Unidocência e ducação musical: crenças de autoeficácia do professor de referência

Abstract

The generalist teacher who teaches at the primary school presents some particularities in their professional, among which we highlight the single-teacher education, the work with young children, and the work with diverse subjects. Among these subjects, the focus of this research rests on Music Education. National and international researchers have shown that this teacher, in many cases, does not feel confident to teach music, i. e., their self-efficacy beliefs levels to this subject are not high. Keeping in mind that self-efficacy beliefs are essential to perform teaching tasks well, we sought, as main goal, to understand the generalist teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs and factors which influence teaching involving Music Education in primary school. Particularly, we sought: to reflect upon the relationship between the generalist teacher and Musical Education in an academic literature review; to understand the generalist teacher’s self-efficacy beliefs; to identify the sources of teaching self-efficacy; to understand factors that influence the generalist teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs regarding Music Education. This qualitative research was based on a literature review about this subject and on semi-structured interviews with eight generalist teachers, who teach in public and private primary schools in Santa Maria (RS). Through Content Analysis (BARDIN, 2011) of the interviews, we distinguished data categories, which were interpreted based on our theoretical framework, Social Cognitive Theory, by Albert Bandura. After analysis of the literature review and of the interviews, we defend the thesis that, even though the generalist teacher encounters musical knowledge and music-teaching knowledge during formal education, if they do not feel confident in their capabilities to promote learning processes regarding specific knowledge, their practices at school will not include music as a class subject. Besides formal education, these self-efficacy beliefs regarding Music Education are related to work context and the conception that this teacher has about what music education represents to primary school. We believe that this research broadens and deepens the academic knowledge regarding teacher self-efficacy. Moreover, having the theoretical framework of self-efficacy theory, this research contributes to the debate on the relationship between the generalist teacher and Music Education, presenting the analysis of this subject with a theoretical perspective still unexplored in Brazilian academic context.