Coro escolar: crenças e práticas de professores de música de Minas Gerais

Abstract

This is a qualitative research that aimed to understand the relationship of music teachers with the phenomenon of children's vocal out of tune in elementary school choirs in Minas Gerais. To this end, semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten teachers who work in the field. It was intended to understand their academic background, identify their practices and beliefs around the theme, as well as reveal the dynamics of the field where such practices take place. The information that emerged from the interviews was analyzed based on codification and categorization processes, guided by the work of Bogdan and Biklen (1994) and Farias, Impolcetto and Benites (2020). The history of orpheonic singing in Minas Gerais elementar schools was found, mainly, in the Revista do Ensino, created in 1925 by the Directorate of Education of that state. The literature review referring to the elementary school choir enabled the identification of historical beliefs and practices around the field. Bourdieu's theories helped to understand i) the existing relationships between habitus/capital, field and practice and ii) that habitus is not destiny; theories of children's musical-vocal development presented bases for questioning beliefs such as innate talent, as well as presented pedagogical possibilities for teaching children in the early stages of musical-vocal development. In this research, the thesis defended is that elementary school choral singing, as an expression of music teaching, is a highly complex and contradictory phenomenon, as it suffers from the dispute over the legitimacy of the logic of the artistic field and the logic of the educational field. In this context, vocal selection is an instrument typical of the conservatorial tradition and, therefore, linked to the logic of the artistic field, which ends up being driven by the lack of understanding of the educational field. This means that the two disputed logics unite, by strengthening the practice of vocal selection, whether explicit or veiled.