Rosa Serrano and Óscar Casanova presented the first paper in relation to this Research Project at the international conference organized by the World Alliance for Arts Education (WAAE). Held in Frankfurt (Germany) from October 28th to November 1st, it was attended by international professors and researchers from the fields of music, visual and dramatic arts, who highlighted the importance and interest of the PROFMUS Project.

Rosa Serrano & Óscar Casanova

In the communication “What is happening with formal music education in Spain: From IMPACTMUS to PROFMUS”, formal music education was contextualized within the framework of the Spanish educational reality, highlighting in partivcular the undervaluation that school music education and music teacher education are suffering with the new educational law. Both circumstances justify the need for rigorous, evidence-based studies that address the causes and consequences of this reality, such as the IMPACTMUS and PROFMUS projects. The results of the latter project, especially with regard to the importance of the teaching role, the most valued activities and methodology and the students’ experiences in the field of compulsory music education, have led to the design of the current project. PROFMUS seeks to deepen the training that primary and secondary teachers are receiving, including pre-service teacher and in-service trainings and whether school music education meets the demands and needs detected in the first project. After explaining the mixed methodological design of the project and presented the different instruments for obtaining qualitative and quantitative data, we highlighted the importance of obtaining evidences about how music education is at present and how it can be improved, what successful educational actions can be carried out, etc. The final aim of the two projects is to show evidence of the importance of music education and the need for it to continue to exist as a compulsory subject for the comprehensive education of all children and young people in the country.