Introduction

In a pluricultural context, the holistic educational process cannot be successful for students if their teachers are not familiar with the theoretical framework related to cultural diversity. This conviction has led to a review of the principal concepts in the field, as a starting point for the subsequent analysis of the different resources and approaches used in educational settings that are (considered) intercultural. Educators need knowledge on the terminology and theory supporting these strategies, because the lack thereof implies an incorrect application of the interventions. Indeed, the current educational process is a true challenge for faculty (Linaza 2006) because meeting the intercultural expectations of current legislation means that teaching methodologies must be increasingly based on communication, cooperation, and interaction with the student body (Rincón and Vallespir 2008).

Among the questions that all teachers initially ask themselves when organizing the learning process in the classroom is the concept of culture: How should I educate the students? What values do I need to transmit to mold socially competent citizens? The UNESCO (1982) defines culture as that which allows people to reflect on themselves and develop their human qualities, including reason, a critical spirit, and an ethical commitment. Thus, the term refers to the behaviors and lifestyle that a society acquires as a group of people develop patterns of thought, action, feelings, and communication. These patterns affect social and family relationships and are unrelated to genetics; rather, they are influenced by historical developments and the education they receive throughout their childhood (Bernabé 2012b).

After pondering these questions, teachers must then examine the reality of their classroom, that is, how they can meet the needs of their students. But is their student body culturally homogeneous? At this point, pluriculturalism comes into play: Azurmendi (2002) considers pluriculturalism to be a group of cultures that coincide in space: if interculturalism takes place, they will be integrated, whereas if a multicultural model is imposed, they will continue to coexist alongside each other but with minimal integration and/or interaction. To evaluate the appropriateness of different educational proposals addressing cultural diversity, we began by considering the questions that have arisen in our teaching experience: How should I educate a culturally diverse student body? What values do I need to transmit to mold socially competent citizens?

This study aims to evaluate the appropriateness of intercultural teaching practices in Spanish pre- and primary schooling according to national education policy and published recommendations on intercultural education. This analysis is based on a 2019 review of available literature on multicultural and intercultural teaching practices, using the database Dialnet (quite popular among Spanish teachers looking to enrich their classes by learning from other teachers’ experiences) and the search strategy of Key Words (intercultural, multicultural…). Once the search was performed and the proposals were critically analyzed against the cognizant legislation, it was clear that more in-depth work on the topic would be needed to achieve the coveted interculturalism promoted in the current educational law.

State of Play

Pluricultural, Multicultural, and Intercultural: Necessary Concepts for Education

As stated by Jiménez (2005), universal access has become the paradigm of education in the new century. Current reality shows that today, the different mandatory educational stages must respond to new situations and necessities, and a variety of multicultural and intercultural educational approaches have emerged. The former is characterized by their defense of cultural groups who feel discriminated against or socially marginalized, and they pursue the modification of ethnocentric educational models, the elimination of racist attitudes, and the assurance of equal educational opportunities. At the same time, they favor the adoption of majority-group practices among minority groups, with the intention of achieving equality, and they do not guarantee the mechanisms to achieve cultural interrelations.

Thus, the mission of education is to socialize the student body not only in shared values (Barquín 2009) but also in purely theoretical conceptual concerns. This mission would disadvise separating students by levels because it highlights the differences and complicates students’ integration, as pointed out by Cabello and Rayón (1998). Basically, the school should be understood as transformative and socializing, not only as a transmitter (Moya and García 2001), as education is not about expanding a culture and reproducing it, but about creating space for reflection, socialization, and shared cultural reconstruction. Finally, the dominant discourse on pluriculturalism and interculturalism—captured in the applicable educational legislation (LOMCE) that forms the basis for teaching practice—is reduced to mere “conversation” because of the practical results that drive homogenization (Aguilar 2001), rooted in the lack of specific training for schoolteachers.

In line with the analysis undertaken in this paper, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the concepts pluricultural, multicultural, and intercultural, in order to better understand the reflections derived from the findings and the boundaries established between multicultural and intercultural music interpretation. In Spain, there is a clear distinction between these terms in the literature (Aguado 2005; García 2004; Muñoz 2001, etc.); however, this is not the case in English-speaking countries, where the concept of interculturalism has not displaced the hegemony of “pluriculturalism” and “multiculturalism” in the dominant discourse. This difference is evident, for instance, in the Act for the Preservation and Enhancement of Multiculturalism in Canada (Parole Board of Canada 1985). Thus, if educators study literature in the field from outside of Spain, they may develop teaching practices in line with concepts that differ from those in our country, and therefore do not conform to the legislative framework that was so marked by the influence of the above-cited research.

In order to explore the multi-/intercultural boundaries of the activities analyzed, the following interpretations of the cited concepts should be taken as a starting point. Pluriculturalism refers to two or more cultural, ideological, or social groups that are present in the same territory. Spain is a pluricultural country according to this definition, even before considering the recent wave of immigration from other parts of the world. Multiculturalism can be understood as the presence of numerous cultures that share a single territory but do not mix (Bernabé 2012b). Socioaffective ties are not significant in achieving the objectives of this approach, although in school, the connections derived from social interaction are relevant for achieving sufficient competence in social skills and citizenship. Finally, interculturalism promotes cultural encounters and aims to create situations of cultural exchange and shared cultural construction; the concept is open and inclusive to promote interaction and develop respectful citizens who are aware of cultural borrowing between diverse cultures. In Spain, as national educational policy establishes the need to achieve interculturalism as an ultimate objective of teaching practice and an ideal societal model for democratic cultural coexistence, all teachers, of any area or subject, should understand the theoretical foundation of the term.

With regard to intercultural approaches, these propose the cultural integration of different populations that reside in the same territory in a process that does not nullify cultural references and which requires the participation and interaction of all members of a society to guarantee equal rights and freedoms. Intercultural educational models aim to teach strategies, skills, and values of different cultures so that students can understand their surrounding reality and contribute to society as equals. The intercultural curriculum includes knowledge that is useful to everyone, regardless of their cultural background, to avoid the hegemonic affirmation of the “authentic” culture; moreover, the approach aims to develop the social conditions that allow a more democratic treatment of diversity as a way to foster balanced intercultural harmony.

In short, intercultural education is characterized by interaction, exchange as a promotor of mutual recognition, and the acceptance of otherness. These goals are only possible if the different agents involved advance in reciprocal learning, shared development, and the appreciation of the transformative role of cultural encounters. Considering these needs, the educational process must insist on professional training in social and civic competencies (García 2009).

Attention to Diversity in the Classroom: References to Diversity in Spanish Educational Legislation

The so-called diversity that can be found in any educational center may have many profiles. For example, students may be first- or second-generation immigrants who require attention that is different from that needed by students with limited mobility or eyesight. A culturally diverse student body needs education of an equal standard, which the government should ensure. To defend the right to high-quality education for immigrants’ children, educational policy has worked to include curriculum content that refers to other cultures that may be represented in the classroom. However, the force of European policy actions has had an oversized influence: the globalizing effect is so strong that multicultural educational approaches are launched more frequently than intercultural methods; that is, educational actions become means to avoiding racism, but they do not favor the dialogue and exchange that would lead to a joint construction of culture (interculturalism) that current legislation advocates. Educating in this intercultural direction, ignoring the homogenizing pretensions of globalization, would be the ideal way of achieving a harmonious, democratic, and diverse society (Ridao 2007).

In light of these considerations, Spanish educational law has seen different changes, implemented to orient practice toward a treatment of cultural diversity that is more tailored to the needs and realities of a diverse student body. Before examining the current legislation guiding primary education, it is worth reviewing the most significant milestones in legislation affecting immigrants. Table 1 shows the most used terms, their meanings, and interpretations, which have marked the development of educational law up to now.

Table 1 Main legal documents related to immigrant populations
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Regarding educational law, Bernabé (2013b) has described the most significant historical changes (Table 2). Although these may appear minimal, demonstrating the need to enact more carefully worded legislation that avoids the prevalent repetition of obsolete vocabulary (at the pluricultural level), the advances do show an evolution. And this has had an impact on the organization of music activities in the classroom, which increasingly respond to the diversity needs of the student body to tailor teaching practices to legislative demands.

Table 2 Main legal documents related to education
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Notwithstanding the above, the idiosyncrasies of the Spanish national territory, comprising autonomous regions (which in turn are divided into different provinces) with very specific cultural and linguistic characteristics, result in differential educational policy developments, in consonance with the competences derived from regional autonomy. Thus, every Spanish region has defended the presence of its cultural characteristics in the curricula of subjects like music: folkloric music and dance have been included to disseminate regional heritage and avoid cultural homogenization within the national territory. Regions with their own language such as the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands, Catalonia, the Basque Country, and Galicia have championed their own cultural characteristics through subjects like music, promoting knowledge of local idiosyncrasies that differentiate them from other regions with a single official language. These divergences may also entail diverse interpretations of specific terminology (multicultural and intercultural), as we will show below.

Analysis: Didactic Musical Approaches for Primary Education

The reality of educational centers shows how cultural diversity is understood from multicultural perspectives, despite the numerous intercultural references present in educational legislation (Bernabé 2012b). In the subject of music, many educational actions are destined toward exploring cultural diversity because its content allows this to occur without imposing significant or substantial changes. Our analysis shows, however, that these actions are generally of the multicultural type; although the names of the different approaches point to an implicit intercultural intention, the interventions are not based on dialogue or exchange, but rather on disseminating and learning certain cultural characteristics. Moreover, the search engine used yielded numerous documents related to multi-/interculturalism through music, but not all were aimed at primary education nor did they describe practical experiences with students in that age group.

Analysis of Multicultural Musical Approaches

Krause et al. (1964) proposed incorporating a few music education aspects that went beyond Western musical characteristics. These investigators considered music as a tool that could contribute to better understanding and knowledge between cultures that coexisted in a single territory. However, they proposed a form of cultural knowledge based on musical study, but not exchange, experimentation, or fusion, that is, following a multicultural line of action.

In the 1990s, Volk (1998) discussed the importance of structuring classes for multicultural learning. Her work was crucial in establishing the basis for applying critical thinking to the study of music from other cultures. In this sense, the contribution by Campbell (2003) was also decisive, arguing that the presence of other music and dance should be part of the classroom because pluriculturalism was (and is) a reality. Yet, this type of proposal, which takes a small cultural element as a representative sample of the whole, contributed to disseminating this multicultural educational treatment across Spain for many years: using other countries’ music as a way to “integrate” the cultural diversity present in the classroom.

In fact, many of the approaches analyzed consider that the music learning/teaching process should begin with the study of traditional Spanish music, as this has been influenced by a constant flow of cultures, including the Jewish and Muslim traditions. In this way, studying flamenco to approach other Eastern music, students can observe the influence of the previous inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula (Muslims, etc.) and how their musical/cultural heritage was adopted and adapted. As noted in the article “Los ‘profes’ rompen barreras musicales” (Without author 2008) [“Teachers break down musical barriers”], some South American countries are dealing with similar problems as Spain. They have a rich history of traditional indigenous music that is gradually being reintegrated into educational institutes. As in Spain, these approaches are aimed at recovering national musical heritage; however, they are not conceived as a starting point for understanding otherness or for creating a shared culture that is jointly constructed and reconstructed.

Montoro (2002) considers music to be a tool for multicultural understanding; however, the music education model she proposes is characterized by its intent to ensure communication and collaboration, from a clearly intercultural perspective. In addition, the emphasis on cooperation in the activities proposed is significant because the role of the teacher is limited to being a mediator who guarantees an intercultural dialogue using music. Given that music can be a means of communication in many senses of the word, it can also be used to communicate between cultures. Moreover, music can serve as an educational tool that not only generates knowledge of other cultures but also makes the leap toward self-identification in the other and therefore toward exchange and common cultural construction. These are the issues that should be promoted through different musical processes proposed in the classroom, as a way of attaining the intercultural ideal promulgated in Spanish educational legislation.

The music education approach presented by Gallego and Gallego (2003) is employed both in primary and secondary schools: building instruments and then playing music of different origins and styles. The rhythms that each student plays with these instruments (or the ones in the classroom) are primarily based on their internal pulse and with the music they have listened to as a child. In that line of thought, Auserón (2012) states that a process of compatibility with their rhythmic system of reference takes place, and this is necessary to be able to play “external” rhythms. Thus, music teachers can use ordinary instruments to take advantage of the enormous rhythmic possibilities of the students, working on rhythmic exercises that are radically different from the typical schemes to achieve different musical results.

With regard to assessment, the focus of some evaluations is interesting: although all of the approaches studied offered a great variety of original and practical activities, not all of them were matched with adequate evaluation tools for responding to the intercultural objective that was implicit in their title. This is the case of Gallego and Gallego (2003). Assessments are not successful if they do not generate a list of items to modify, improve, or strengthen with regard to the performance of the exercise. In this way, the conclusions of the debate on the experience “In search of lost rhythms” should be recorded in a document to legitimize the actions taken by the educator and to make an explicit analysis of students’ performance in order to make recommendations for improvement. If progress in the activities and their results are quantified and statistically documented, the potential for improvement and change will multiply. As discussed earlier in this paper, all educational processes (intercultural or not) should be based on adequate evaluation. Sadly, in the case of Spanish educational legislation, the assessment of students’ attitudes (intercultural or not) was not included in the evaluation criteria, a fact that greatly hinders the validation of these practices.

The process of musical teaching/learning is normally organized around the practice of rhythm, movement with music, song, listening, interpretation, and improvisation. But what can be done at a musical level to get the attention of children with an immigrant background? According to current legislation, the difference lies in the type of music chosen. One resource (both in Spain and internationally) is the website www.doslourdes.es, a repertory of traditional music for use in primary school. At the same time, new approaches should include revising features and practices that have been used previously, giving each and every element of the curriculum a truly intercultural and interactive focus.

In the line of multicultural work, Bravo and De Moya (2006) propose activities aimed at imparting knowledge of other cultural manifestations through music, but not at deconstructing and reconstructing previously acquired concepts or facilitating the exchange that would be ingrained in an intercultural educational practice. On the other hand, González (2007) uses a more intentionally intercultural approach, with activities that are based on a rigorous theoretical contextualization of the concepts of cultural diversity and a subsequent development of explicitly intercultural curricular goals (attitude-based objectives with corresponding content and criteria for evaluation). Other analyzed activities use terminology very freely, cataloging multicultural practices as intercultural (as in Bravo and De Moya (2006), above). These activities, rigorously organized, aim to improve social contact among a diverse student body in response to current societal needs. In this way, all promotion of social contact would enable the construction of dialogue and therefore exchange, in the line of the main objectives of intercultural education that all primary education teachers should aspire to achieve.

Molina (2007) proposes using the Orff methodology as a basis for achieving sociocultural integration of the student body, considering that the didactic strategies contained therein are applicable to different cultures and countries. Among the most notable activities are collective exercises for working on rhythm; however, they lack references for assessment and an interactive organizational model that favors shared musical construction.

“Music unites us” is an approach to intercultural experience proposed by De Moya et al. (2010). Like virtually all the inter- and multicultural music approaches reviewed here, this set of activities is based on traditional popular songs, which are considered the best medium to favor cultural contact. Despite the interesting use of cooperative work and information and communication technologies, the practices presented can only be considered multicultural, as the popular songs are used to present other cultural “options” through music, but not to foster a musical dialogue or an exchange of experiences and elements (in this case, the interpretation or fusion of different pieces based on students’ proposals). In the same year, Schippers (2010) proposes a review of music education from a more global perspective, with the integration of music from other parts of the world and an inclusive vision that music belongs to everyone. However, as discussed below, the use of other types of music is not yet a reality due to shortcomings in the university teaching curricula.

Some activities proposed by the Jarit Association (2011) have a multicultural perspective, although the percussion workshop uses an intercultural approach, as students are invited to use the concepts they have learned in their own musical interpretation in a way that favors cultural exchange, incorporation, and fusion. This situation is not observed in the extensive dossier of Gómez (2011), who shares an interesting perspective on world music from a more classical and popular standpoint but who follows a multicultural line of education in that the objectives do not go beyond acquiring knowledge of other music through theoretical study and (basically strict) interpretation.

A final activity is one in primary education, which Sirera (2016) described as intercultural. In this case, it was clearly based on multicultural principles: the experience was limited to using popular and folkloric music, also in different languages, as a basis for learning about other peoples. Beyond the incorrect terminology of its title, it falls into multicultural folklorist practice in a bid to achieve the interculturalism established by current law.

Analysis of Intercultural Musical Approaches

Paradoxically, intercultural music practices do not necessarily need to be characterized by their use of “other” music. Rather, they are often based on the fusion between rhythms used in the dominant culture and those of neighboring or minority cultures (whether traditional or contemporary) and on the reflection about those rhythms to understand where a particular musical element comes from and how it can evolve though the musical approaches used in the classroom. This assertion has the following explanation: the contents of music class curricula, both in primary and secondary education, are characterized by the inclusion of world music as a working (and performance) tool for interculturalism, which current legislation aims to promote (Bernabé 2015b). Yet, personal experience also suggests that critical analysis of one’s own musical heritage can also foster interculturalism by extricating mutual and characteristic elements in an optimal way. In one class of students in their final year of primary school, the children were able to successfully accomplish these tasks, demonstrating their personal and musical maturity. Students at the secondary level could feasibly achieve a consolidation of this process of maturity.

Music education allows the development of collective values and appreciation for foreign musical styles and different interpretations, all essential goals that assure a successful intercultural music process. Giráldez (1997) shows that practicing other musical styles does not imply the loss of one’s own cultural identity. On the contrary, musical practice invites reflection on cultural identity and fosters a common construction of it through listening, understanding, and engaging with others. As González (2007) pointed out, music is by nature a cooperative activity, and it helps every student feel useful and necessary in music class. Even authors studying pluriculturalism through disciplines other than music, such as Rué (1998), have acknowledged that musical interpretation is a perfect model to exemplify the cooperative work that is so crucial to achieving integration. For that reason, the promotion of instrumental and vocal interpretation activities, with an emphasis on group values, is so relevant, and it extends beyond the importance given to the repertoire per se in the multicultural practices discussed above.

In primary education, the didactic units proposed for music class that favor exchange and experimentation are not especially abundant. The use of processes such as improvisation, which is consistent with an intercultural approach through work on dialogue and exchange, is not widely used because they imply less apparent “control” over the classroom. For example, activities such as improvisation of simple pieces using the rhythmic structures of songs from other countries are one form of cultural-musical exchange or shared construction of music. This type of approach, as shown by our analysis, shows how the reality of education demands that music teachers avoid presenting a specific piece of music as if were the prototype of the totality (Alsina 2006). On the contrary, both primary and secondary level music class can expose students to a wide variety of genres and styles, reinforcing the importance of the rich cultures that have produced them.

Today, Spanish educators and education students do not have access to adequate professional training to prepare them for a culturally diverse classroom, as many teaching colleges have neither music classes nor general classes on intercultural education. However, at the start of the new century, Vilar (2006) already considered that this was a poor excuse to justify the lack of teacher training in interculturalism, as many congresses, courses, and workshops are available. Thus, the key to improving the educational process resides in better teacher training (García 2009), which should be adapted to the real needs of educators in their current classroom situation.

Different studies on training for music teachers in superior conservatories (Bernabé 2015a) and universities (Bernabé 2013a; Bernabé 2014) report weaknesses in education curricula regarding assuring adequate attention to a culturally diverse student body. In general, music curricula for educators place an oversize emphasis on refined Western music, although specialized curricula now exist for pedagogy of musical education and language and for musicology, which do include some ethnomusicological elements, such as a course in oral musical traditions.

Activities to build musical instruments can also take a collaborative focus based on cooperation and respect. Bernabé (2011) reported how this exercise can be organized in groups that share materials and who thus must take turns and help each other; this is very much in line with intercultural objectives, as it involves cooperation and dialogue in the pursuit of a common goal that can only be achieved through collaboration. If the activity is not organized in this way, it may fall into multicultural practices in which curricular elements are not interpreted interculturally: the evaluation of attitudes may be overlooked, and the processes used may not correspond to the collaborative intentions and principles of interculturalism. The insistence on evaluating attitudes must be highlighted in order to pay due attention to the comprehensive nature of the educational process, regardless of whether it is intercultural or not, as we have highlighted elsewhere in this paper.

During the program entitled “In search of the lost rhythm,” carried out in the Azahar preschool and primary school (Without author 2004), the assessment instrument was simply a short debate, a few questions, and the creation of murals about the activities performed. However, it is highly significant that educators evaluated students’ attitudes and interaction during the “musical dialogue.” Thus, this practice can be considered intercultural because all of its elements were oriented toward the process of exchange and dialogue that intercultural education hinges on. Through music, it is possible to achieve the dialogue that is so necessary to the intercultural educational process: this is true even when not all members of the group or class share a common spoken language. Considering this perspective, González (2007) considers that the aural message is received and interpreted differently but in equally interesting ways by individual students. In this line of dialogue and socialization, Lorenzo et al. (2004) propose the use of songs (with no special preference for traditional music) in order to favor the communicative and socializing process. Their activities are geared toward a reflection on the use of song as a tool to favor language learning and at the same time as an element of sociability and communication. This method is consistent with the intercultural approach to music education advocated for in the present paper—it needs to evolve toward a place of reflection arising from the use of songs and instruments employed in diverse musical practices.

Other authors such as Sanfeliu and Caireta (2005) base their work on the interpretation of contemporary pop music by singer-songwriters such as Manu Chao or Ismael Serrano, as the principal themes of their music explores issues such as immigration, poverty, and social solidarity. This way of approaching other kinds of music, with clear influences from the traditional genres in the place of origin (e.g., Manu Chao), constitutes the first step toward understanding differences to avoid racism. Thus, these exercises hew more closely to the multicultural model; however, they could take the learning process a step further into the intercultural terrain through work on intercultural attitudes using the songs’ themes. Working with the lyrics would thus favor dialogue and reflection, and even if activities do not include the direct, creative musical process that would lead to the composition of common music, it would represent a certain enrichment of values rooted in the analysis of the text.

Leiva (2005) has insisted on the importance of music class as a space for creative construction. We can add that only in this way can a true recognition of difference be achieved.

In 2007, Morata (2007) (an interculturalism teacher in the Andalusian pre- and primary school of Fuengirola) launched a project that was purely structured around intercultural objectives and methodologies (albeit it used some typically multicultural approaches). The project included seminars for parents and teachers and promoted joint training sessions for all actors in the educational process. Likewise, Salido (2007) proposes an activity which, despite not including “interculturalism” in the title, clearly reflects a correct interpretation of its tenets: integration is promoted through common behavioral patterns and values, and these are easily practiced using musical activities.

Navarro (2008) also considered music class to be a tool that facilitates understanding and interculturalism, thanks to its interpretational, compositional, and didactic features. The study of music allows students to explore different melodies, rhythms, and styles, and it instills a respect for diversity. Vera (2000) also shares this conviction, considering that art, as a generator of human creativity, stimulates social and moral values and qualities that are essential to respect otherness.

Díaz and Ibarretxe (2008) comment on the importance of working in two directions in music class: to spark critical reflection on one’s own identity and to develop the capacity to appreciate other identities through music. This approach is valuable in initiating an intercultural path, as practicing different kinds of songs (not just traditional ones) invites the student body to reflect on their own culture, leading to a dialogue with “other” cultures in the pursuit of a new, common culture that recognizes the contributions of all its members. The key is to avoid the situation described by Arriaga (2005), in which students do not listen to the same music in their free time as they do in the classroom, resulting in a situation in which the songs in music class seem strange and unknown to them. For intercultural work, then, the most adequate musical choices are those that the student body is familiar with, not necessarily the traditional music from their home countries or immigrant groups’ countries of origin. This fact is rarely recognized when proposing a repertoire to work on in the classroom.

Again, traditional music is the center of attention for González (2010), who proposes a new interpretation of this resource by incorporating improvisation in lyrics and instrumentals. This experience holds a great deal of interest because it includes a thoughtful comparison of the elements in the different pieces analyzed and of national music traditions. In fact, cultural reflection can be considered one of the most important moments in the intercultural educational process, although this should not be based solely on typical traditional music, as no country can be typified with a single cultural sample (Toriz 2006).

Cano, Sousa, and Claustro CP Cardenal Cisneros in Camuñas (2010) have developed interdisciplinary approaches for achieving intercultural attitudes through musical activities and movement. A labor-intensive process of evaluation was also carried out, in a sign that multidisciplinary, intercultural education was not considered a one-off project but rather a feasible cross-cutting theme within the performance of daily coursework. It is worth noting that nearly all of the activities described were specific programs tied to research or to so-called intercultural or special celebrations; this circumstance did not favor a continuous educational process in the intercultural sense and had negative repercussions on social development, as conflict-ridden coexistence impedes harmony and community. Educators should also take this consideration into account when designing intercultural activities with culturally diverse student bodies.

In 2012, there were certain advances toward interculturalism. Valenzuela (2012) presented a didactic unit on the music of the Canary Islands from a critical perspective about its similarities with different popular manifestations from other parts of the world. Bernabé (2012a) also proposed a critical approach based on the practice of world and Spanish music, organizing the evaluation process with a special emphasis on attitude assessment.

A year later, Pérez-Aldeguer (2013) proposed working on intercultural competencies in the primary school classroom through rhythm work, with his Dum Dum Program, based on group participation to favor the musical experience through composition, interpretation, and listening. An interesting proposal, it aims to help children understand that music is a tool for communication on many levels. The same year, Perales and Pedrosa (2013) argued for the need to change the curricular structures in schools, which had been rendered obsolete following the migratory boom in the 2000s. These investigators considered it necessary to include flamenco music in the Andalusian classroom as the only way to understand the relationship between the dominant culture of their students and the Eastern cultures that have historically influenced it. That is, the study of flamenco was posited as a cross-cutting axis of Andalusian culture and a gateway to increasing the prominence of Eastern influences in the classroom.

Later, Carrión (2014) then proposed working on singing-songwriting as a tool for communication in intercultural educational spheres, highlighting the interesting messages transmitted by this kind of music when familiarizing children with the exchange of knowledge. Bernabé (2014) also commented on the importance of working with traditional songs, referred to in the cognizant legislation of each Spanish region.

Perandones (2015) works in a similar line as Pérez-Aldeguer (2013), basing her programs on rhythm work as the primary foundation but seeking a fusion between urban pop and classical music. The author puts forward an interesting proposal on teacher training, which would make it easy to then implement the program in the primary level classroom. In this year, another experience worth mentioning, but in the preschool setting, is commented in the article “Trabajamos la interculturalidad en Educación Infantil” (Without author 2015b). The type of intervention is multicultural, but important, as it taught children about similarities between cultures based on those between a traditional Chinese dance and another from Asturias. This work is very remarkable given the early educational phase, but it should be expanded to primary school using the same precepts. A similar program, also related to dance, is described in the article “Multicultural day” (Without author 2015a) where experiences with other cultures are presented through dances from different parts of the world; however, unlike the previously described experience in the preschool setting, this program did not include any explicit reflection on differences and/or similarities.

A year later, the intercultural experience of Aróstegui and Espigares (2016) in the primary school classroom underscored how intercultural musical practice ends up being reduced to using popular songs; moreover, teachers’ excessive zeal for the technical musical aspects undermined the activities’ intercultural intentions. Nevertheless, the correct terminology was used, and the intent to promote intercultural experiences using music was obvious.

Albeit in an extracurricular setting, Aparicio and León (2018) promoted intercultural experiences through the typical creation of orchestras. Their work was based on the assumption, already discussed at length, that musical education has a positive impact on attitudes of respect and tolerance toward otherness, and it did not fall into the typical multicultural uses of the repertoire to interpret. In this way, their activity lives up to the demands of good intercultural practice, and its replication in the wider educational system would be desirable.

Bernabé (2019) has shown how students aged 6 and 7 years can compose in the classroom while also working on the interculturalism promoted in the cognizant educational legislation. The theoretical and conceptual basis, and the distinct procedures and attitude-related objectives, are in clear agreement with the law and show how terminological specificity can be adhered to in successful intercultural activities. This experience represents a positive response to the issues raised in this document: if educators have the right theoretical corpus related to cultural diversity, their didactic proposals for the classroom can better respond to legislative precepts.

Training for Music Educators in a Globalized World: Proposals

Teaching staff must respond adequately to the needs of the student body, while also attending the other major actor involved in the educational process: families. To that end, universities should prepare educators by mixing theory and practice in the way that best reflects reality. There is ample room for improvement in both high conservatories of music and teaching colleges before intercultural training can be ensured in all education specialties, as evidenced by the lack of any course related to intercultural education in any of the different high conservatories. This article offers only a brief vision of this situation, given that its primary aim is not the analysis of professional teacher training. Numerous other specialists (like Shifres and Castro (2019), among others) have, however, underlined the need for adequate teacher training to establish intercultural relations in the classroom.

It is important to understand that one of the main problems that music faculty face is the inability to respond to students’ needs due to the lack of specific training that keeps interculturalism at the forefront of their lesson planning. The Lora del Rio primary school (CEP Lora del Río 2011) has created a collection of intercultural materials to provide information and training to its staff, which could foster a higher quality in intercultural processes. The availability of these materials in learning centers could lead to an improvement in the dominant educational discourse, which should not make any departure from social reality (Moreno 2010).

If we take as an example the analysis of a Valencian university, we can see that the curricula of music education courses make no mention of intercultural education or interculturalism in general (Bernabé 2013a, 2014), even though education law considers that the area of artistic education is the most suitable for guaranteeing cross-cultural competence and relationships. Moreover, a review of the university website and the instructor materials for the Master’s degree for primary school education shows no evidence of any content in interculturalism in the Master’s coursework. It is essential to use intercultural teaching approaches and to understand when a practice is intercultural or multicultural, given the different objectives described in this article. The lack of professional training in this area, and around collaborative and reflective techniques, has a negative impact on teachers’ perceptions of this challenge (Palomares and González 2012).

Thus, if we wanted to develop an intercultural training program for music education professionals, we would begin with a reflection on the most common mediating elements of music used in intercultural education. The most straightforward way to incorporate intercultural content would be to adapt the guidelines for courses that have already been approved, rather than submitting new course proposals to the public administration for consideration. Bernabé (2013a, 2014) proposes one such adaptation for pre- and primary school. Using these modifications and others, future teachers could obtain knowledge on how to adapt their didactic approach to the real needs of a pluricultural student body.

Universities have the largest responsibility to assume regarding awareness of the pluricultural reality, and they must orient their curricula in that direction. They do not necessarily have to create new courses, but they should review the existing ones to adequately adapt them to the specific needs of the present. This action would respond to criticism that the university does not respond to the educational realities of today’s classrooms.

Discussion and Conclusions

Regarding the questions discussed and the objectives pursued, it can be said that the musical approaches analyzed in the area of primary education reflect a lack of specific teacher training in interculturalism among music faculty, as they fail to monitor processes or attitudes related to the teaching strategies in question. In contrast, all of the considerations discussed here, as well as the training approaches proposed and the intercultural objectives of current legislation, support the importance and appropriateness of evaluating student attitudes as a main outcome of intercultural activities. Azorín and Bernabé (2019) drew a similar conclusion: following a bibliographic analysis of musical listening activities for primary education, the authors described the insufficient number of publications reporting on intercultural listening practices. This result suggests that the faculty either does not feel professionally prepared or that they do not work on diversity in an intercultural way, as set out in current law.

Our analysis identified very few didactic musical approaches based on experimenting with improvisation using non-Western and/or non-traditional rhythms, whereas a great number take the strict interpretation of music by other nationalities as the starting point for an approximation to other cultures. However, we consider that a cultural reflection on other kinds of music should not be neglected, and it would be feasible to carry out this kind of activity in the last year of primary school. This strategy would prepare students for the secondary level, which is the final phase of mandatory education, after which they should have an acceptable understanding of cross-cultural relationships.

At the same time, it is worth noting that most of the program descriptions we found were not in line with the concept of intercultural education and made an indiscriminate and incorrect use of the terminology related to pluriculturalism. This lack of familiarity with the theoretical underpinnings of the field has led to educational practices that are more multicultural than intercultural in nature. As a result, the potential of the projects is not fully realized, and their educational objectives are somewhat blurred. That is, they are described at times as “intercultural” when the teaching strategies are, above all, multicultural (Moya and García 2001). That said, even experts on pluriculturalism in education are not in full agreement on these issues, which could have a negative impact on teachers’ educational practices and subsequently on social interactions between cultures within and outside the classroom.

The absence of evaluation in the musical approaches analyzed, for both student and teacher, is significant, as this step is highly relevant for demonstrating the impact of the classroom activity. Such absence sparks a reflection on what Spanish educational law establishes: the tendency to obviate the evaluation of attitude-related content. This pattern can be observed through a reading of the evaluation criteria set out in both past and present laws (LOGSE, LOE, LOMCE). Assessments could contribute to improving teaching strategies in pluricultural situations, and if any adaptations are necessary to address the intercultural educational process, the assessments should also be modified in parallel. Thus, this phase of the teaching approach should be very prominent, reflecting the different objectives and contents related to student attitudes; meeting these goals would imply the beginning of a shared, deconstructed/reconstructed culture. Indeed, Herrera and Lorenzo (2007) consider that the educational programs denominated intercultural do not reflect that idea in the development of concepts, processes, values, or attitudes; these authors consider that the issues related to attitude should receive the most attention in order to ensure that the student body really acquires the intercultural social skills that they need.

For intercultural education in the music classroom, it is not enough to introduce conceptual contents from other cultures (e.g., African music traditions), a typical practice in the multicultural activities described in this paper. Rather, from our own professional and practical experience, we believe that it is necessary to modify the characteristic program elements in the classroom (objectives, assessment criteria, etc.) to facilitate its transformation into an ideal space for intercultural education, which current legislation consider essential for a healthy society. This would be an important component of a comprehensive educational policy in different spheres (Moreno 2010) and involving all agents with a role in the educational process (including families and a deeply committed student body). Indeed, education is not just about learning facts about a discipline (Linaza 2006) but about holistically preparing the student body so that they may fully develop as contributing members of society. This “society” must also include the society of origin and destination, as identity is not a singular concept but an accumulation of associations with different groups (Barquín 2009). That complexity is reflected in the intercultural activities we identified, and it is exactly what Spanish society needs to achieve the intercultural situation “recommended” in educational legislation.

The range of activities analyzed in the different articles included in this review suggests that the main shortfall of activities lies in the assurance of dialogue, and through it, exchange, generation of knowledge, and recognition. All in all, we consider that music, as the result of multiple contacts between cultures over the centuries, is an ideal educational tool for primary school: the study of music contributes to a more open mentality toward different aesthetic phenomena (Leiva 2005) because it reflects musical language from different origins and transmits universal sentiments; thus, it is logical to consider it as a tool for intercultural education. At the same time, the music education process has other methodological, conceptual, and practical peculiarities that make it a good vehicle to transmit intercultural skills. Cabedo and Arriaga (2016) have also insisted on the contribution that musical education can make to intercultural understanding.

Primary school teachers should implement changes in their activities about working on intercultural attitudes through different processes, in particular through exchanges and dialogue. These are the types of changes that could translate intercultural theory into intercultural practice and, consequently, achieve intercultural results, overcoming the problems posed in the Spanish educational system. This task may not be overly challenging, despite the null or limited training in interculturalism, as music has intrinsic qualities that make it a tool for intercultural education. It favors interaction and fusion through composition and improvisation, and it makes it possible to respect knowledge of both national and foreign musical elements. In short, musical education must promote interculturalism, as it reflects the evolution of society and is therefore the ideal tool for intercultural learning.