This round table focuses on the great opportunities we see in strengthening the student voice during music teacher training in certain ways. It will start with general thoughts and visions on the relevance and chances for empowering the students voice in music teacher training: How can we motivate students for active participation in the study programs? Where and how can we offer space for co-responsibility and co-design? As cooperation competence is one of 17 ‘future skills’ that are considered essential to promote in students as part of higher education (Ehlers, 2020), we will ask: How can we support collaboration and (international) networking, as we know that future generations and future (music) teachers will have to deal with tasks and challenges that they will only be able to solve in cooperation with other highly qualified people. They should not only develop their individual cooperation skills during music teacher training, but also become motivated to help shaping the study environment, to bring new projects into life and take co-responsibility.

Specific examples of successful projects, which strengthened the student voice will be presented (including reflecting surveys), like the new successful and constantly growing network of music teacher training students from music universities in Germany (“SchulMusikAustausch“).

A central aim of this round table is to include the perspectives of all participants and to learn from each other. Therefore we will use different working methods to encourage the colleagues (and hopefully also students from various countries/institutions) to discuss crucial questions in different groups and in the plenum.