal of 30 European countries’ educational systems (in terms of music in schools and the training of school music teachers) will ease future international collaboration. And based on surveys designed to ascertain standards of music teacher training in the various countries, TEAM is also developing a set of Europe-wide “TEAM Learning Outcomes for Music Teacher Education” that is intended to help shape the content and level of training for music teachers in a future-proof way. Here, 15 partner institutions (schools, postsecondary institutions, and further education providers) from eleven European countries with high levels of expertise in the necessary fields are working together with the additional involvement of associated partners from a total of 23 countries as well as major international networks such as the AEC, EMU, EAS, and European Music Council. This project is set to conclude in September, and we are currently hard at work on the findings and on ensuring the established structures’ sustainability.
“Advance Democracy. Participation, Diversity, and Social Cohesion in Music Education”
The big TEAM Outreach Conference is to take place on the mdw Campus from 8 to 11 April as part of the 33rd EAS Conference. For it, we have chosen the important theme of democracy education. The conference motto “Advance Democracy” is of historical significance: it is borrowed from an eponymously titled a cappella choral work composed by Benjamin Britten in 1938 in reaction to developments in Nazi Germany—a work that will be performed live on this occasion. Rising populism, digital disinformation, political apathy among young people, and global challenges’ increasing complexity underline the necessity of education that strengthens democratic values and participative skills. In view of such developments, democracy education has become a central theme of particularly European educational discourse. The point of this conference is hence not only for its ca. 400 delegates from all over the world to put their research and practice up for discussion at the mdw. We’re also, in keeping with the theme of participation, looking to challenge traditional conference formats: open music-making labs for all delegates, participative concert settings, opinion walls and silent discussions, sustainability-related impulses, BarCamp formats and disruption of rigid keynote settings, financial support for colleagues who have difficulty affording conference attendance, and funding for participation by university and school students are just a few of the ideas we’ll be trying out. So do join us to listen, discuss, and participate in the development of an entire world’s worth of music education that is well equipped to thrive in the future.
