Music Beyond...Therapy. An Educational Tool for Inclusion

Music is an integral part of every person’slife. Scientific research hasshown the effectiveness of music in medical-rehabilitation contexts to the extent that it is considered, for some categories of people (disabled,socio-cultural, elderly), forthe exclusive use of the psychotherapeutic field. The purpose of this review is to demonstrate the importance that music has also in the educational and didactic field to “exploit” its peculiarities, “beyond” the therapeutic component to include the many different contexts of life. Among these,the “digital environments” make music the protagonist of a “world 2.0”, within which, starting from the strengths of the differentiated Method of Maria Montessori, it is possible to create a union between pedagogy and musical education. The last section deals with deafness and music as a specimen, highlighting how theoretical and empirical research on thistopic has dealt with it from a threefold perspective: on the one hand, music asrehabilitation therapy for deaf people; on the other, music’s contribution in the overall education of the deaf; finally, music as entertainment and its enjoyment as an expression of quality free time for deaf people.