An exploratory survey on the musical competence and the initial training of primary school teachers in Italy and Croatia

In some national contexts, the musical practice in the primary school is the simple and reductive opportunity to sing in a choir or to improvise rhythmic movements. In general, in the same national contexts the curricula of study assigned to the music an important role in the training process of the person-pupil by fully recognizing its educational value. Many times, in other contexts, there is a discrepancy between what was stated in the national study curriculum (in terms of learning outcomes) and what is actually done in daily teaching practice. The reason is often the lack of specific professional skills of teachers needed to bring effective and innovative the educational and musical activities. These difficulties, in our opinion, reside in the quality of university courses that teachers have done; in particular, the problem lies in the level of consistency between the required professional qualities to “be teachers” and the quality offered by the universities to “become teachers”. Starting from this basis and from a comparison among the various training courses for future primary school teachers in Italy and Croatia, a self-assessment questionnaire was developed and delivered to these teachers with the following objectives: detecting the knowledge and the skill level in music education; analyzing and comparing the results emerged; trying to detect critical and problematic nodes; identifying and proposing specific and minimum skills that university students who are preparing to teach in primary school should develop to be able to organize, plan and implement a curriculum of studies consistent with the objectives related to the demand for training. The questionnaire consists of 20 questions divided into two parts: 6 general questions and 14 specific disciplinary questions. The survey was conducted in 2016 by involving 175 Italian teachers and 122 Croatian teachers. Some problematics emerged: the relation between the awareness and the competences owned by every teacher and the consequent effect in daily teaching activities; the idea of every teacher about the importance of the education, the contents and the professional competences that are essential in order to organize and carry out formative paths. Although the number of questionnaires is limited, the results corroborate our hypothesis: the central question lies in the initial training of teachers that, if successfully organized, can be able to promote the development of specific educational and musical skills.