When minorities are the majority: voices from a teacher/researcher project in a multicultural school in Sweden

Abstract

What can a music teacher do, when confronted with 99 percent immigrant students? How does he or she interpret guidelines in national governing documents and, at the same time, listen to the needs of the students? This article opens the doors to two music classrooms in Malmö, a Swedish town with 27 percent of the population born abroad. The project `Social Inclusion in Music education'(SIM), described here, sought to give voice to both teachers and students who work and live in multicultural areas. It was conducted as a collaborative project by a music teacher and a university lecturer-researcher in music education. The results show that the teacher and students involved all stress the importance of student engagement. In the observed classrooms, this engagement is encouraged by taking the music of the youth culture as a starting point.