Body and mind that experience and signify: proprioception and meaning in music teaching relations – considerations in dialogue with the cultural-historical perspective

Abstract

This article presents a synthesis of the main findings of a doctoral dissertation in Education, developed within the framework of Cultural-Historical Psychology (CHP), which investigates the relationship between proprioception and music teaching and learning. The study sought to understand how bodily and psychological processes are articulated in the development of Higher Psychological Functions (HPFs) during Group Piano lessons. Grounded in the works of Vygotsky and Luria, the dissertation proposes self-mastery as the minimal unit of analysis of musical learning, relating it to the internalization of signs and the cultural mediation that characterizes musical activity. The central research question was to understand how proprioception—conceived as the perception of one's own body in movement and as a condition for the voluntary regulation of action—can foster conscious attention and the aesthetic appropriation of music. Adopting a qualitative approach based on formative intervention and microgenetic analysis, the study examined interactive situations in Group Piano lessons in which proprioceptive practices and body-based methodologies, such as the Orff approach, promoted musical development. The findings indicate that proprioception, when culturally mediated, expands expressive possibilities, aesthetic listening, and self-mastery, constituting a process of internalization that transforms both bodily action and musical thinking. The dissertation concludes that, from the perspective of Cultural-Historical Psychology, proprioception can be understood as a psychological function capable of being requalified through cultural mediation, whose voluntary mobilization promotes self-regulation, conscious attention, and the development of a humanizing musicality, thereby contributing to the fields of Music Education, Cultural-Historical Psychology, and studies on the body, consciousness, and human development.