Personal Relationship between Teachers and Students in Individual Instrumental/Voice Lessons in Portugal, and its Influence on the Musical Development of the Student: A Case Study

Abstract

The purpose of this article is an improved understanding of the relationship between teachers and their students in the context of individual music instrumental lessons in Portugal. It seeks as well to discover if this relationship affects the student’s musical and pedagogical evolution and to establish a connection between both. The methodology uses two questionaires, one for teachers and another for students, which were distributed in four of Portugal’s major conservatories. The results were analised with the statistics software SPSS19.

Interpretating the results, the conclusion is that teachers and students share a satisfying relationship; teachers affirm they feel fulfilled in their profession, and students show themselves motivated by and confident in their teachers.

A large majority (both teachers and students) seem to agree with the idea that this relationship is of extreme importance for the optimal development of the student as a musician, exactly as is stated in the books and studies that were chosen as theoretical sources to elaborate this article.