"Turning point" in students' and teachers' social representations of music.

Abstract: The theoretical background This paper deals with a research project currently being undertaken about the social representations of music held by both university students studying to become music teachers and general teachers in compulsory school. The general hypothesis of the project is that "musical knowledge", can be investigated as a social and psychological construction as described by the theory of social representations, as well as social music values affecting music education and teaching practice. The previously results show significant co-occurrence of words concerning the concepts of music, musicality, musical child and music education. The purpose (aim) of the study Social representations of music change and are affected by events. Therefore discontinuity points are created, called "turning points". These turning points are determined by the tendency to produce changes that can neutralize conflicts of identity (i.e. student/musician, student/teacher, musician/teacher). However such transformations do not happen from the inside, but are induced by the outside, through conflicts of a social nature. At the same time, the evolution of the SR mainly tends to coincide with self affirmation. The main aim of this paper is to analyse the “turning points” that occur during the university music courses and in the professionalization phases. Method An open questionnaire was submitted to the university students studying to become practitioner in the nursery and general teachers in kindergarten and primary school, at the beginning and end of the course of Music Education. We collected 912 questionnaires. We focalised our research on the following topics: music, musicality, the musical child, the music teacher and music education. The students were asked to complete some sentences (1a. Music is..1b. Musicality is….) and answer some questions concerning musical child, music education and teacher’s competencies. The same questionnaire was submitted to general teachers in primary school of several Italian regions. We collected 350 questionnaires. The synthesis of the content We first classified the answers into different categories. In particular we have analysed the prototypes of “musical child” and “music teacher” held by our subjects. We found different prototypes of musical child and collected the competences of music teacher in 3 categories. Then the frequency of the words and the multiple correspondence analysis were carried out by means a specific software. The multiple correspondence analysis was made to analyse the co-occurrence of words. The results of the questionnaire submitted at the different stages (beginning of the course, end of the course, teachers in the school) were compared. We are now analysing the questionnaires in order to estimate if there are some changes and “turning point” concerning 4 topics: music, musicality, musical child and teacher competences. Conclusion and implications for music education The data analysed so far show that the university courses and the change of social role (student/teacher) affect the social representations of music and music education. The full results will be presented and discuss in the Symposium. We believe that by making explicit their own social representations of music, the students will have a better awareness of their own future professional role and will act more deeply during the university training and the first phase of professionalization. The expected impact of the results will be a contribution to the elaboration of the university curriculum for training music teachers.