Social representations of "musical child" held by university student

This paper deals with a research project currently being undertaken at the University of Bologna about the musical training of university students studying to become teachers in nursery, kindergarten and primary education. 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, affecting music education and teaching practice. The previous results show significant co-occurrence of words concerning the concepts of 'music', 'musicality', 'musical child', 'music teacher' and 'music education'. This paper will show the results concerning the prototypes of “musical child” and the 'turning points' occurred during the courses of Music Education.