Music education for deaf and hearing children: an inclusion project

• Grant number: 15/08052-5
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: September 01, 2015
• End date: August 31, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Arts - Arts Education
• Principal Investigator: Lucia Helena Reily
• Grantee: Márcia Regina Nepomuceno dos Santos Oliveira
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Educação (FE). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This study aims to discuss music education in the educational process of deaf children, considering the inclusive school scenario. According to public policies, as regards the 11.769/2008 national law that determines that music education is a required subject in basic education, we pose the following question: how can teachers ensure music education to a heterogenous group of students? Furthermore, in the educational context in which music is a requirement, how can deaf students enrolled in inclusive schools participate, if they are not seen as able to perform activities such as singing, participate in rythmical and melodic activities with musical instruments, or participate in listening moments? Although there are studies in the field of early childhood music education, few of these studies focus on deaf children. In our point of view, the issue falls upon the right to access culture for students with disabilities. In this way, the project aims to contribute to the process of refection about deaf persons and their relations to music. We are concerned about music teachers and how they can adapt their teaching practices in order to enable deaf students to have access to music and musicking. The project aims to understand how deaf and hearing students and the music teacher participate, each in his own way, to musical experiences that are accessible to all within the inclusive school context in a municipal elementary first level school in Campinas, in the state of São Paulo. After reviewing the literature on teaching music to deaf students, several accessible music experiences will be proposed, involving sound, instrument construction, rythmical sensory experiments, composition with alternative scores and collective musicking experiences. We hope to demystify the preconceived social and pedagogical notions about the possibility of including music in the education of deaf students who study alongside hearing students while also providing music education in order to promote access to students who do not hear. (AU)