Saber tocar e saber ensinar: os saberes mobilizados na prática pedagógica do professor de instrumento

This paper presents the results of a graduate research project with the objective to understand the process of developing teaching skills of undergraduate performance majors who work as musical instrument teachers. We address, specifically, the results regarding the professor’s knowledge employed during the practice of teaching the undergraduate performance major. We adopted a biographical narrative methodology (BOLIVAR; DOMINGO, 2006) producing narratives of three performance majors that graduated with a bachelor’s degree from UFSM (Federal University of Santa Maria) and are musical instrument teachers. As a theoretical framework, this inquiry was based on studies by Gauthier et al. (2006) and Tardif (2012). With regard to the knowledge employed during the practice of teaching, we observe that the teachers, in some way, employed the knowledge described by the above mentioned authors, among them: knowledge of the pedagogical, disciplinary, curricular, and experiential traditions, of educational sciences and knowledge of pedagogical action; and knowledge specific to musical instrument teachers, such as knowledge of the educational function (ARAUJO, 2006) in reference to the methodology and didactics specifically used for the teaching of instruments. Moreover, this research advances knowledge when we identified a type of knowledge that has not yet been mentioned within the context of the teacher of a musical instrument: knowledge related to technique and musical expression, as well as the physical and emotional preparation for a public performance, which we denominate “performance knowledge”.