Conference Agenda

In German-speaking teacher education, divergent training pathways and professional fields have traditionally existed for music educators at general schools and at music schools. However, these professions are increasingly converging, both in everyday professional practice and in academic discourse. Reasons for this include a shared orientation toward the overarching goals of accessible music education and cultural participation (Lessing, 2018); increasing cooperation between general schools and music schools—for example, with elemental music pedagogy in the primary sector. Added to this is the considerable shortage of qualified music teachers in schools (e.g., Aigner, 2023; DG EAC, 2023), a gap that is in many places being partly filled by professionals from the field of instrumental and vocal pedagogy. These developments contribute to an increasing permeability of institutional and professional boundaries.

Against this backdrop, the mdw is developing an extension program that will qualify graduates of the Master’s in Instrumental and Vocal Pedagogy (IGP) program to teach music independently in primary schools. This initiative responds to a particular situation: While music is part of the Austrian primary school curriculum, it plays only a marginal role in teacher education unless a music specialization is chosen. In school practice, this often results in the deprioritization of music education. The extension program seeks to counter this trend and to help secure comprehensive music education for all children.

Meanwhile, it becomes clear that the professional scope of instrumental and vocal pedagogues is expanding and aligning more closely with European models in which music education is more broadly conceived. This may reduce institutional barriers to access to music education, thereby diminishing inequalities (Krupp, 2016) and contributing to democratic education, but it also highlights questions of power, responsibility, professional affiliation and necessary competences (de Vugt, 2013; Porsch, 2021) which emerge when educators with different training pathways work under one roof.

This presentation draws on emerging findings from AnmuT (2024–2026), a qualitative research project investigating processes of participation and professionalisation within the large-scale music and dance education programme JeKits (“Instruments, Dance and Singing for Every Child”) in North Rhine-Westphalia. AnmuT examines how children’s cultural participation in music and dance and teachers’ professionalisation processes are interrelated and enacted in practice. Methodologically, the project combines Grounded Theory Methodology (Strauss & Corbin, 1996) and Situational Analysis (Clarke, 2012) with principles from childhood research (Butschi & Hedderich, 2021; Schierbaum et al., 2024) to capture both adult and child perspectives through interviews and group discussions.

The findings reveal the everyday work of music and dance teachers in JeKits as shaped by a polyphony of expectations: a dense and often contradictory web of voices articulating or implying what music education means, and what it should achieve. Teachers navigate expectations from parents, pupils, school staff, music and dance schools and programme administrators, each with their own vision of the purpose of their work: cultivation of skills, systemic compensations, entertainment or policy fulfilment.

Teachers attempt to balance these competing logics while striving to sustain their careers and artistic identities: Working across portfolio careers, they mediate between divergent logics of art, education and labour. “Managing expectations” becomes a central professional task – an ongoing practice of translation, compromise and negotiation.

The paper conceptualises this polyphony of voices as a defining feature of school-based music and dance education: an arena where diverse educational logics intersect without full alignment, exposing both the fragility and the democratic potential of music teaching in plural school systems.

Both general education schools and music schools in Germany are currently experiencing a shortage of music teachers, which is set to worsen in the coming years (Klemm, 2022; Müller, 2023; Lehmann-Wermser & Witte, 2024). As part of a recent crowd research study on the reasons for this shortage (Bradler et al., forthcoming), group discussions were held with music school teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia to explore their views on their profession and the everyday reality of their work. The collected data was analyzed using Qualitative Content Analysis following Kuckartz and Rädiker (2024).

A key topic proved to be cooperation projects between primary or secondary schools and music schools, in which the majority of music school teachers in North Rhine-Westphalia are involved (Simon, 2017, p. 19). Teachers' views on this formative part of their professional life reveal a profound and complex ambivalence:

On the one hand, they explicitly advocate cooperation projects with schools due to their presumed potential to strengthen equal participation and access to music education for young people from diverse backgrounds and overcome social barriers. On the other hand, they struggle with the reality of the associated settings of instrumental and vocal (large) group tuition. What proves crucial here is that teachers perceive the pedagogical aspects of these settings as very demanding or even overwhelming and the students’ instrumental or vocal learning progress as marginal, resulting in a low level of musical ability at both the individual and group levels. This situation collides with the artistic standards and ambitions that are essential to the music school teachers’ professional identity, and therefore triggers tendencies towards demarcation and distancing from the teaching reality in cooperation projects. Overall, teachers find themselves torn between a sense of ethical conviction and discontent at the lack of alignment with the artistic aspect of their professional expertise.

Since the 1990s, Bläserklassen—classroom-based wind band programs—have gained increasing traction in German general-education schools (Bons et al., 2023), also in Austria (Ardila-Mantilla, 2016) and Switzerland (Bachmayer & Peter, 2011). Besides music schools, Musikvereine (member-run, nonprofit music associations that, especially in rural Germany, are key actors in the musical and cultural landscape; MLR, 2013), are cooperation partners (Borchert, 2024). Their involvement varies: they may provide instruments, facilities, or teaching staff, typically to recruit young members and sustain their organizational structures. Musikvereine also collaborate with local music schools and private instrumental teachers who deliver instrumental instruction and/or supervise Bläserklassen (Bons et al., 2022; Borchert, 2024; Borchert & Bons, 2022).

Bläserklassen thus constitute a music-educational interface where different professional groups—and their distinct logics of action—meet. Although the role of Musikvereine as partners of music schools (Röbke, 2004; Berg, 2010; Ardila-Mantilla, 2016) and their contribution to music education have been repeatedly highlighted (Oebelsberger, 2011; Schmitz, 2012), the intersections of the amateur music scene, school music instruction, and instrumental pedagogy, as they materialize in Bläserklassen projects, have received little empirical attention.

In our presentation, we foreground these interlinkages using empirical insights from two recent projects on amateur music culture (Bons et al., 2022; Buchborn et al., 2024). Analyzing group discussions with the Documentary Method (Bohnsack, 2021), we reconstruct perspectives and routines of actors within Musikvereine regarding cooperation in Bläserklassen projects. This provides empirical access to common-sense theories and action-guiding orientations underlying these collaborations from the perspective of the amateur music scene. Such insights are relevant not only for practitioners; but also for universities of music to reflect on the following questions: What logics of action do our students bring? Which will they encounter in future teaching? Which conflicts can be anticipated, and which approaches might foster more productive collaboration?