Abstract
This article explores teachers’ ideologies, values, and lived experiences of teaching music in culturally diverse classrooms. Drawing on Irish primary classroom observations and reflective teacher logs collected over a full school year, the study examines how teachers perceive and respond to diversity in music education. The analysis is framed by three theoretical concepts, space (Massey), encounter (Arendt), and disorientation (Ahmed), which offer distinct lenses through which to examine the relational and political nature of socio-musical educational spaces. Findings reveal that teachers play a pivotal role in facilitating and shaping such spaces, yet their responses to diversity vary widely. Some demonstrate flexibility, responsiveness, and openness to child agency, whereas others rely on habitual, screen-mediated practices that limit creativity and reinforce cultural stereotypes. Teachers with greater levels of musical confidence tend to embrace child-led activities and culturally responsive approaches, whereas those with lower levels of confidence often revert to highly prescriptive, externally sourced content. A recurring theme is the gap between teacher intentions and actual practices. While many teachers view music as inherently good and inclusive, their approaches often overlook the complexities of intercultural encounters. Disorientation, understood as moments of discomfort or unfamiliarity, emerges as a critical concept, revealing both challenges and opportunities for pedagogical transformation. Teachers’ responses to disorientation reflect broader structural issues, including a homogeneous teaching workforce, embedded bias, and limited cultural awareness. Hence, we argue for increased reflexive engagement with discomfort and disorientation that recognises the political dimensions of music in diverse classrooms. Through such engagement there is great potential for teachers and schools to embrace change to create more inclusive and agentic musical spaces that reflect the intercultural realities of contemporary classrooms.
Introduction
This article positions teacher ideologies, values, and practices in relation to macro-politics and, more specifically, in relation to educational structures and systems. A teacher’s worldview on issues such as social justice, inclusion, and migration, for instance, shapes their pedagogical approaches, perspectives, professional choices, and overall vision for education. In this article, we explore teacher experiences, perspectives, and practices of teaching music in diverse classrooms through an Irish study of music in intercultural schools to illuminate “on the ground” issues.
We are interested in exploring teachers’ lived experiences by asking the following questions:
What role does the teacher play in managing the complexities that diversity brings to music in schools?
What are teacher perceptions of teaching music in diverse classrooms and how do these perceptions intersect with the realities on the ground?
How are teachers facilitating and negotiating musical spaces in school as intercultural encounters?
What teacher approaches facilitate musical participation, belonging, and agency?
These questions are interrogated theoretically and grounded in actual data gathered from teacher logs and observations taken across a full school year. The discussion is framed around three core theoretical concepts and thinkers: namely, space as conceptualised by Doreen Massey (2005), encounter as conceptualised by Hannah Arendt (1998), and disorientation as conceptualised by Sara Ahmed (2006). Through such a conceptual framing, illuminated by examples from practice, the article presents critical insights into how spaces of encounter and disorientation are potentially opened up for teachers, as well as how they are otherwise shut down or avoided altogether.
Teaching in diverse (music) classrooms
Research reveals the reproduction of racial stereotypes amongst teachers, with prevailing ideas that migrant children are less able or underachievers (Kitching, 2014; Lewis & Diamond, 2015). In a study of discourses on multicultural education amongst Finnish teacher educators, it was found that the subject position of an immigrant was constructed as opposite to that of a Finn (Hummelstedt et al., 2021):
The “immigrant” is used both for somebody who has recently arrived in Finland and for those with some kind of migration background that makes them different to “original” Finns. The Other is articulated as culturally different, and culture as something static. (p. 5)
This need for sameness is at odds with a view of culture seen as fluid, hybrid, changing, and unknowable (Bhabha, 2006). The need for interculturality within schools and classrooms, seen as “the establishment of difference as a precondition to creating connections to otherness” (Aman, 2015, p. 520), has never been more relevant within ever-changing, complex, and diverse societies.
Music education scholars are increasingly attuned to such issues of diversity and the many problems within the teaching workforce as well as amongst student-teachers. As far back as 2010, Karlsen and Westerlund called for an “agency-enhancing music education” where pedagogical approaches and professional choices in classrooms needed to change to foreground music as a means for “negotiating identity and experiencing oneself as an agent” (p. 233). Since then, there have seen repeated arguments for creative, child-led, and collaborative musical activities in diverse classrooms to foster intercultural competence and socially inclusive spaces (Crawford, 2019; Kenny & Lukienchenko, 2025; Marsh, 2019; Rinde & Kenny, 2021). Furthermore, scholars have highlighted the need for teachers to confront the complexity and discomfort that diverse classrooms bring, particularly when negotiating taken-for-granted frames of reference and questioning established professional knowledge (Ballantyne & Kallio, 2024; de Quadros & Kenny, 2024; Westerlund et al., 2021). This requires a teacher commitment to discomfort which many see as an essential part of an anti-racist and anti-oppressive approach to teaching (Coppola, 2023; Hess, 2013; Kallio & Westerlund, 2020). Ballantyne and Kallio (2024) explain:
teacher decision-making legitimizes certain ethical frameworks over others . . . The inherent relationality of teaching further implies that these decisions are not made from the relative security of a detached, neutral standpoint. Rather, these complex decision-making processes involve teachers’ own dynamic, intersectional social locations, identities, and experiences. (p. 5)
High levels of continuing reflexivity over a teaching career and an openness to change are thus at stake (Christophersen et al., 2023).
The study, context, and methodology
This article seeks to not only illuminate existing structures, practices, and problems but also encourage critical reflection on teaching music in diverse classrooms. To do this, teacher perceptions and pedagogies are interrogated from both ethnographic accounts of schools and classrooms (the musical spaces), as well as actual teacher accounts of their experiences. Thus, through data from participant observation and teacher reflective logs, we seek “authenticity” where “places and spaces are an important aspect of the research, because they are part of, and usually an important part of, the informant’s identity, sense of self and their social world” (Delamont, 2014, p. 30).
Data on the teacher experience is taken from a case study on a broader research project titled MUSPACE, see https://muspace.hypotheses.org/. Relevant to this article, two primary schools and four teachers are selected for analysis and discussion. The two schools selected are significantly diverse primary schools in the cities of Dublin and Limerick, with a high percentage of children from an asylum-seeking or refugee background. There are over 50 nationalities represented in the Dublin school and over 46 represented in the Limerick school. They are publicly funded primary schools with the Limerick school designated as Catholic 1 with an enrolment of 418 children. The Dublin school is classified as a Community National School 2 with an enrolment of 447 children. Both schools are co-educational and have classes from junior infants (average age is 5 years old) to sixth class (average age is 12 years old).
Observations were carried out with the two primary schools over 9 months and involved observing music classes and extracurricular music activities between October 2023 and June 2024. Thirty class observations took place in total, allowing in-depth study over four classrooms. The four teachers kept reflective logs over the school year which involved five entries prompted by questions sent by Ailbhe. A total of 20 logs were gathered using Microsoft Forms. The four teachers involved were all White and Irish, which is reflective of the overall teaching workforce in Ireland (Heinz & Keane, 2018; Keane & Heinz, 2016). The teacher participant details and some contextual information about the teaching of music both inside and outside the classroom are provided in Table 1. Due to the small number involved and for ethical reasons, the teachers are assigned numerical identifiers and not identified as either being in the Dublin or Limerick school.
Teacher Participants.
Expanding upon the tradition of triangulation, this research uses the concept of crystallisation as a way to broaden out and conceptualise the validity of this research (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005). Crystallisation rejects the idea of a single, discoverable truth and instead offers a way to study “externalities that refract within themselves creating different colours, patterns, and arrays, casting off in different directions” (p. 963). Thus, the complexities, experiences, and intersectional identities of the teacher participants in this project are analysed and interpreted as situated, partial, constructed, multiple, and embodied. Ailbhe was responsible for gathering all data and had full access to the raw data during the analysis. The interview data were anonymised for Catharina, who then contributed to the analytical process and the conceptual framework alongside Ailbhe.
Discussion
We, as authors, theoretically explored teachers’ lived experiences of music in diverse classrooms by employing research findings to illuminate key arguments and issues from practice. Three core theoretical frames guide the discussion. These are (1) space as conceptualised by Massey (2005), (2) encounter as conceptualised by Arendt (1998), and (3) disorientation as conceptualised by Ahmed (2006). Critical reflections on spaces of encounter and disorientation for teachers and schools are thus offered in the following discussion.
Space
Massey (2005) views space as relational, always changing, and as “the simultaneity of stories-so-far.” Applying this lens to formal education, one rejects a view of classrooms and schools as bounded or as static places, to instead understanding these contexts as a constantly evolving production of space. Space is thus made and remade in and through school interactions. Socio-musical spaces created in such classrooms and schools, like any space, can be viewed as fields of tension full of intersecting discourses, biographies, and power relations, as also revealed in previous studies (Kenny, 2022, 2024; Kenny & Jaber, 2025; Rinde & Kenny, 2021).
To illustrate how some of these interactions play out in practice, the following observational fieldnotes offer insight. Here, Teacher 1 has just finished accompanying the children on the guitar and there is a lull in the classroom as he puts the guitar down:
Two girls at the other side of the room start to sing “Throw, Catch.” Teacher 1 looks towards them and asks, “Would you like to sing that?” The children react by quickly standing up and arranging themselves into two groups. The teacher reminds them of good behaviour and states “one voice only” for their hands to go up. One girl (from Libya) explains then to all the others how the song works and reminds everyone of the lyrics. Three other children (from Afghanistan, Poland, and Ireland respectively) are then selected by the teacher to demonstrate the song and dance. The teacher sets the pulse with numerals and clapping in order to gain control over the song and set the children up to sing it together. The children all then perform the song and dance together. All of the children were very engaged and happy to do this.
From these fieldnotes, we see the teacher utilising a pedagogical pivot point (Ellsworth, 2005) by providing an opportunity for child-led musical activity and agency. However, they still provide structure and support in terms of behaviour management (though very minimal here) and setting the pulse of the music to facilitate group singing and thus success for the class activity. What is most interesting here is the teacher confidence and ease in reacting to the children’s leadership and musical interests in the moment. This may be due to the teacher’s strong musical background and the senior class level; however, it was also evident that strong relationships had been built up in this classroom, both amongst the children themselves and between the teacher and the children. It is clear that this classroom is comfortable with spontaneity (from both the teacher and children alike), light facilitation, and peer-to-peer leadership. This classroom is very much, in Massey’s (2005) terms, a “relational space,” willing to shift and change practices in response to ongoing interactions in that space.
All of the teachers noted in their logs considerable tensions within their classrooms when the musical content was deemed boring by the children or when the children engaged in groupwork. Taking boredom and disengagement as a focus in the first instance, this was predominantly observed when teachers over-relied on sing-along or clap-along music videos played through laptops onto interactive whiteboards. The fieldnotes here capture one such instance of this:
Teacher 3 is back to her laptop and pulls up a video of a song to accompany the “Monkey Puzzle” picture book on YouTube. She turns to the class, “Sing along, OK?” The children sing along while their teacher’s eyes remain fixated on the screen. The teacher remains seated beside the laptop. The teacher from her laptop position interrupts, “I can hear nice singing and I can hear not nice singing. Let’s try again, listening.” The children are losing interest and many do not join in singing or half-heartedly join in. The teacher focuses on behaviour quite a lot at this point with repeated statements, “sit in seat,” “listen,” “feet on floor.” After a few attempts, the teacher pulls up a different song video on YouTube and asks the children to sing along. The children lose interest quicky.
Here, we observe a lack of both teacher and child agency in the music lesson where the videos take the lead in the delivery of musical content. The leadership role the teacher assumes in this instance is primarily one of classroom behaviour management, as well as video choice. While there is a clear attempt to integrate musical learning with a picture book, the lack of direct facilitation from the teacher, as well as a high level of control over their bodily movements, leads to disinterest from the children. Unlike the earlier example, there is little room for spontaneity and interaction in this music class, with the space being largely mediated through technology. Furthermore, there is a clear desire from this teacher for a predetermined lesson structure that requires minimal preparation and is tightly controlled through screen use. Interestingly, in the teacher log, this teacher notes their “limited musical background.” She writes of a need for a specialist music teacher to deliver the music curriculum as well as a particular programme to follow indicating a perceived low level of competence to lead music lessons.
Groupwork was also commented on by all teachers in their logs as a source of conflict and tension in their classrooms. Teacher 1 notes, “during certain composition lessons, where they had to work together as a group, certain individuals weren’t adding the same effort to the group,” while Teacher 2 shares, “one child being louder than the others on purpose—this caused laughing at first but then led to arguments.” Teacher 4 adds, “sometimes some children find it difficult to work with others who they may clash with during groupwork.” These findings also resonated with the views of the children themselves, who described many tensions experienced during groupwork on a soundscape project in the same classes (for details of this particular project see Kenny & Jaber, 2025). One could view such group music-making encounters as a disruption to the status quo, with unpredictable outcomes. Given the significant levels of diversity within these classroom spaces, Homi Bhabha (2006) might refer to such disruptions as inter-: as in-between or hybrid where authority is disrupted and the potential exists to “emerge as the others of ourselves” (p. 157). While such groupwork caused friction, it also created heightened opportunities for collaborative and creative interactions in the classrooms and thus potential for new kinds of knowledge and ways of being with each other at school. O’Donnell et al. (2019) explain, “the right to opacity does not preclude us learning to experiment with pedagogies that open us to the world and the world to us. We can have solidarity without sameness” (p. 21).
Encounter
Arendt (1998) writes of a space-making plurality that relies on encounter and interrelation. Thus, plurality is put forward as a means to enable new beginnings or “ruptures” to “set something into motion” (p. 177). The concept of rupture for Arendt is also viewed as a means of political action; an act of freedom where, through encounter and interrelation with others, people co-create a space of appearance. This space of appearance is reliant on both plurality (in the meeting of difference) and natality (manifested as a chance of a new beginning). Arendt views such plural encounters as revelations, where one is revealed to the other: “the space where I appear to others as others appear to me” (p. 198). Akin to Massey discussed earlier, this space can be made and remade through encounter; it is unpredictable and may potentially lead to a ruptural new beginning (Arendt, 1998).
When analysing the teacher data, we, as authors, are concerned with how teachers may open up or shut down such spaces of encounter and appearance within significantly diverse classrooms. As Arendt (1998) reminds us, “wherever people gather together, it is potentially there, but only potentially, not necessarily and not forever” (p. 199). Therefore, the existence of ethnic, religious, and cultural plurality within classrooms does not in itself lead to new or transformative practices. In fact, the significant levels of diversity encountered in the classrooms examined often resulted in teachers transferring simplistic or widely accepted cultural norms, assumptions, and stereotypes. For instance, all of the teachers noted in their logs the taken-for-granted universal power of music, with statements such as “it transcends cultural barriers,” “it comes naturally,” and “it brings a sense of belonging.” This stance of viewing music as a common language and as inherently good has been recognised by previous researchers as an assumed neutrality or lack of reflexivity amongst teachers (Ballantyne & Kallio, 2024; Christophersen, 2024; Mantie & Tironi-Rodó, 2024; Westerlund & Karlsen, 2020). Ballantyne and Kallio (2024) argue, “how music teachers are thus equipped to navigate diversity in ethical ways demands a more complex understanding than simply ‘choosing good’ or minimizing discomfort, in recognizing and engaging with this complexity and potential conflicts that may arise” (p. 5).
Throughout the fieldwork, there was an emphasis from the teachers on recognising difference within their classrooms through musical repertoire in different languages or through yearly celebrations of different cultures (e.g., Diwali). For example, African songs were frequently played through screens to the children with opportunities for sing- and clap-along participation, as demonstrated in the fieldnotes here:
The class begins with an introduction about a song from Ghana, “Che Che Kule” (loosely translated as “hey, you”). Teacher 2 leads a warm up of singing, “Head, shoulders, knees and toes.” She then asks what age they were when they first learned this song and the children answer, “5 years old.” The teacher explains that this is a song from Ghana, and it is the equivalent of “Head, shoulders, knees and toes” that children sing in Ireland. The teacher further explains that this is how children in Ghana would play in the playground. She goes on to slowly say the words which the children repeat. The teacher then puts on a video on the screen of the song performed as a call and response which is delivered by a male Ghanian musician and three female dancers. The children are attentive and quiet. The teacher then instructs half the class to do the call and the other half to do the response along to the video.
Here, we see efforts from the teacher to incorporate a children’s song from another country through comparison—albeit through an assumption made about what children do in playgrounds in both Ireland and Ghana. We also see efforts towards authenticity by using a video where the song is led by an actual Ghanian musician. The teacher also provides, briefly, contextual details to situate the song in a particular cultural and geographic setting. However, there is an overriding sense of musical tourism and an us-and-them approach apparent (Hess, 2013). The pedagogy remains highly structured and teacher-led (from both the class teacher and video instructor) with little room for child agency or creative input. The “politics of diversity . . . the everyday processes by which we all exercise agency, negotiate power and identity, and assign meaning to difference” are all evident but unacknowledged here (Kallio et al., 2021, p. 2). Interestingly, the actual video used 3 is from an organisation in Australia, Blacktown Arts, who feature many of these videos from diasporic communities—in this case Stephen (Yaw) Derkyi and his three daughters. Hence, we see a recognition of and culturally responsive approach taken by the Australian arts organisation to the many musics that diasporas in the country share. But when translated into an Irish classroom (through a screen), we lose the nuances of such transnational insights. While the teacher is, therefore, well-intentioned in diversifying repertoire in the classroom, issues remain about promoting culture as a singular and/or a static experience, as well as reinscribing cultural stereotypes.
It is also worth noting that this same video was used in the other school who participated in the study (in a different location in Ireland), which raises questions about the ubiquitous use of certain YouTube videos amongst teachers and how YouTube algorithms affect teacher choice (screen use will be further discussed under the theme of disorientation). It further brings to light ongoing issues with video and repertoire choices to teach culturally diverse musics. Several scholars have raised concerns for some time in this regard, with Abril (2013) stating:
Music and materials should be selected with integrity and sensitivity, no matter the style, genre, or tradition . . . as long as the teacher assists students to make connections between their musical cultures and those beyond their experiences, and helping all students deepen their musical skills and understanding. (p. 9)
While various resources have been developed to address this amongst music educators (e.g., Bartolome, 2009; Campbell, 2018; Coppola et al., 2021), seeing this work connect with teacher practices on the ground remains challenging.
As stated at the beginning of this article, a teacher’s worldview shapes their pedagogical approaches, perspectives, professional choices, and educational vision. Although teachers repeatedly assumed a neutral standpoint in their logs, stereotyping frequently arose in the fieldwork observations. As well as the choice of musical repertoire, already discussed, this also manifested for whole school performances. For instance, one school chose the musical Aladdin to perform that year and this was questioned by one of the researchers:
What were your reasons for choosing Aladdin?
Well, we chose it because there are lots of children from Arab countries so it’s great because they know stuff about what is in the songs and for the costumes, they will have suitable clothes already at home.
What kind of stuff in the songs?
Well, there was a line about “Brush up your Sunday salaam,” and one child said, “No, it’s Friday,” and then another child then said, “No, it’s OK, it’s Sunday in some countries.” So, stuff like that, it’s nice because they like to talk about it and show that they know all about it.
OK, so this was very much on purpose?
Oh yes, last year we had The Lion King because we have so many African kids here at the school.
The choice of musical performed in the school reflects a tension between teachers’ good intentions to promote diversity and the challenges of recognising and addressing cultural stereotyping. Disney’s animated production of Aladdin (1992) received harsh criticism from academics and critics for its use of orientalism and portrayal of Middle Eastern people for many years and continues to spark debate (Aljahdali & Hakami, 2024; Galer, 2017; Shaheen, 1993). Indeed, the remake in 2019 changed the lyrics “Brush up your Sunday salaam,” referenced in the fieldnotes above, to Friday to reflect the fact that Friday is the holy day in Islam. What is interesting about the above extract is that despite the children raising the issue, and easy to access information on the internet about Aladdin, the teacher fails to respond in any active way—again, an assumed neutrality from their standpoint but a recognition that it is good for the children to discuss such issues and “show that they know all about it.” Westerlund and Karlsen (2020) share that music educators “prefer a politically and socially neutral stance for transmitting musical content” (pp. 215–216), and this was evident in the schools and classrooms explored in this study, where teachers make efforts to choose repertoire and content that reflect the visible differences amongst students, despite limited critical engagement with diversity. This “chasm” is referred to by Bresler (1992) as existing between teachers’ advocacies, on the one hand, and their classroom practice, on the other.
(Dis)orientation
Teachers’ log entries in this study suggest a strong sense of habitualness, with taken-for-granted assumptions and routines playing a significant role with only limited explicit reflection on school practices or their own beliefs and classroom approaches. For example, when asked to reflect on what role music plays in addressing diversity in classrooms and schools, one of the teachers wrote in their log that music “brings a sense of belonging.” In the same log, that teacher stated that diversity in the classroom does not influence their music teaching, and further that they saw no challenges with regard to diversity in the classroom. In a later log, the same teacher wrote that there was no need for continuous professional development to deal with music in the intercultural classroom, because “it comes naturally as part of a child led practice.” Not knowing exactly what the teacher meant by “it,” the teacher’s statements about what is considered natural and necessary—as well as the assumption that music leads to belonging (and by association, inclusion) —reflect a sense of self-evidence and complacency often associated with familiarity and settlement. Professionally speaking, the teacher appears to be “home,” which tends to favour routine behaviour, unexamined beliefs, and implicitness over questioning, deliberation, and curiosity (Christophersen, 2024).
Ahmed (2006) writes about being “at home and as home” (p. 9) as occupying and inhabiting space. Building on Edward Said’s (2019) notion of orientalism, Ahmed (2006) connects homeliness to “orientation,” and the ability to be able to take certain things or points of view as given, thereby also creating lines that “divides things and creates spaces that we imagine we can be ‘in’” (p. 14). The school performance of the musical Aladdin can, from this point of view, obviously be read as orientalism; it performs an image of the Orient as seen from the Occident, and the main function of this gaze is to provide a sense of the West, the point from which one can see the East. However, performing Aladdin would, from Ahmed’s phenomenological point of view, be a way of orientating bodies in specific directions, directly affecting how bodies come to take up or inhabit space: “by thinking of orientalism as a form of world facing, I want to suggest that orientalism also involves phenomenal space: it is a matter of how bodies inhabit spaces through shared orientations” (p. 118). Lines and grids are then no longer symbolical: they are physical and tangible as they directly affect how school children’s bodies orientate and are allowed to take up space through actions, movements, music, and clothing or costume. By performing this caricature of something Eastern, school children and teachers also perform the West, the position from which one can be orientated and take things for granted.
When asked to describe a musical event that fostered a strong sense of community amongst a diverse group of children, the teacher responsible for the musical highlighted exactly this event in their log—where children “performed in the musical Aladdin Kids in the school assembly.” Connecting this statement to the previous teacher’s remarks about music as a form of belonging, it becomes clear that certain choices and practices in the music classroom can indeed foster belonging and community. More specifically, they can create such a sense by drawing up the spaces that are seen as worth belonging to—spaces “we” can feel orientated in relation to. While teachers often act with good intentions, they may not always consider who feels most comfortable or “at home” in such spaces, or what truly shapes a sense of belonging or community. Another teacher, on the other hand, notes that:
As most primary teachers in Ireland to date would have a similar background (hopefully greater diversity in the years to come) . . . we would be dependent on the likes of Dabbledoo, The Right Note or Google for ideas of intercultural music.
Two aspects of this statement are noteworthy: first is the teacher’s recognition of the homogeneity amongst educators in Ireland—a claim that is supported by research showing that the teaching workforce in Ireland is predominantly “White Irish” (Heinz & Keane, 2018; Keane & Heinz, 2016). Similarly, international studies on teacher demographics highlight that despite increasingly diverse student populations, teaching staff remain comparatively homogeneous (e.g., Brussino, 2021). A similar lack of diversity is also evident in music teacher programmes internationally (Aróstegui & Fernández-Jiménez, 2023; Elpus, 2015; Hewitt & Thompson, 2006; Nysæther et al., 2021; Talbot, 2018). In other words, teachers often come from dominant cultural groups, which may limit their understanding of non-dominant cultural experiences (Forghani-Arani et al., 2019). The teachers’ statements in this study appear to reflect a limited cultural awareness, consistent with the perspectives described above.
Second, another striking aspect of this teacher’s statement is the reliance on external actors when engaging with musical practices that fall outside their comfort zone or are perceived as distant from “home,” such as facilitating a more diverse music education. Re-visiting Ahmed (2006), the spatial and metaphorical dimensions of her theoretical concepts evoke positions, lines, grids, relations, and maps. As Rosello (2016) notes, such symbolic maps may represent “culture,” a “politics of truth” or an “aesthetic regime” (p. 78). In this context, one could argue that a “media and technological regime” is at play—a regime shaped by screens, digital tools, and media actors external to the music classroom. As demonstrated by the teachers in this study, aspects of their music teaching rely heavily on an uncritical use of screens and media. Consequently, responsibility for content and pedagogical choices is in many cases outsourced to commercial software providers, media platforms, or companies, resulting in prepackaged musical activities that require minimal reflection or pedagogical engagement from the teacher in charge of the class (Ben & Mullen, 2025).
The teachers’ reliance on external media and technology actors could be seen not only as a pragmatic everyday choice, but also as a response to a possible sense of “disorientation” when confronted with cultural experiences or musical practices that lie outside their habitual frames of reference, of what is familiar, comfortable, and intelligible. When teachers encounter musical content that does not align with these orientations, they may turn to commercial solutions as a way of re-anchoring teaching within a perceived zone of competence or comfort, even as it potentially narrows the scope of cultural engagement, critical inquiry, and potentially new orientations within the classroom.
In Ahmed’s (2006) terms, the significance of disorientation lies in what it reveals about orientation itself—about what it means to be situated, balanced, and at ease in the world. Disorientation involves moments of losing one’s grip, feeling off-balance, or encountering the world as strange and unfamiliar. Such moments, while unsettling, can also serve as the “pedagogical pivot points” mentioned above (Ellsworth, 2005): ruptures that open up possibilities for new ways of knowing and being. However, disorientation is not only pedagogically generative, but it also has a political dimension. The spatial and social dynamics embedded in orientation mean that some bodies move smoothly through educational spaces, while others are hindered or excluded. As Ahmed (2006) notes, disorientation is inevitable, but the critical question is “how such experiences can impact on the orientation of bodies and spaces, which is after all about how things are “directed” and how they are shaped by the lines they follow” (p. 158).
In this light, the teachers’ limited cultural awareness, their efforts to maintain control in the classroom, and their desire to preserve comfort can be understood as responses to disorientation. These responses are also tied to professional competence: the ability to use disorientation as a pedagogical pivot point requires both subject knowledge and the courage to remain in discomfort and to explore it. Conversely, reverting to familiar practices to avoid uncertainty has political consequences (Christophersen, 2024). When dominant cultural lines are reproduced in the classroom, some children will feel “at home and as home”—while others may persistently experience disorientation. Unlike teachers, however, children often lack the agency or authority to reshape the educational spaces of the music classroom. Their disorientation is not a temporary rupture that opens up new possibilities, but a structural condition that reinforces marginality. In this way, the classroom becomes a space where comfort is unevenly distributed, and where the orientation of some bodies depends on the disorientation of others.
Conclusion
In this article, we have explored teachers’ experiences, perspectives, and practices of teaching music in diverse Irish classrooms. Drawing on classroom observations and teacher logs, our analysis reveals that teachers play a pivotal role in shaping the musical spaces of these classrooms. However, their responses to diversity vary significantly. The findings show that while some teachers demonstrate flexibility, responsiveness, and openness to spontaneous classroom interactions and pupil input, others rely heavily on habitual, often screen-mediated practices. These practices not only limit agency and creativity for both teachers and children but also tend to reinforce cultural stereotypes and reaffirm biases. From an Australian perspective, Fienberg (2023) argues:
Teachers need not feel challenged by the environment or community in which they work. If you look out and around opportunities will present themselves. It might start with a phone-call to a parent, attending a local festival, supporting students on a field trip, or even contacting a First Nations artist whose song you are learning through social media. (p. 457)
Our findings suggest that how teachers navigate the complexities of diversity in their classrooms is closely tied to their levels of musical confidence and comfort with uncertainty and disorientation. Reaching beyond the classroom walls to connect with community, as Fienburg suggests, could greatly assist in this regard.
A recurring theme in the study is the gap between teachers’ “good” intentions and actual pedagogical practices. Teachers often express well-meaning but reductive views of music as universally inclusive, using phrases such as “music brings belonging” or “it comes naturally.” These perceptions frequently clash with the lived realities of culturally diverse classrooms, where tensions, misunderstandings, and moments of disorientation are common. Drawing on Ahmed’s (2006) concept of disorientation, these moments reveal the limits of assumed neutrality and challenge teachers to confront their own positionality. Disorientation, while unsettling, can serve as a pedagogical pivot point, that is, an opportunity to reorient teaching practices towards greater inclusivity and reflexivity.
Throughout our analysis, we have drawn on the theoretical perspectives of Massey, Arendt, and Ahmed. These frameworks, combined with empirical data, illuminate how musical and educational spaces are relational, political, and shaped by orientation and disorientation. Our findings show that musical encounters, particularly through groupwork or spontaneous, child-led activities, can disrupt established norms and open up possibilities for new ways of being together. However, teachers may not always recognise or embrace these disruptions. Without attentiveness to their own blind spots and embedded biases, they risk reverting to familiar practices that reinforce dominant cultural narratives and marginalise students from non-majority backgrounds.
The discussion illustrates that teachers play a crucial role in either opening up or shutting down spaces of encounter and disorientation in diverse classrooms. Massey’s notion of space as relational and dynamic, Arendt’s emphasis on plurality and natality, and Ahmed’s framing of orientation–disorientation all underscore the importance of teacher awareness and agency in shaping inclusive musical encounters. Importantly, the limited cultural awareness and lack of critical engagement with diversity observed amongst teachers are not merely individual shortcomings. They reflect broader structural conditions in education, including an ethnically and culturally homogeneous teaching workforce coupled with a lack of musical self-confidence. These factors may lead teachers to rely on simplistic or stereotypical music education practices—practices that, at worst, may exclude or “other” pupils. Therefore, we argue for greater teacher reflectivity that embraces discomfort—one that recognises the macro-politics of musical participation and actively seeks to disrupt and disorientate to create spaces where all pupils can feel seen, heard, and valued.
Footnotes
Author Contributions
Declaration of conflicting interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This research forms part of the funded Research Ireland Laureate Project MUSPACE (2022-26).
