From the beginning of the 20th century, have been recorded various trends and orientations related to man's perceptions of himself, of society, of Nature, etc.  These trends crystallize in the respective educational policies, a fact that is also expressed in the production of educational material and, consequently, in school textbooks (Athanasiadis, 2016) (Koulouri & Venturas, 1993). Concurrent in Greece, from the beginning of the 20th century, the folk song is utilized in various ways related to the central state policy and its adjustments, depending on the conjuncture. Thus, the content of rural folk music is recreated and utilized in new social and economic contexts. Simultaneous, within these changes, the relationship between man and Nature is being reshaped to a decisive degree. With these data, the presence of Nature in education also changes character, passing various stages (eg nature worship, environmental education, etc.) (Ramsey, 2002).

This paper will discuss the main issues of the research that includes the study of Music school textbooks from the first surviving textbooks to those used nowadays in general primary and secondary schools. More specifically, it concerns the music material that corresponds to folk or traditional songs (according to the classification of the authors of the books) (Stavrou, 2004), which have direct references to Nature. It is a material that mainly includes references to animals, plants, the change of seasons, and the perception of natural laws. For the needs of material management, the relevant methodology is developed regarding the issue of the relationship of the delivered musical material of the sources with the folk music of the countryside and its oral character regarding the issues of notation, recording, the transition to the written form, always taking into account the historical context and the orientations of the educational policy of each period.

The way of referring to Nature in the various musical traditions can often contain elements of representation and imitation, programmatic and rhetorical elements, etc. However, these phenomena are presented differently in scholarly and oral traditions. The understudy material crystallizes the way composers, conductors, music teachers, and authors of textbooks perceive folk songs. Consequently, from the moment these songs are subject to processing (e.g. at the level of melody, harmonization, structure, choral processing), it becomes clear that they can acquire these elements to a greater or lesser extent (Fevgalas, under publication). Considering these data, the main part of the paper concerns the investigation of the internal musical elements (melodic movement, rhythm, modality, style, ornamentation, etc.) of the specific folk songs in their connection with Nature.Respectively, the above elements will be systematized and presented in various axes, such as style, rhythm, general and specific symbolism, while will appear standard-stereotypical rhetorical elements that seem to correspond to animals and plants. Additionally, tools of historical and systematic musicology will be used to study the material.

• Ζητήματα αναπαραστάσεων και ιδεολογιών στη μουσική εκπαίδευση (φυλή, φύλο, γλώσσα, τάξη, κουλτούρα κ.ά.)
• Ιστορία της μουσικής εκπαίδευσης στην Ελλάδα

Nafsika Mantziou is a graduate of the Department of Music Studies (NKUA), a graduate of the Studies in Greek Culture program (HOU), a graduate of the postgraduate program Education Sciences (HOU), and attends the postgraduate program Ancient Theater: Educational and Philological Approaches (University of the Aegean). She has completed training courses on Popular Culture, Environmental Education, and Music Pedagogical Systems. In addition to studying Higher Theory of European Music, she has been taught clarinet, piano, santouri, and nei. Her research interests include the didactic utilization of oral musical traditions and the utilization of music in the understanding of the man-made and natural environment.

Stefanos Fevgalas is a musicologist, composer and educator. He is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Ioannina, a graduate of the Department of Music Studies (NKUA), a graduate of the program Studies in Greek Culture (HOU), while he has completed postgraduate studies in the programs Historical Research, Didactics and New Technologies (Ionian University) and Public History (HOU). He has completed the studies of Higher Theorists of European Music (Diploma in Composition) and holds degrees in Byzantine Music and Piano. Part of his studies has been published in four books (Papagrigoriou-Nakas publications) and has been presented in scientific journals and conferences.