This book is divided into four sections. In Section One, four essays outline key issues in cultural diversity in music education; Section Two deals with approaches to learning and teaching; Section Three focuses on the classroom; and Section Four presents case studies from Asia, Africa and Australia.

Music is a powerful means for educating citizens in a multicultural society and meeting many challenges shared by teachers across all subjects and grade levels. By celebrating heritage and promoting intercultural understandings, music can break down barriers among various ethnic, racial, cultural, and language groups within elementary and secondary schools. This book provides important insights for educators in music, the arts, and other subjects on the role that music can play in the curriculum as a powerful bridge to cultural understanding. The author documents key ideas and practices that have influenced current music education, particularly through efforts of ethnomusicologists in collaboration with educators, and examines some of the promises and pitfalls in shaping multicultural education through music. The text highlights World Music Pedagogy as a gateway to studying other cultures as well as the importance of including local music and musicians in the classroom. Book Features: Chronicles the historical movements and contemporary issues that relate to music education, ethnomusicology, and cultural diversity. Offers recommendations for the integration of music into specific classes, as well as throughout school culture. Examines performance, composition, and listening analysis of art (folk/traditional and popular) as avenues for understanding local and global communities. Documents music’s potential to advance dimensions of multicultural education, such as the knowledge-construction process, prejudice reduction, and an equity pedagogy.

This open access book highlights the importance of visions of alternative futures in music teacher education in a time of increasing societal complexity due to increased diversity. There are policies at every level to counter prejudice, increase opportunities, reduce inequalities, stimulate change in educational systems, and prevent and counter polarization. Foregrounding the intimate connections between music, society and education, this book suggests ways that music teacher education might be an arena for the reflexive contestation of traditions, hierarchies, practices and structures. The visions for intercultural music teacher education offered in this book arise from a variety of practical projects, intercultural collaborations, and cross-national work conducted in music teacher education. The chapters open up new horizons for understanding the tension-fields and possible discomfort that music teacher educators face when becoming change agents. They highlight the importance of collaborations, resilience and perseverance when enacting visions on the program level of higher education institutions, and the need for change in re-imagining music teacher education programs.

'Facing the Music' provides a rich resource for reflection and practice for all those involved in teaching and learning music in culturally diverse environments, from policy makers to classroom teachers. Schippers gradually unfolds the complexities and potential of learning and teaching music 'out of context'.

This peer-reviewed academic yearbook stems from the inaugural meeting of the newly formed UNESCO UNITWIN network on Arts Education Research for Cultural Diversity and Sustainable Development, held at the National Institute of Education, Singapore in April 2017. It presents international scholarly perspectives on issues related to arts education and cultural diversity in terms of: i) national and international policies; ii) terms, concepts and vocabularies; iii) current and ongoing research; and iv) best practices. The UNESCO UNITWIN is an arts education research think tank that gathers and leverages original research and critical commentaries on the arts and sustainable development from UNITWIN member states and beyond (Australia, Canada, Colombia, Germany, Hong Kong, Kenya, Korea, Israel, New Zealand, Singapore, Taiwan, the Netherlands and the United States of America).

Now available in paperback, the sixth edition of this definitive text provides students a strong background in the conceptual, theoretical, and philosophical issues in multicultural education from a leading authority and scholarly leader of the field---James A. Banks. In the opening chapter author Banks presents his well-known and widely used concept of Dimensions of Multicultural Education to help build an understanding of how the various components of multicultural education are interrelated. He then provides an overview on preparing students to function as effective citizens in a global world; discusses the dimensions, history, and goals of multicultural education; presents the conceptual, philosophical, and research issues related to education and diversity; examines the issues involved in curriculum and teaching; looks at gender equity, disability, giftedness, and language diversity; and focuses on intergroup relations and principles for teaching and learning. This new edition incorporates new concepts, theories, research, and developments in the field of multicultural education and features: A new Chapter 5, "Increasing Student Academic Achievement: Paradigms and Explanations" provides important explanations for the achievement gap and suggests ways that educators can work to close it. A new Chapter 7, "Researching Race, Culture, and Difference," explains the unique characteristics of multicultural research and how it differs from mainstream research in education and social science. A new Chapter 14, "Principles for Teaching and Learning in a Multicultural Society" contains research-based guidelines for reforming teaching and the school in order to increase the academic achievement and social development of students from diverse racial, ethnic, cultural, language, and gender groups. A new Appendix—"Essential Principles Checklist"—designed to help educators determine the extent to which practices within their schools, colleges, and universities are consistent with the research-based findings described in the book.