The work of the academic of the Dept. of Music at the ULS, Dr. Mario Arenas, seeks to determine if the musical training they have received influences their teaching practice.

The Didactae Magazine of the University of Barcelona, ​​in its 72nd edition, published the article by academic Department of Music of the University of La Serena, Dr. Mario Arenas titled: 'The teaching performance in Musical Education of generalist teachers in Chile. An exploratory mixed study'.

In his mixed descriptive-exploratory work, he aims to describe for the first time the performance of generalist teachers in the area of ​​Musical Education, trying to determine if the musical training they have received influences their teaching practice, and if this is related to the effectiveness what they perceive about themselves when teaching the subject.

In relation to the results, these show problems in the teachers' performance, such as unsystematic classroom interventions, absence of progression and lack of focus on didactic actions. Inadequate or non-existent training and the lack of resources for the development of the subject, on the other hand, are the main factors influencing the perceived level of self-efficacy and the assessment of their professional performance in this area. 

As expressed in the article itself, “the objective of this initial study (…) has been to extract a snapshot of one of the many realities that occur in Chilean musical education through an interpretation of complementary data. Obviously, it is not intended to generalize the results, but rather to show the teachers' imagination about the topics discussed through the discussion group and to triangulate their statements with other quantitative data."

Didactae is a publication on research in specific didactics of the Faculty of Education of the University of Barcelona and, among others, is indexed in Latindex.