Contributo da musicoterapia para a inclusão de alunos com deficiência mental na escola

Abstract

In this essay we have tried to bring together Music / Music Therapy and Mental Disability within the process of Inclusion, regarding it as quite pertinent and Update Music is a part of our identity process; it bears a meaning for each individual, it bonds to the lived experience, past or present. The taste for Music appears in childhood. It is visible and determinant in every culture and it probably goes back to the beginning of our species. Its effect on the human mind is undeniable, being used as a relaxation technique, providing liberty, stability, integration and inclusion to the student with Mental Disability. Some years ago, people with disability were seen as supernatural, which were supposed to be hidden, set aside society but nowadays an effort is being made towards inclusion of those subjects, with specific curricula. Society nowadays sees those subjects as someone who is able, someone who, if given the same opportunities, may be useful, independent and autonomous in order to improve his living standards. So, the option was to build an online questionnaire using an accessible tool of Google docs. The choice of the questionnaire as the instrument to collect data represents one of the methodological options of this study, as it presents itself as one of the most adequate options to attain our objectives: to ask in an impersonal way about a specific issue: the contribution of Music Therapy to the inclusion of students with mental disability. Sixty questionnaires were distributed via e-mail, from which 55 were considered valid, representing 91,7% of the total. The music therapist technicians were selected are all working in Portugal. The study fits in the paradigm of quantitative investigation, as it is required a presentation and a systematization of the data we consider reliable. In the reconstruction of the hypothesis we have followed the Simplified Model of Research (Without hypothesis). The results obtained confirm the efficacy of music / music therapy in the process of inclusion of students with mental disability, for in the opinion of the music therapists, its power leads to the participation and involvement in the group / community. In this essay we try to investigate the possible efficiency of Music Therapy in this socomplex process of Special Education.

Date of Award	6 Oct 2011
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Célia Ribeiro (Supervisor) & Helena Maia (Co-Supervisor)