INTERCULTURAL PRACTICE AS RESEARCH IN HIGHER MUSIC EDUCATION: THE IMPERATIVE OF AN ETHICS-BASED RATIONALE

Introduction This chapter aims to demonstrate how intercultural practice in music education can be considered as, and turned into, research – and vice versa – by taking into account various ethical issues. Drawing on a wide range of intercultural practices and research currently taking place at the University of the Arts Helsinki, Sibelius Academy in Finland, our overview will be underpinned by practical experiences gained through three projects: a Finnish-Cambodian intercultural project, a project on co-constructing Nepalese music teacher education through Finnish-Nepalese collaboration, and a collaborative project on visions for intercultural music teacher education in two higher music education contexts in Israel and Finland. These projects have been designed in response to the emerging needs for music teacher education to move beyond the model of expert silos, characteristic for universities (Davidson & Goldberg, 2010), and to change the ‘conservatoire culture’ of music teacher education that preserves and cultivates rather than encourages teachers or students to step out of their comfort zones. This stepping out of comfort zones has also become necessary in arts education, which needs to recognise the increasing plurality of frameworks in our societies and the related need to deal with potential conflicts and uncertainty. In these projects, the exposure to larger societal issues, gained through intercultural collaboration, has aimed at existential learning experiences and evoking educational change, both within higher music education institutions and in wider educational systems.