Social justice, critical pedagogy, culturally responsive teaching, and artistic citizenship have become more prominent research topics in music education over the past few decades. While many researchers have brought new ideas and significance to these subjects in music education (Abrahams, 2005; Benedict et al., 2015, Bennett, 2023; Elliott, 2012; Hess, 2017), the literature and research surrounding social justice in music teacher training and the prospective utilization of social justice pedagogy in music education should be expanded.This study examines whether and to what extent pre-service music education students are thinking about diversifying student populations and social justice in music education, as well as their attitudes towards the place of social justice pedagogy in music education and music teacher training. A mixed methods approach is used to examine the beliefs and experiences of pre-service music education students regarding their self-reported social justice proficiency, prospective social justice utilization in teaching music, and their self-efficacy for teaching music in heterogeneous classrooms.Two countries are included in this study in order to observe if university music education students in differing teacher training systems have similar attitudes and experiences with social justice in music education. This study also explores the development of a social justice pedagogy framework for music education and whether this framework could be successfully applied to universities with different music teacher training systems.Populations in both Austria and the U.S. are becoming increasingly more heterogeneous (Statistics Austria, 2025; Pew Research Center, 2008), which may bring the possibility for increased awareness of social justice issues. Along with this, more heterogeneous student populations might result in an increase in social justice topics being brought into the classroom that teachers should be prepared to address. With this in mind, my research topic has become increasingly relevant and shows that there may also be a need for the landscape of music education and music teacher training to evolve internationally to meet the changing needs of music students in increasingly heterogeneous classrooms.The aim of this study is to share how the inclusion of social justice concepts in music teacher training may be beneficial to pre-service music education students before they enter the classroom. In addition, a social justice pedagogy framework for music education that can be applied to different teacher training systems is in development. This presentation will include study results and an overview of the social justice pedagogy framework for music education.