Music Education: "Be creative, discover new musical cultures, reflect on music, and teach it in an engaging way! We’re shaping the future of music education!" – Prof. Dr. Oliver Kautny
April 2025
What makes the teacher training program at the University of Cologne special is the enormous musical and cultural diversity here. Every instrument and every musical culture is welcome and can be studied here—from Western classical and Turkish art music to jazz, rock, and hip-hop. Every “instrument of the world” can be studied here.
At the University of Cologne, teacher education students learn to make music themselves, to be creative, to reflect on music, its history, its use, and its impact, and to teach music in a contemporary way while captivating young people.
The curriculum addresses the pressing questions of our time and explores them through original research: What will the music education of tomorrow look like? How are musical preferences changing in schools? How do we respond pedagogically to change in a (post-)digital and polarized world, and how do we address migration, populism, and climate change?
The Faculty of Human Sciences at the University of Cologne offers the most modern music teacher training program in the world. Nowhere else is there such a wide range of artistic practices available for study. Further information: