In Portugal, inclusive education is considered fundamental as recommended by the current legislation of the country. Despite this, in Artistic Education Programmes, most teachers do not have adequate training to work with children with Special Needs. For this reason, and in order to promote inclusion in Arts Education Programmes of Music, in the year 2018 we started an action-research project, entitled: Inclusion of Children with Special Needs in Arts Education Programmes: From Research to Action.

Through this research, we intend to find solutions so that children with motor disabilities arising from Cerebral Palsy can attend the Art Education Programmes in Primary Education, to develop their potential and musical skills, with possible use of Digital Technologies.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Work financed by FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, within the scope of the PhD scholarship with reference 2020.07331.BD, and by National Funds through FCT - Foundation for Science and Technology, IP, within the scope of the UIDB/00194/2020 project, referring to CIDTFF - Research Center in Didactics and Technology in the Training of Trainers.

For the development of this research, we adopted the Action-Research Methodology. The work plan consists of three major research cycles: a Diagnosis Cycle, a Preparation Cycle, and an Intervention Cycle. Each of these cycles considers planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation actions in an inclusive and change-oriented perspective. As a result, these Cycles lead us to the practical development of a Training Programme for Arts Education Programmes of Music teachers as well as an Intervention Programme in a Portuguese Artistic School. Throughout this study, a flexible participant observation posture was adopted, assuming a "technique based on observation, focused on the researcher's perspective, in which the researcher observes directly and in person the phenomenon under study" (Coutinho, 2018, P.370)". In this context, for the development of this study, we chose to use a "flexible approach that involves performing a naturalistic observation of the different environments, using Participant Observation and the Field Diary, conducting interviews and analysing different documents" (Amado, 2017, p. 150). All the information compiled by this action-research was organized and studied through software-supported content analysis in the webQDA platform (https://www.webqda.net). webQDA is a web-based qualitative data analysis software for all researchers and practitioners who conduct qualitative research.

In this research work, the following actions have already been carried out: (i) Approval with favourable opinion to carry out this study, by the Ethics and Deontology Council and the General Regulation of Data Protection, of the University of Aveiro; (ii) Characterization of the child with Cerebral Palsy that gave origin to our study; (iii) different bibliographic reviews in different contexts, in order to know what has been done by science so far; (iv) 18 interviews with parents of children with Cerebral Palsy and 18 interviews with professionals who work with children with Special Needs, in order to know their Needs and the Good Practices developed in favour of children; (v) different Short Duration Training Workshops in different establishments in Portugal, in order to raise awareness for Inclusion in Music - music for all; (vi) a PhD internship in the Department of Music Informatics of the Faculty of Computer Science at the University of Milan, Italy, to get to know the different technologies they are working on, which can also be used to promote music learning for users with specific special needs. At this moment we are ready to develop the Long-Term Training Programme and the Intervention Cycle is taking place in the Artistic School where the child with Cerebral Palsy has already entered. The results obtained so far show that teachers are not yet prepared for the challenges posed by Inclusion in Artistic Education Programmes. We highlight the need for specific training, focused on the use of Technologies, involving the educational community in an active and collaborative way. Thus, it will be possible to stimulate the potential of children and adults to transform Music Education into Inclusive Education for all.

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