At the Boundary of Sound and Faith: A Systematic Review of Religious Music Education in Multicultural Settings

Abstract

Cultural and religious diversity has become a defining feature of societies worldwide. Although religious music serves as a powerful medium for fostering intercultural understanding, it remains underexamined in educational research. This systematic review analyzes studies published between 2016 and 2025, identified through comprehensive searches of SCOPUS, Web of Science, and ERIC databases. Eleven peer-reviewed studies meeting thematic criteria were selected for in-depth analysis. Findings revealed persistent challenges in religious music education, including policy ambiguity, teacher identity constraints, and limited resources. The review identifies a shift from traditional knowledge transmission to experiential pedagogies, leading to outcomes such as emotional resonance, intercultural understanding, moral self-regulation, and student agency. It also highlights structural gaps in longitudinal research and a significant underrepresentation of religious music traditions from Eastern Europe and other non-Anglophone regions. A practice–outcome heatmap developed in this study uncovered unexplored links, particularly regarding student agency. Future research should investigate these underexplored pedagogical–outcome pathways and address current geographic and cultural imbalances by incorporating regional traditions—such as Eastern European choral and sacred music—into global academic discourse.

1. Introduction

Contemporary education is situated within a rapidly shifting global religious landscape. Intensified transnational migration, the fluidity of belief systems, and increasingly hybrid identities have challenged the dominance of single-religion narratives in public spaces (Burchardt and Wohlrab-Sahr 2013). Cultural and religious diversity has become a defining feature of societies worldwide, with no country remaining culturally homogeneous (Jackson 2014, p. 14). At the same time, religious tensions are rising globally, and education has not been immune to their impact (Sonn 2024). As microcosms of society, schools reflect the challenges and tensions posed by religious diversity. In multicultural and multifaith communities, students from different religious backgrounds often face misunderstanding, prejudice, and communication barriers (Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat 2019). Mainstream school curricula tend to deliberately avoid religious topics, further reinforcing stereotypes and divisions among students (Mercado 2021). These issues are especially acute in countries with strong traditions of church–state separation and high levels of religious pluralism (Mercado 2020).

These realities highlight the urgent responsibility of public education systems to foster students’ religious literacy, mitigate interfaith conflict, and promote social cohesion in pluralistic societies. Responding to this need, the Council of Europe has called for the integration of religious and nonreligious worldviews into intercultural education frameworks to cultivate democratic values, civic literacy, and societal harmony (Jackson 2014, p. 15).

Music holds a unique and irreplaceable position in religious education. As a highly perceptible and symbolic medium that transcends language (Baleng 2024), music also plays a crucial role in moral judgment and emotional regulation. Studies suggest that positive musical experiences can enhance prosocial behavior (Pardo-Olmos et al. 2025) and reduce the likelihood of moral transgressions (Ziv et al. 2012). Religious music, imbued with the emotional and ethical significance of specific faith communities, is particularly effective in cultivating empathy and moral sensitivity (Cho and O’Connor 2024). Compared with general music education, religious music education—by engaging students with the cultural and spiritual meanings embedded in music—shows substantial potential for enhancing intercultural understanding, identity formation, and social integration (Mercado 2021).

Despite these advantages, the inclusion of religious music in public school curricula often triggers legal, policy, and public controversies—especially in countries with strict church–state separation. In the U.S., for instance, Mercado (2020) analyzed 16 district policy documents and found a widespread absence of clear guidelines for teaching religious music; in some districts, such references were entirely omitted. This policy vacuum contrasts sharply with the position statement of the National Association for Music Education (NAfME), which clearly distinguishes between using religious music as curricular material and participating in religious rituals. NAfME emphasizes that religious music instruction must be academic rather than devotional, and educational rather than proselytizing. However, in practice, vague local policies and inconsistent teacher interpretations often lead to excessive avoidance or unintentional proselytization, undermining the educational value of religious music (Mercado 2020).

Cross-cultural music learning that lacks historical context, cultural grounding, and active engagement can prevent students from grasping the deeper religious meanings behind the music (Bradley 2012; Mercado 2020). Additionally, school music curricula have long prioritized Christian-based repertoire (Niknafs 2017), while other religious traditions are frequently marginalized or presented in fragmented and decontextualized ways under the label of “world music.” Such approaches risk misrepresentation and may deepen students’ struggles with religious identity and cultural belonging (Mercado 2020).

Against the backdrop of increasing religious diversity, intensified intercultural encounters, and ongoing global tensions, this study investigates how religious music education can foster positive transformations in students’ and teachers’ identity formation, intercultural understanding, and educational equity. Specifically, it addresses the following research questions: (1) What challenges does religious music education face in contemporary school settings? (2) What teaching practices are currently used in religious music instruction? (3) How do these practices influence students’ understanding and teachers’ professional identity?

2. The Multicultural History of Religious Music in British Colonies

From a historical perspective, Britain represented a major route for the popularization and institutionalization of modern religious education. Religious music teaching in English-speaking countries was closely tied to the nineteenth-century popularization of the tonic sol-fa method in Britain. Centered on the principle of movable-do, this system was institutionalized through Sunday schools, elementary schools, and teacher training networks; it was officially recognized by the English Education Department in 1860 and by the end of the century had become a regular feature of primary education, forming a “school–church–community” triadic foundation (Rainbow 1967; Stevens 2007). Subsequently, through missionary and educational networks, the system spread to Australia, southern Africa, South Asia, and the Pacific, where it gradually localized into multicultural traditions of religious music pedagogy (Stevens 2007; Stevens and Akrofi 2010). This lineage not only established a longstanding tradition of “school-based religious music” in the English-speaking world but provided an important methodological and curricular precedent for later approaches such as the Kodály system (Rainbow 1967; Stevens 2007).

At the case level, missionary schools in nineteenth-century South Africa gave rise to the renowned Amakwaya choral tradition: four-part hymns and choral singing became institutionalized within both school and church contexts, eventually developing into a choral culture closely tied to local communities, identities, and public competitions (Stevens and Akrofi 2010). In South Asia, missionary schools and local churches compiled hymnals in vernacular languages and widely adopted (or adapted) sol-fa notation. In some regions, such as among the Mizo people, this resulted in enduring traditions of choral and congregational music (Stevens 2007). These cases demonstrate that religious music pedagogy in Britain and its colonies was not a one-dimensional process of “cultural transplantation” but was continually reinterpreted and reconstructed through classrooms, worship, community performance, and identity negotiation (Stevens 2007). In this way, it left behind a historical legacy of “multicultural–school-based” religious music education.

3. Materials and Methods

This study adopts a systematic literature review approach (Aguinis et al. 2023) to critically examine the development, pedagogical models, and educational outcomes of religious music education across diverse cultural contexts and educational systems. The review process follows the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Moher et al. 2009) to ensure methodological rigor, transparency, and replicability.

The following section outlines the procedures for literature search and selection, offering a replicable framework for future research in this area.

3.1. Literature Search Strategy

Before conducting a systematic literature review, we first conducted a preliminary scoping search in three mainstream education and social science databases—Web of Science, Scopus, and ERIC—to confirm the appropriateness of the keywords and to sort out the overall distribution of existing research.

The search strategy followed Boolean logic principles and employed the truncation symbol (*) to capture variations of word endings. The final search query was as follows: (religion* OR faith* OR sacred OR theology) AND music AND (teach* OR pedagogy OR instruction OR education OR classroom OR curriculum OR learning).

The selection of keywords took into account religious, musical, and educational dimensions to obtain multilevel research results covering classroom teaching, curriculum design, and educational concepts. The literature search was completed in July 2025. Through the above strategy, 1623 records were obtained (see

Table 1. The search strings.

Scopus	TITLE-ABS-KEY (religion* OR faith* OR sacred OR theology) AND music AND (teach* OR pedagogy OR instruction OR education OR classroom OR curriculum OR learning)
ERIC	https://eric.ed.gov/?q=%28religion*+OR+faith*+OR+sacred+OR+theology%29+AND+music+AND+%28teach*+OR+pedagogy+OR+instruction+OR+education+OR+classroom+OR+curriculum+OR+learning%29+ (accessed on 8 September 2025)
Web of Science	(religion* OR faith* OR sacred OR theology) AND music AND (teach* OR pedagogy OR instruction OR education OR classroom OR curriculum OR learning) (topic)

).

3.2. Screening

We followed the PRISMA protocol to screen 1623 records (see Figure 1). The inclusion criteria were as follows:

Only peer-reviewed journal articles were included (n = 862).

The publication range was limited to 2016–2025 (n = 526).

Only English-language articles were included (n = 435).

Based on these criteria, 1188 articles were excluded. The remaining 435 records were exported from databases into Excel files on 10 July 2025, for further manual screening. Two researchers independently conducted a two-stage screening. In the first stage, titles and abstracts were reviewed to assess eligibility, and nonrelevant studies were excluded. Eligible studies were required to explicitly address the intersection of religion and music education; include students, teachers, or instructional contexts; and focus on the educational functions, classroom practices, or pedagogical implications of religious music (see

Table 2. Reasons for exclusion of irrelevant records by database.

Database	Not Related to Religion	Not Related to Music	Not Related to Education	Irrelevant to Religious Music Education Experience
Scopus	112	20	63	2
WoS	22	4	134	4
ERIC	31	10	5	2
Total	165	34	202	8

).

Figure 1. PRISMA screening flow chart.

Figure 1. PRISMA screening flow chart.

Following this screening, 26 studies were selected for full-text review. In the second stage, duplicate records were identified and removed (n = 12). The remaining studies were assessed in depth to determine alignment with the review’s objectives, including analysis of research aims, methodologies, and conclusions. Full texts were retrieved whenever possible; however, three could not be accessed. A final set of 11 studies met all inclusion criteria and were included in the systematic review.

3.3. Data Extraction and Analysis

To address the research questions, we conducted a full-text analysis of the 11 included studies, extracting descriptions of instructional interventions, curricular designs, and transformations among students and teachers. We then employed NVivo for thematic coding and constructed a two-dimensional matrix of “Practice Nodes × Outcome Nodes” to reveal the associations between instructional practices and educational outcomes. Studies that did not provide explicit accounts of interventions or observable transformations were excluded from this coding stage. In total, eight studies were incorporated into the practice–outcome matrix, and the results were visualized in a heatmap to illustrate prevalent practice pathways and their potential educational effects.

4. Results

4.1. Study Characteristics and Sample Demographics

The 11 included studies were predominantly conducted in the United States (n = 7), with others based in India (n = 1) and Ukraine (n = 1) and one involving cross-national collaboration (n = 1) (see

Table 3. Studies included for analysis.

Study No #	Author (Year)	Study Countries	Methods	Subjects of the Study
1	Lang et al. (2016)	Mauritius, Czech Republic, USA	Quantitative	University students
2	MacInnis (2017)	USA	Qualitative	University students
3	Niknafs (2017)	USA	Qualitative	Female music educator
4	Perrine (2018)	USA	Qualitative	Policy documents
5	Mercado (2021)	USA	Mixed methods	Eighth grade advanced women’s chorus
6	Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat (2019)	India	Qualitative	Primary school
7	Mercado (2020)	USA	Qualitative	16 school districts
8	VanDeusen (2019)	USA	Mixed methods	Preservice music teachers
9	Mitlytska and Gerdova (2023)	Ukraine	Qualitative	Seminary students
10	Rodrigues (2024)	USA	Qualitative	Graduate theology seminary students
11	Waligur (2020)	USA	Qualitative	Graduate theology seminary students

). This geographic distribution indicates that research aligned with the focus of this review tends to occur in contexts marked by high religious diversity and heightened policy sensitivity—particularly in countries such as the United States, where a strong tradition of church–state separation coexists with culturally embedded religious expression (Niknafs 2017; Perrine 2018; Mercado 2020).

Most studies targeted secondary or tertiary students, typically situated within the context of classroom instruction or curricular interventions (Mercado 2021; VanDeusen 2019). Two studies focused on graduate-level seminary students (Waligur 2020; Rodrigues 2024), emphasizing sensory engagement and embodied understanding in interreligious theological education. Mitlytska and Gerdova’s (2023) historical analysis explored the institutional role of religious music education in Ukrainian seminaries during the 19th and early 20th centuries, adding a historical dimension to the seminary-based trajectory within this review.

By contrast, studies such as those by Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat (2019), Mercado (2021), and Perrine (2018) examined religious music instruction in mainstream schools, analyzing how such content is introduced, negotiated, and pedagogically framed in religiously pluralistic settings. Other works—particularly those focused on teacher identity and reflective practice (Niknafs 2017; VanDeusen 2019)—shifted attention to music educators or preservice teachers, exploring the tensions between religious identity, cultural sensitivity, and pedagogical legitimacy. These studies highlighted the phenomena of “legitimate voice” and “self-censorship” among teachers operating in religiously diverse environments.

Notably, three studies did not report specific demographic data but were based on experiential accounts (MacInnis 2017; Rodrigues 2024; Waligur 2020). These studies relied on personal teaching reflections, course narratives, or experiential descriptions of religious education. While such qualitative approaches help uncover nuanced pedagogical dynamics and religious contextualization, they also reflect a broader limitation in the field regarding quantitative data collection and comparative analysis. This is particularly evident in research dealing with religious sensitivity, teacher identity, and classroom power structures, where reflective or participatory methods are often adopted to navigate ethical concerns and minimize disruption to teaching environments.

4.2. Methodological Approaches and Distribution

From a methodological perspective, 8 out of the 11 studies employed qualitative approaches, including case studies, reflective teaching narratives, ethnography, policy analysis, and narrative inquiry. A significant number relied on classroom reflections and personal teaching experiences (MacInnis 2017; Rodrigues 2024; Waligur 2020), highlighting the value of first-person teacher narratives as both a means of knowledge production and an effective strategy for presenting the intersection of culture, belief, and pedagogy in religiously sensitive contexts. Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat (2019) and Mercado (2021) adopted multilayered case study designs incorporating classroom observations, interviews, and student reflections. These approaches provided structured insights into complex educational environments and underscored the descriptive depth often found in religious music education research.

Quantitative studies were rare in this field, with only one—Lang et al. (2016)—employing an experimental design to examine the impact of religious music on cheating behavior through controlled variables.

Mixed-methods research appeared in two studies: Mercado (2021) and VanDeusen (2019). The former combined classroom observations, interviews with teachers and students, and written student reflections to construct a multidimensional account of how interreligious music instruction influences students’ cultural attitudes. The latter integrated participatory observation, group discussions, and reflective interviews to investigate cognitive shifts among preservice teachers engaged in cultural immersion experiences. These two studies demonstrate feasible pathways for methodological integration, addressing the tension between limited quantitative data and the subjectivity inherent in qualitative approaches.

4.3. Challenges in Religious Music Education

First, at the macroinstitutional level, religious music education is constrained by unclear legal and policy frameworks. In the U.S.-based sample, more than two-thirds of school district policy documents provide no clear guidance on religious music education, and some omit it entirely (Mercado 2020). Even when mentioned, the principle of “nonproselytization” is often mistakenly equated with a blanket ban on religious music in classrooms, leading teachers to avoid the topic out of fear of complaints. As a result, instruction is often limited to musical literacy while ignoring the cultural and theological significance embedded in religious music (Mercado 2020). When students incorporate religious lyrics into compositions or song selections, teachers lack clear criteria to distinguish between “personal expression” and “religious persuasion,” facing the dilemma of balancing students’ freedom of expression with compliance to church–state separation (Perrine 2018). This policy ambiguity not only restricts classroom openness but hinders students’ deeper understanding of the essence and diversity of religious music.

Second, identity politics and structural power dynamics pose challenges to the legitimacy of religious music educators. Niknafs (2017), reflecting on her experience as a Muslim woman teaching music in the U.S., pointed out that the music education system is implicitly centered on Christian cultural norms. In some cases, merely wearing a headscarf may trigger institutional “safety” reviews. This power structure forces minority teachers to self-censor, limiting their ability to apply their religious musical expertise and leading to curricular homogenization. In VanDeusen’s (2019) study, nine White preservice teachers engaged in fieldwork in a Muslim community in Michigan and, for the first time, experienced the pedagogical challenges brought by linguistic and religious differences. The experience made them aware of their previous cultural privilege and blind spots in mainstream classrooms, prompting reflection on their limitations and biases in religious cultural education.

Third, a lack of instructional resources and inadequate teacher preparation remains a widespread practical barrier. In rural India, applied theatre interventions revealed that teachers lacked interfaith teaching scripts, relevant training, and curricular support (Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat 2019). Similarly, in a public middle school in the southern United States, teachers reported not only facing pressure from performance-based evaluations but shouldering the additional responsibility of teaching religious cultural content. Their most pressing challenges were time constraints and insufficient background knowledge (Mercado 2021). The study further noted that most U.S. districts lack structured curriculum materials and teaching guidelines for religious music education. Professional development in this area remains underdeveloped, with little policy support.

Fourth, religious music education also encounters cultural tensions from families and communities. In an applied theatre project conducted in a rural Indian school, students publicly challenged entrenched prejudice and discrimination between Hindu and Muslim groups. However, some parents expressed strong resistance, fearing their children might begin questioning familial traditions and religious authority (Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat 2019). Similarly, Mercado (2021) found that in U.S. school settings, family, school, and religious institutions often differ significantly in their acceptance of religious music, sometimes resulting in direct conflict. For example, some students reported hearing worship music at home, learning interfaith choral works at school, and attending mosques where music is strictly prohibited—leading to confusion in both emotional experience and identity development (Mercado 2021).

Finally, religious music education within seminaries and teacher training institutions remains constrained by traditional pedagogical paradigms. Western theological education has long prioritized reason, text, and visual materials while neglecting embodied, emotional, and auditory dimensions. As a result, religious music is often “kept in the head” rather than experienced holistically (Rodrigues 2024). This disconnection diminishes students’ sensory engagement and emotional resonance with religious music and limits its pedagogical potential in fostering interreligious understanding and experiential faith formation.

4.4. Practical Models for Religious Music Education

First, chorale and chant represent one of the foundational approaches in religious music instruction. In seminaries, chanting serves not only as a technical exercise but as a means of building community and facilitating spiritual experience. For instance, in Waligur’s (2020) course “Sacred Sound in World Religions,” each session began and ended with silence and chant. After a period of bell meditation and breathing exercises, students engaged in collective chanting, generating a shared experience of “being shaped by one another through common sound.” On the contrary, in the Ukrainian seminary tradition, sacred chants and polyphonic choral singing are not only compulsory coursework but extend to public performances known as “sacred concerts,” highlighting the dual function of religious music in serving both liturgical and public artistic purposes (Mitlytska and Gerdova 2023). This also reveals the differences between its religious music and that of the U.S. in terms of legalization and public nature.

Second, contemplative listening was a widely adopted pedagogical method in most of the reviewed studies. Commonly, teachers guide students in analyzing melody, rhythm, and stylistic features of songs rooted in religious traditions, prompting reflection and discussion on their cultural and theological meanings (Mercado 2021). However, contemplative listening takes diverse forms across instructional contexts. MacInnis (2017), for example, emphasized that listening is not merely an act of aesthetic judgment but a process through which students are continually invited to perceive a “sacred calling,” integrating music into spiritual practice and faith life. Rodrigues (2024) combined sacred music listening with contemplative texts by Anthony de Mello, guiding students from rational analysis to bodily perception, using sound to evoke emotional resonance and reconfigure cultural identity. Waligur (2020) required students to keep a listening journal, engaging in attentive listening either in actual religious sites or in their everyday environments, and documenting their experiences and reflections. Compared with the emphasis on individual reflection highlighted by American scholars (MacInnis 2017; Rodrigues 2024; Waligur 2020), the related practices in Ukraine (Mitlytska and Gerdova 2023) and India (Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat 2019) placed stronger emphasis on the public and collective dimensions: the former grounded in the institutional tradition of choral singing and chant, and the latter often weaving listening together with narrative to deepen students’ understanding of social identity and group experience.

Third, movement pedagogy is emerging as a key practice in religious music education. In an interreligious theology course, Rodrigues (2024) integrated bodily practices such as yoga poses, Sanskrit chanting, and breath control into classroom instruction, emphasizing a holistic engagement of “voice–body–mind,” allowing students to access and comprehend the spiritual logic and aesthetic language of unfamiliar faiths through embodied experience. Similarly, Waligur (2020) guided students through collective wailing, improvisational chanting, and bodily movement, cultivating a ritual-like classroom environment that fostered physical resonance with religious traditions. In Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat’s (2019) applied theatre project, students embodied religious characters and cocreated interfaith scripts, using physical expression to negotiate identity differences and reconstruct understandings of the “other.” This body-centered approach not only enhanced student engagement but expanded the pedagogical possibilities of religious music education in multicultural settings.

Finally, immersion fieldwork in authentic religious contexts has become a prominent model in religious music education. VanDeusen (2019) led nine preservice music teachers on a one-week field teaching experience in a Muslim community school in Dearborn, Michigan. Through participating in religious festivals, dining in halal restaurants, visiting the Arab American National Museum, and coplanning music lessons with students, participants experimented with incorporating Arabic into music instruction and gained deeper insight into the intersection of religion and culture. Similarly, Waligur (2020) required students to visit various religious sites and document sonic details—ritual sounds, rhythms, tone colors—as a way to connect theology classrooms with real-world religious communities, fostering emotional investment and reflective thinking. On another front, MacInnis (2017) encouraged students to leave the classroom and observe campus-based arts groups to explore the theological question of “the artist’s role in community,” thereby broadening the social dimension of religious music education. In contrast to U.S. practices that primarily stress compliance and cultural sensitivity, the immersive pedagogies in Ukrainian seminaries and Indian schools underscored the dual significance of institutional legitimacy and social dialogue.

Taken together, these pedagogical models illustrate a broader shift in religious music education from traditional knowledge transmission toward experiential pathways. However, in the U.S. such experiential approaches are often entangled with issues of policy sensitivity and teacher–student identity, whereas in Ukraine and India, relevant practices are more deeply embedded in historical traditions and community interactions.

4.5. Practical Outcomes for Religious Music Education

First, religious music education demonstrates significant educational outcomes in cultivating intercultural religious understanding. In a study conducted in India, Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat (2019) used applied theatre pedagogy to encourage students to challenge stereotypes of “infidels” through bodily expression and role-play, thereby fostering empathy and openness toward diverse religious identities. In Mercado’s (2021) classroom practice, students who participated in an “interreligious choral unit” gradually shifted from an initial stance of detachment to one of understanding and respect. They recognized religious music as not only a form of artistic expression but a medium of intercultural dialogue, while also reflecting on their own biases toward religious others. On a related note, VanDeusen (2019) found that preservice teachers in immersive field experiences began to acknowledge overlooked racial identities and privilege structures, repositioning students as cultural knowledge builders rather than passive recipients.

Second, studies by Waligur (2020) and Rodrigues (2024) showed that incorporating embodied practices into religious music education can effectively stimulate emotional resonance and foster active student engagement. Both scholars introduced embodied pedagogies in seminary classrooms, encouraging students to integrate body, emotion, and sound as perceptual tools for engaging with religious difference and sacred experience. In such environments, students “felt” the deeper meanings of faith differences through their bodies. Some students were moved to tears during chanting sessions, demonstrating that music served as an emotional trigger for interreligious understanding, not merely a cultural artifact.

Third, religious music may also act as a contextual cue for stimulating moral self-regulation. Lang et al. (2016) found that religious music can reduce dishonest behavior in culturally specific contexts, particularly among listeners with high religious identity and frequent ritual participation. In these cases, religious music evoked internalized behavioral norms, resulting in greater moral discipline during experiments. However, no significant effects were observed among nonreligious participants, indicating that the moral impact of music is contingent upon cultural and religious embeddedness.

Fourth, student agency in religious music education is often activated through participatory and embodied instructional designs. In the interfaith theatre project led by Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat (2019), students cocreated scripts, exchanged roles, and engaged in public performances, transforming from passive recipients into “cultural agents” who openly addressed community-based discrimination and religious boundaries. In seminary contexts, students developed a concrete sense of participation and agency through various forms of engagement, documentation, and reflection on the relationship between sound and culture (Waligur 2020). This shift also extended to the transformation of teacher roles. At a public middle school in the southern United States, teachers who initially avoided religious topics began to actively plan and discuss the meanings of religious cultures and repertoires with students after implementing an interreligious music unit (Mercado 2021). Similarly, in VanDeusen’s (2019) study, preservice teachers in immersive fieldwork recognized their limited awareness of students’ cultural backgrounds and reflected on the blind spots in conventional teacher education, expressing a clear intent to build future pedagogies that treat students as cultural agents.

Finally, this process of identity reconstruction also led researchers to reflect on broader policy and structural issues. VanDeusen (2019) reported that preservice teachers, during immersive practicums, became aware for the first time of how political contexts such as the “Muslim Ban” could negatively impact students’ emotional well-being and learning environments. This realization prompted a reassessment of the limitations of maintaining a “depoliticized” stance in the classroom. Meanwhile, in U.S. public education, Christian music is often legitimized under the label of “cultural tradition,” while other religious music remains marginalized due to a lack of perceived legitimacy (Mercado 2021). In the Indian context, students discussed religious segregation and bias in their villages for the first time within the relative safety of the classroom. This not only fostered critical awareness of structural inequalities but prompted educators and curriculum designers to become more cautious about the unconscious marginalization of nondominant religious voices in multifaith instruction (Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat 2019).

5. Findings

The following analysis is organized along two dimensions, “practice nodes” and “outcome nodes” in religious music education, forming the basis for coding review and visual analysis. The aim is not to offer a simplistic summary of teaching practices across different contexts but to systematically map the structural relationship between “what was done” and “what effects were observed.” This strategy helps to identify which pedagogical approaches are most frequently used to facilitate cognitive, emotional, or identity-related shifts among students or teachers, and which practice–outcome pathways remain underexplored in the current limited body of research. It also offers a visual framework for informing future instructional interventions and theoretical development.

Table 4. Coded links between practices and outcomes.

#	Article	Excerpt for Coding (Practice)	Practice Node(s)	Excerpt for Coding (Outcome)	Outcome Node(s)
1	Lang et al. (2016)	“they were exposed to: religious, secular, or control.”	Contemplative Listening	“Religiosity interaction, with religious people cheating significantly less in the religious condition.”	Moral Self-Regulation
2	MacInnis (2017)	“I show my students the importance of attentiveness, of watchfulness in their musical activities and music listening”; “I ask students to observe musicians at their craft … attend one rehearsal, take substantive notes, and then prepare an essay…”	Contemplative Listening; Immersion Fieldwork	“At this point, many of my students are surprised that music can be so powerful.”; “Excellence is a fine standard… but it can easily lead to idolatry and, like all idols, consume us.”; “Most of my students visiting ensemble rehearsals for the first time express an interest in attending that ensemble’s next concert”	Emotional Resonance; Moral Self-Regulation; Student Agency
5	Mercado (2021)	“they rehearsed three pieces: Hamisha Asar, Adinu, and Sing Alleluia.”; “ I was an active participant—observing, interviewing, teaching.”; “Students copy recordings by ear… the role of the music educator is to shift students’ focus from the final product of music performance to the process of learning, integrating listening…”	Chorale and Chant; Immersion Fieldwork; Contemplative Listening	“I have enjoyed learning about how different and alike religion across the world is.”; “School districts would be wise to update existing policies on the study and performance of religious music… The NAfME policy recommendations have not been updated in two decades.”; “Melinda indicated that she does not know enough about other genres… after seeing her students improve their cultural understanding, she began to appreciate the unit.”	Intercultural Religious Understanding; Critical Policy Consciousness; Teacher Identity Shift
6	Bhatia and Pathak-Shelat (2019)	“students were asked to adapt a familiar story into a play such that the performance reflected their lived experiences of discrimination…”; “We had worked as media educators in this school for two years.”; “They asked, expressed, and listened to each other.”	Movement Pedagogy; Immersion Fieldwork; Contemplative Listening	“Being a part of this project helped me re- imagine my relation with my classmates… I refuse to judge… based on their religious identities.”; “They prioritized the team objectives over their religious identities.”; “having done this on stage, I have gained confidence. I can now do it in my community.”; “Students who participated in this project suggested that they were more open to working and collaborating with people from a different religious/cultural background.”	Intercultural Religious Understanding; Moral Self-Regulation; Student Agency; Critical Policy Consciousness
8	VanDeusen (2019)	“Nine undergraduate music education majors from a state university volunteered to participate in the cultural immersion field experience…”	Immersion Fieldwork	“Before this experience, if I were walking down the street and a woman in a hijab had walked past me, I would have felt mildly uncomfortable. “; “I don’t think I truly understood…how many students couldn’t speak English. And having to work with one of them today and trying to communicate…”; “By engaging in international cross-cultural experiences, she became more culturally competent, resulting in greater success connecting with her students.”; “What does it mean that participants did not think about their racial identities …their minds when they were outside of the school and in the community?”	Intercultural Religious Understanding; Moral Self-Regulation; Teacher Identity Shift; Critical Policy Consciousness
10	Rodrigues (2024)	“six or seven minutes of a musical piece was played at the beginning of each class”; “mantra recitation, devotional songs (bhakti sangeet), and classical Hindu and folk dances … to facilitate the collective engagement of students in a musical experience.”; “… one student was a professional dancer … led the class in breath work and our own movement.”	Chorale and Chant; Contemplative Listening; Movement Pedagogy	“This course … created new and exciting thinking for me.”; “The primary obstacle I faced as an instruc-tor in implementing musical pedagogy was the task ofrethink my role.”; “students analyzed subjects from their own religious standpoints while interacting with students of other faiths.”	Emotional Resonance; Teacher Identity Shift; Intercultural Religious Understanding
11	Waligur (2020)	“each student presented a practice—Gregorian chant, Vedic chant, Qur’an recitation, etc.”; “students visited places of worship and kept a listening journal”; “Each session began with a student sounding a Tibetan meditation bowl … we focused on the breath: breathing in … breathing out.”; “Students had additional assignments outside the classroom, such as visiting places of worship and reporting on their visits.”	Chorale and Chant; Contemplative Listening; Movement Pedagogy; Immersion Fieldwork	“In the silence we listened to our own breath and the breath of others … embodied communal experience of sacred sound.”; “students encountered a living representative who spoke, chanted, played, or danced … from a place of devotion, practice, and scholarship.”	Emotional Resonance; Intercultural Religious Understanding;

presents the coding categories, corresponding study IDs, key quotations from the original texts, and the ways in which teaching activities and educational outcomes were described and represented in specific studies.

The heatmap not only illustrates the most prevalent practice pathways but reveals the triggering mechanisms and interaction patterns of different instructional approaches (see Figure 2). First, immersion fieldwork was associated in multiple combinations with religious understanding, moral self-regulation, and student agency, presenting a “high-coverage and multieffect” feature that highlights its status as a core practice in the current evidence base. Second, contemplative listening was primarily linked to emotional resonance when used in isolation. However, when combined with immersion fieldwork or movement pedagogy, its associations expanded significantly to include intercultural understanding and role transformation, suggesting an “enhancing–integrative” function within multimodal designs. Third, chorale and chant appeared more frequently in conjunction with teacher identity shifts or student agency when paired with other practices, indicating its role in amplifying socioemotional and identity-related effects through collective participation and ritual synchronization. Together, these patterns suggest that the effectiveness of religious music education is not triggered by isolated activities but relies on a dynamic cycle of experience, reflection, and action. Yet such a “chain mechanism” has not been systematically tested in existing research, providing an avenue for future longitudinal interventions.

At the same time, the heatmap highlights that immersion fieldwork and chorale and chant exerted significant influence in fostering intercultural understanding and identity formation. However, the relatively weak signal for policy outcomes reminds us that religious music continues to be framed within education systems primarily as a form of “cultural display,” rather than as a resource for critical civic education.

In addition, the heatmap reveals several practice–outcome pairings that remain underexplored. For instance, critical policy consciousness was activated only in a very limited number of cases, while single practices such as choral and chant or contemplative listening rarely coupled directly with student agency or moral self-regulation. The scarcity of these patterns suggests that current research has paid insufficient attention to policy reflection, structural awareness, and the transition from perception to action.

6. Discussion and Conclusions

This study systematically reviews empirical and practice-based research on religious music education published in the past decade, highlighting the multiple challenges, pedagogical shifts, and learning outcomes associated with this field. Most of the included studies adopted qualitative methods, such as participant observation, teaching narratives, and ethnography, while empirical studies were relatively scarce. This trend echoes Flensner’s (2017) observation that religious education has long lacked systematic empirical evidence, particularly regarding classroom instruction, learning trajectories, and teacher–student interaction. In terms of geographic distribution, the majority of studies were conducted in the United States, reflecting the country’s unique position as a religiously diverse yet legally restrictive (church–state separation) context, where religious music teaching is situated at the forefront of pedagogical sensitivity and complexity (Davis 2016).

First, religious education has traditionally been considered a sensitive area within public schooling, and religious music education faces its primary challenge at the level of legal and policy ambiguity. Multiple studies noted that most U.S. school districts lack clear policies on religious music instruction, with some entirely omitting religious content from official curricula (Mercado 2020). This has led to widespread avoidance or superficial engagement by teachers. Such “avoidance mechanisms” restrict students’ opportunities to explore religious music as a cultural form and hinder the legitimate presence of religious diversity in the classroom (Niknafs 2017). Kasprisin (2003) observed that schools often preemptively avoid in-depth religious education because of fears of legal repercussions and public controversy. At the same time, Christian hymns are often included under the label of “traditional repertoire,” while other religious music is commonly categorized as “world music” and marginalized because of its perceived “otherness” (Niknafs 2017). This practice undermines efforts to promote meaningful intercultural understanding. Additionally, the religious identity of teachers is often subject to structural regulation (Niknafs 2017), aligning with prior findings that educators must constantly negotiate between professional expectations and personal expression, often engaging in self-censorship or facing institutional limitations (Freeman 2013). Further challenges reported across studies include the lack of appropriate teaching materials, limited teacher cultural knowledge, high public sensitivity around religious topics, and the dominance of traditional theological frameworks that are difficult to reform in formal curricula.

Second, from a pedagogical perspective, religious music education is shifting from knowledge transmission to cultural practice. Several studies observed a move away from treating sacred music solely as technical training toward fostering emotional resonance, cultural understanding, and affective engagement between students and music (Mercado 2021; Rodrigues 2024; Waligur 2020; VanDeusen 2019). Educators have also transitioned from technical facilitators to cultural mediators, moving from avoidance of sensitive issues to active negotiation of religious pluralism (VanDeusen 2019). Nonetheless, there remains a clear divide between seminary and public-school contexts. Seminaries generally have greater curricular and cultural autonomy, allowing for immersive and embodied instructional models (Mitlytska and Gerdova 2023; Waligur 2020; Rodrigues 2024). In contrast, public schools, constrained by policy ambiguity, social controversy, and resource limitations, often rely on superficial “cultural display” approaches. For example, VanDeusen (2019) noted that while immersive fieldwork improved preservice teachers’ cultural sensitivity, they still had to navigate tensions among parental concerns, curriculum mandates, and personal faith expression in actual classrooms.

This review also identified an important gap: although some studies reported positive short-term student feedback following religious music units, Mercado (2021) argued that current discussions of intercultural religious understanding are largely based on classroom reflections, short-term observations, or written commentary. The focus often remains on students’ immediate attitudinal shifts, with limited attention to how their cognitive frameworks and emotional attitudes evolve over time. There is a lack of longitudinal studies tracking such development. Similarly, Schweitzer and Ilg (2017) called for more longitudinal and time-sensitive research in religious education, emphasizing that long-term projection and faith development tracking are critical to evaluating educational impact. For instance, whether sustained exposure to multireligious music contributes to enhanced civic consciousness or reduced prejudice and fear remains unanswered in the current literature.

In addition, the connection between religious music and moral education is another underexplored line of inquiry. Previous studies have shown that religious background influences individuals’ cognitive patterns in moral judgment (Jack et al. 2016), as religion itself shapes a moral worldview that is deeply aligned with innate moral intuitions and emotional instincts of human beings (Teehan 2018). Lang et al. (2016), using experimental data from three countries, demonstrated that religious music exerted a “moral priming” effect only when it aligned with participants’ internalized religious norms. This indicates that religious music is not a universally effective moral tool; its influence depends on contextual factors such as cultural compatibility, ritual intensity, and listener religiosity. Future research should further examine whether long-term inclusion of religious music in teaching can lead to structural changes in students’ prosocial behavior and moral self-regulation.

In conclusion, although this review highlights the multiple pedagogical values of religious music education, it must also acknowledge its limitations. First, this study included only 11 high-quality English-language publications, excluding potentially relevant studies in Chinese, Spanish, Arabic, and other languages. This was largely due to the limited coverage of non-English works in international databases, which may overlook local practices in non-Western contexts. Second, the small number of studies identified reflects the marginal status of religious music education in global educational research. However, surprisingly, even some regions within the former British colonial system where the English-speaking academic community is relatively active have rarely been included in these discussions. This phenomenon suggests that, although colonial history did provide the English-speaking world with a diverse foundation for religious music education, the concentration of academic output may in fact be shaped more strongly by specific legal contexts and the structures of research communities, as exemplified by the U.S. On one hand, many national public education systems remain cautious—or even resistant—toward incorporating religious content. On the other, in contexts marked by religious diversity and policy ambiguity, teachers often lack adequate support and are reluctant to participate in research. These factors have contributed to the field’s prolonged “silence” in mainstream academic discourse. Therefore, while this review affirms the pedagogical potential of religious music education, it also underscores the structural neglect it faces within both academic and policy frameworks—making the need to advance research in this area both urgent and necessary.

7. Future Research

Through the “practice–outcome” heatmap constructed in this review, we not only identified the basic patterns of correspondence between different instructional pathways and educational outcomes but revealed several structural gaps that warrant further investigation. For instance, while multiple combinations of practices consistently demonstrated positive effects in emotional resonance and intercultural religious understanding, the dimension of student agency remained largely unaddressed across most practice pathways. This absence does not necessarily imply that the practices themselves are ineffective; rather, it may reflect the limitations of existing research designs and data collection strategies, which have not yet systematically captured their potential educational impacts. In fact, current studies are predominantly qualitative—case studies, ethnographies, teaching narratives, and policy analyses—richly depicting classroom experiences of emotion and cultural understanding but lacking longitudinal tracking and comparable quantitative evidence. As a result, findings often remain descriptive in nature, making it difficult to determine which combinations of practices actually foster student agency over extended periods of time.

To address this gap in school-based contexts, future research could adopt semester-scale longitudinal designs, such as implementing a religious music unit at the class level and tracking students’ changes in intercultural religious understanding, emotional resonance, and student agency between pretest and post-test, followed by an additional measurement at the end of the semester or several months later to examine the sustainability of effects. Data collection could combine survey-based assessments of student outcomes with student interviews and reflective journals, thereby enriching quantitative findings with qualitative insights into underlying mechanisms. Such a mixed-methods approach would not only provide measurable trends but highlight students’ perspectives as active participants, thus redressing the current over-reliance on teacher accounts and policy documents in this field.

In addition, it is worth noting that among the 11 studies included in this review, only one—Mitlytska and Gerdova (2023)—addressed the tradition of religious music education in Ukrainian seminaries. In fact, countries such as Ukraine have long integrated religious music into formal school curricula and historically developed music education models centered on choral singing, sacred chant, and religious festivals. This reflects a broader issue: within the predominantly English-language body of international research, such region-specific practices remain structurally present but theoretically silent and bibliographically invisible. Future reviews may focus on the design and implementation of religious music curricula in Eastern European contexts to address the current imbalance in geographic and religious representation shaped by Western-centered perspectives.