Promoting Music Teachers’ Aesthetic Care and Support of Gifted Children’s Aesthetic Existence in Specialist Music Education

The self-actualization of children gifted for music—as aesthetic beings striving to realize their fullest potential and find joy in and through music making—does not occur spontaneously. Given their unique vulnerabilities and high-stakes dilemmas, their education requires ethically attentive support. It is therefore essential to adopt an ethical lens to critically examine the development of gifted children’s musical talent and reaffirm the central role of aesthetic care within specialist music education.

This research investigates how teachers’ aesthetic caring practices—grounded in Noddings’ Care Ethics, which emphasizes relational attentiveness and responsibility—can foster Foucault’s notion of an aesthetics of existence, where students actively shape meaningful, creative lives. Drawing on Engeström’s third-generation Activity Theory, which examines interconnected systems of collective human activity, my doctoral project conceptualizes teachers’ pedagogical practices and students’ learning processes as interdependent, co-evolving activity systems. This innovative framework integrates theory and practice, offering critical depth in understanding how teachers cultivate aesthetic care in music education.

The project employs an action research approach within a specialist music program in Finland—the Sibelius Academy’s Junior Academy—thereby contributing to care ethics discourses in gifted music education. The findings will provide specialist music educators, particularly in international contexts, with actionable insights for fostering musical self-actualization and sustaining holistic ecosystems that nurture gifted students’ aesthetic and personal flourishing.

Keywords: Aesthetic Care, Aesthetic Existence, Care Ethics, Music Gifted Education, Music Pedagogy, Action Research, Activity Theory.

Chun Li is a doctoral researcher in the Research Study Programme at the MuTri Doctoral School. Her studies are funded by an EDUFI Fellowship awarded by the Finnish National Agency for Education.