Research Short: Challenging the salvation stories of music education

This week, I spoke with Hanna Backer Johnsen on her recent article, ‘Challenging the salvation stories of music education: Adolescent music school students narrating their musical lives’ in Research Studies in Music Education. Using narrative inquiry, her study explores how adolescents from diverse backgrounds in Finnish music schools describe their experienced musical ecosystems, challenging “salvation” stories and highlighting young people as active agents shaping meaning across interconnected musical worlds.

Adolescents from immigrant and low-income backgrounds challenge professional “salvation” stories that frame music education and social innovations in music education as rescuing them. Rather, their narratives show complex experienced ecosystems of music-making, where meaning, identity and belonging are negotiated across contexts, often beyond the reach of formal education. The findings illuminate the complexity and ambiguitiy of inclusive efforts in music education and in social innovations.

Hanna explained the methodology behind her study:

‘Using narrative inquiry, I analysed interviews with adolescents participating in Floora, a Finnish social innovation widening access to goal-oriented and extracurricular music school tuition. Students shared stories of their musical lives within the music school and beyond. The small, qualitative sample provides rich, in-depth insight into lived experiences rather than broad generalisation.’ As this research highlights the complexity of inclusion, it is especially relevant for educators, music hubs, and policymakers. It highlights the risks of simplistic “salvation” stories in music education that can obscure structural inequalities and young people’s lived realities. It supports shifting from seeing students as targets of inclusion to recognising them as agents, and encourages connected practices, knowledge-sharing, and focusing on meaningful music-making rather than only accessibility.

According to Hanna:

‘From an ecological point of view, the relationship between music school students, teachers, and the institution calls for genuine dialogues to be able to explore new musical worlds together. Understanding agency as a reciprocal movement provides room for inclusion as a transformative force for all involved.’

Hanna is a doctoral researcher at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland. Her research interests include social justice and equity in music education, especially focusing on young people and families from diverse backgrounds. Her research focuses on students’ voices, radical inclusion, belonging and social innovations within the Finnish music school system. A central part of her doctoral work is the social innovation Floora (2013–2023) within the music school context. She am a member of the Nordic research network for kulturskole-related research (Cutting Edge) and the European doctoral and postdoctoral network for music and art school research.

Currently she has also been part of developing a collaborative pilot project – Responsibility Agents – with a group of adolesescents in the municipality of Raseborg (Finland), aiming at enhancing young peoples’ local and democratic participation, dialogue, and action in the local (arts and music) community.

Find out more:

• Read the full article in Research Studies in Music Education.
• See Hanna’s institutional profile.

Written by Kerry Bunkhall – Research Manager for Music Mark

See the full list of Music Mark’s research