Post-digital music practices in music teacher training

• Applicant: Dr. Josef Schaubruch
• Subject Area: Musicology
• Term: since 2026
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 577381189

The network focuses on researching postdigital music practices and their translation into music teacher training. Such practices include producing, DJing, sampling, and remixing, as well as making music on the web, in virtual spaces, or with artificial intelligence (e.g., Haenisch et al., 2023; Mazierska et al., 2019; Miranda, 2021). Labeling these practices as postdigital indicates, first, that they could only emerge under conditions shaped by digitalization; second, that they cannot be conceived as purely digital, since they are deeply entangled with analog practices and processes; and third, that research and translation of these practices must consider not only technical aspects but also social, ecological, cultural, aesthetic, and economic dimensions (Buchborn & Treß, 2023; Clements, 2018; Weidner & Stange, 2022). The overarching aim of the network is to accompany and advance the ongoing translation of such practices into music teacher training (e.g., as artistic subjects) through research collaboration and exchange. Specifically, the network both consolidates and expands research on these practices and their translations (e.g., artistic strategies, processes of appropriation and professionalization) and develops and tests its own translations (e.g., competence heuristics, teaching and learning formats). By doing so, the network responds to the need of adapting music teacher training to current educational policy frameworks and recommendations (KMK, 2017, 2021, 2024; Redecker, 2017), position papers of music education associations regarding digitalization (BMU, 2019; FMV, 2021), as well as changing musical lifeworlds (Born, 2022; Théberge, 2015) and contexts of transmission (Schmitt-Weidmann, 2023). This enhances the attractiveness and diversity of music teacher training and helps address the current teacher shortage (BMU, 2023; BFG Musikpädagogik, 2024). The network’s reference to the concept of postdigitality enables a differentiated investigation and translation of contemporary music practices by overcoming unproductive dichotomies such as analog vs. digital or real vs. virtual and replacing them with notions such as hybridity. Moreover, the concept provides a foundation for engaging with broader societal challenges and foregrounding critical and ethical questions in music teacher training. Finally, as a reflexive framework (Knox, 2019), postdigitality offers a shared orientation that connects diverse research projects and didactic approaches on digitalization in music education.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks
• Co-Investigator: Dr. Chris Kattenbeck