Improving classroom inclusion through Orff-inspired music education: a study from a secondary school in Fujian, China

This study explores how Orff-inspired music education may promote inclusion when Chinese urban students and their migrant classmates with diverse backgrounds attend music education lessons together. Fieldwork focused on a large state secondary school in Fujian, China. Two Key Findings are examined. Key Finding 1 focuses on the mechanisms of how Orff-inspired music teaching improved students’ perceived inclusion in terms of friendships, motivation, and confidence. Key Finding 2 reveals how perceived inclusion differed across three types of students, metaphorically named Birds, Kites, and Stones. Implications for policy and practice are considered. We suggest that music education can be used in urban schools in China to develop more inclusive classrooms. The importance of teachers’ awareness of their role in enhancing inclusion and of their students’ characteristics is outlined.