E v a G e o r g i i -H e m m i n g a n d M a r i a W e s t v a l l

This article concerns students of music education in Sweden. It investigates the student teachers' perceptions of their ongoing music teacher education, with a particular focus on the task of teaching music today. It considers whether they believe their teacher education prepares them for this undertaking, and in that case, how. Their various experiences from their school-based in-service education are considered, and the findings lead to a discussion of ideological issues with a bearing on democracy, the value of music, and the function of music as a curriculum subject. About the authorsEva Georgii-Hemming is Reader at the School of Music, Örebro University, Sweden.She received her PhD in Music Education from Örebro University in spring 2005. She teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in qualitative research methodology, philosophy of music and sociology of music. Previously Georgii-Hemming has been an instructor in teaching methods and ensemble conducting in music teacher education and for 14 years she worked as a music teacher at upper secondary school. Research interests include questions about the concepts of knowledge and learning, the relation between theory and practice in music education, narrative inquiry and life history research. Earlier studies contend with questions about musical identities, young people, popular music and learning in formal and informal contexts and music teachers' work

Preservice music teachers enter the profession with firmly held beliefs of what music education entails. With an increasingly diverse population of students in PreK-12 education in the United States and Sweden, a collaborative, intercultural immersion course was designed to challenge preservice music teachers' beliefs. Twelve music education majors participated in the intercultural course. Data consisted of focus group discussions. With Bildung as a theoretical framework, the following five themes emerged: Beyond Tourism, Democracy and Classroom Management, Shared Experiences, Something to Bring Back, and Old Meets New. The intercultural immersion course provided a scaffold for the participants to consider what and why they teach the content that they do and the ramifications of making such decisions on their potential teaching practices of PreK-12 music students.

This article addresses the role of general music education within the framework of cultural diversity. It is generally thought that music itself has a universal dimension that connects people. With the increase in migration and globalisation, music is often described to be 'on the move' or travelling through different cultures and being influenced by new elements (e.g., Rao 2011). Is this notion also valid within the music classroom and how is diversity approached by teachers? Is music education reproducing either a uniform or diverse set repertoire of skills or does it challenge students to develop a broader relationship to music, based on an inclusive, critical and multicultural approach? We have chosen to investigate this topic by carrying out a case study in Finland, since we have found that the specific Finnish context, with its historical cultural diversity combined with a more recent wave of immigration, can inform us about intercultural processes on a more general and international level. We focus on teachers in Swedish-speaking schools in Finland to investigate how their own minority position in the country might or might not, influence their understanding of cultural diversity in music education. The article begins with a description of the situated context and a theoretical background in which we draw out our position in relation to multicultural and intercultural education. We then present some empirical evidence based on a study in which interviews were conducted with teachers in four Swedish-speaking schools in Finland. In these interviews, teachers were asked questions concerning their understanding of the relationship between general music education and cultural diversity. The article concludes with a discussion of the social, educational and musical consequences of a culturally diverse approach to and within music as part of general education.

discussão a respeito de abordagens interculturais relacionadas às propostas de uma educação para a diversidade. Interrogam-se aspectos relativos à incorporação no currículo escolar de conteúdos provenientes de manifestações populares típicas dos diferentes países que visam atender às demandas por uma educação intercultural. O artigo norteia-se pela questão: como poderíamos experimentar um diálogo intercultural no contexto da música? Para tanto, são apresentados os conceitos de interculturalidade, multiculturalidade e transculturalidade. A seguir, apresentam-se resultados parciais de uma pesquisa em andamento intitulada Processos Interculturaisde Ensino-Aprendizagem com o objetivo de embasar as reflexões em torno da interculturalidade, que no orbe desse projeto, foi realizada por meio de imersão musical.