Música nas escolas de Natal/RN: um olhar sobre a prática frente às políticas educacionais.

Abstract

This research investigates the teaching practices of Music educators in the municipal school system of Natal, Brazil, focusing on the intersection between current educational policies and the realities of classroom instruction. The study is based on the legal requirement for music education established by Law No. 11.769/2008 and the segmentation of artistic languages in local curricular guidelines. Its main objective is to analyze how official documents relate to the actual teaching of Music in public schools, identifying strategies, challenges, and inconsistencies. A qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive approach was adopted. The methodology involved document analysis and semi-structured interviews with four licensed Music teachers and one pedagogical advisor from the Municipal Department of Education. The collected data were examined using content analysis, which enabled the identification of thematic categories that reflect the complexity of music teaching in diverse educational contexts. Findings reveal that, despite their commitment to critical and context-based music education, teachers face significant structural limitations, including the lack of proper classrooms, insufficient instruments, inadequate teaching materials, and limited institutional support. Furthermore, the recent Complementary Law No. 241/2024 is viewed as a setback, as it transfers responsibility for Arts education in the early years of elementary school to generalist teachers, disregarding the need for specialized training. The study concludes that a gap persists between the prescriptions of educational policy and the practical conditions in schools. It highlights the urgent need to value specialized Music educators and to establish educational policies that respect the specificities of artistic languages, thereby fostering a broader and more critical cultural education for students in public schools.