THE VOCAL HEALTH OF MUSIC EDUCATORS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY WITH TEACHERS WORKING IN KINDERGARTEN AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the results of a research about the vocal health of teachers, which involved 37 professors working in the age group from 3 to 12 years old. We made, therefore, a comparative study between the habits and the vocal health situation of 11 music educators and 26 teachers of other subjects, based on the collected results by means of the application of auto-evaluative questionnaires about vocal health and hygiene (anamnese). The work also presents a reflection about the implications of the vocal knowledge in the music teacher’s formation. The study showed that the musical educators, as the teachers of other subjects in the regular school, present, likely, some difficulties of maintenance of their vocal health, although, in general, there are not a huge quantity of alarming data in any cases, except for the teachers’ level of knowledge about voice.
Keywords: Music educator; Vocal health; Professional voice.