“WHEN THEY TALK ABOUT GIFTED, I ONLY THINK ABOUT MOZART AND BEETHOVEN!” MYTHS, PREJUDICES AND INCLUSION: THE NARRATIVE OF MUSIC TEACHERS ABOUT TALENT,
HIGH ABILITIES OR TALENT
Talent. High Abilities in music. Musical Giftedness. Specialized Educational in Arts/Music. Music Teachers
The Specialized Educational Assistance (AEE, in Portuguese) is a guaranteed right for students, recognized as special, who must have at their disposal services and resources that allow them access to their cognitive and social development. In music, high abilities provoke concerns that involve: 1) teachers’ understanding of high skills or giftedness in music; 2) the identification of such skills, and 3) the specific and appropriate care. From this perspective, this research aimed to know and describe how music teachers report their understanding of the concept of high skills or giftedness; how they describe their characteristics and what difficulties they encounter in identifying this capacity in their students. The narrative interview was the data technique used to achieve the proposed objectives. Four teachers from a school of the Regional Administrative Center of Plano Piloto in Brasília, Brazil participated in the study. The interpretative analysis of the data pointed to the following categories: 1) Musical Training; 2) Concepts; 3) Characteristics and Identification; 4) Difficulties and 5) Interventions. Among the results, we highlight the strong presence of myths and beliefs about high abilities. Teachers perceive high skills or giftedness as exceptional and believe that they will rarely have students with these characteristics. On the other hand, they believe that they should consider that everyone in their class is talented or gifted and, therefore, there should be no differences. Consequently, they fail to recognize such skills, and even propose that they receive differentiated care. We hope that the results can contribute to guide teachers about high abilities or giftedness in the music area and foster the attendance of these students in basic education