Mental boundaries in teachers’ reflections on interculturalism in music lessons

The German-speaking discourse on intercultural music education has gained increasing prominence since the 1970s and in particular more recently as a result of asylum and ref - ugee policies. While existing empirical studies focus primarily on the migration education perspective (see Wurm 2006, Schmidt 2015, Honnens 2017), often with respect to the role of Turkish youth, the perspectives of teachers on intercultural music instruction have received only limited attention. With the aim of contributing towards understanding teachers’ views, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with music teachers in Germany concerning the association between interculturality and music teaching. Interview data was analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach (see Strauss & Corbin 1990), methodologically extended by situation analysis according to Clarke (see Clarke 2005). In the data analysis, the core category ‘Grenzen im Geist’ (mental boundaries) emerged from the coding process. Subse- quently, these mental boundaries, as well as intended strategies for overcoming and reducing them, were derived from teachers’ reflections on intercultural music teaching. In this paper, theoretical connections will be made between the following aspects: the migration-related discourse of intercultural music education, power-critical perspectives on boundaries, and selected excerpts of my qualitatively collected data material.