The cultivation of 21st-century competencies has become a major focus of contemporary educational reform, yet integrated competency-based research in music education remains limited, particularly in vocational teacher development contexts. This scoping review examines how the five core competencies of Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking, Creativity/Innovation, and Cultural Competence are represented in contemporary music education research and explores their implications for vocational music teacher professional development in China. Guided by a scoping review methodology, the study analysed 149 English- and Chinese-language sources published between 2020 and 2025 retrieved from ERIC, Google Scholar, ProQuest, and CNKI databases. The findings revealed uneven distribution across the five competency domains. Cultural Competence emerged as the most extensively represented domain across both language corpora, while Creativity demonstrated strong representation in English-language scholarship but comparatively limited coverage in Chinese-language research. Critical Thinking remained the least developed domain overall. Four major cross-cutting patterns were identified: the dominance of English-language scholarship, the over-representation of preservice teacher education, the limited attention given to vocational music teacher professional development, and the absence of systematic application of the 5C framework in music education research. The review highlights significant gaps in competency-oriented professional development for vocational music teachers in Chinese secondary vocational schools. The study contributes an evidence-informed foundation for developing a contextualised 5C-based professional development handbook and provides implications for music teacher education, curriculum development, and future competency-based educational research.
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