Social representations of the ‘musical child’: an empirical investigation on implicit music knowledge in higher teacher education

Abstract

This paper deals with an empirical study undertaken at the University of Bologna about the social representations of music held by university students studying to become teachers in nursery, kindergarten and primary education. An open questionnaire was submitted to the university students at the beginning and end of the music education teaching courses over the academic years 2003–2006. Eight hundred and fifty-five questionnaires were collected. We first classified the answers in different categories. Then we undertook frequency counts of the specific key words and carried out multiple correspondence analysis to analyse the co-occurrence of words. The results show significant co-occurrence of words concerning the prototype of ‘musical child’ and the conceptions of ‘music’, ‘musicality’, ‘music teacher’ and ‘music education’. Some ‘turning points’ concerning the conceptions of music and prototypes of the musical child occurred during the music education courses, showing that these concepts become richer, more professional and more varied in their nature. In conclusion, university music training could be one of the fields for explicating students' knowledge of music and developing their self-efficacy.