Musically Talented Pupils in Slovene Elementary Schools: Gender and Age Differences in the Area of Musical Abilities / Glazbeno talentirana djeca u osnovnim školama u Sloveniji: razlike prema spolu i dobi u području glazbenih sposobnosti

Abstract

The basic purpose of this article is to form suitable terminology and definitions for musical talent that include important fields of evaluating the characteristics of musical talent. It also aims to carry out research into some characteristics of a sample of musically talented Slovene pupils in the area of musical abilities at the elementary school level, especially from the aspect of finding possible differences related to gender and age. The research involved 86 elementary school teachers from twelve Slovene schools (city and rural) who teach first to fifth grade (6-10 year-old pupils). 86 musically talented pupils were evaluated. It is surprising that of the musically talented pupils nominated, 72.1% were girls and only 27.9% were boys. Based on the results, we tried to prove the hypothesis that gender is not a differential factor of the characteristics of most musically talented pupils in the area of musical abilities. There were only two characteristics that showed a statistically significant difference between boys and girls: the variable of listening with directed attention was expressed more by girls and tonal stability was expressed more by boys. Contrary to our expectations, age (6-10 years old) was not found to be an important differentiation factor in the characteristics of musically talented pupils in the area of musical abilities.

Characteristics of an Outstanding Musical Talent - a Case Study

“…In the context of a holistic, integrated, multidimensional view of a musical talent, six major areas of characteristics of a musical talent were identified: musical abilities, musical creativity, musical performance, musical knowledge, musical activities and non-musical characteristics. Theoretical Model of Characteristics of Musical Talent (Figure 1) was chosen, in which a wide range of these characteristics are included (Kovačič, 2020(Kovačič, , 2016Kovačič, Blažič and Črčinovič Rozman, 2015;Kovačič and Črčinovič Rozman, 2014;Črčinovič Rozman and Kovačič, 2010;Blažič, Črčinovič Rozman and Kovačič, 2009). (Kovačič, 2016, p. 194)…”