Conservatory education of a musical savant with autism: a case study in Turkey Sule Erden and Gonul Reyhanoglu Abstract Purpose – Savant syndrome, a very rare condition in the world, refers to individuals who have extraordinary talents but might have disabilities that prevent them from maintaining their life. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the views of conservatory instructors about the education of Buğra Çankır (BC), a musical savant with autism. Design/methodology/approach – As it was difficult to communicate with BC and elicit his views, interviews were conducted with his teachers, who had similar experiences in his music education process. The participants were six instructors who worked as full-time instructors in the conservatory. The participants were administered a semi-structured focus group interview form that described the difficulties, experiences, perceptions and feelings they had in their interactions with BC. Data obtained from the study were subjected to content analysis methods performed by the researchers; analysis involved identification of the codes and themes and formation of sub-themes and codes in line with these themes. Findings – Results showed that the participants had difficulties in teaching BC because of having insufficient knowledge about his features. In addition, while planning the conservatory education processes, the participants were found to redesign the teaching content considering the features of the student. Research limitations/implications – The present case study is important in terms of revealing the problems experienced in the education processes of these individuals. More detailed qualitative studies or action research could be utilised in studies to be conducted in the future. Originality/value – BC’s educational experience is the first case for educational institutions and instructors in Turkey. Keywords Musical savant with autism, Absolute pitch, Conservatory education Paper type Case study Introduction Savant syndrome, a very rare condition in the world, refers to individuals who have extraordinary talents but might have disabilities that prevent them from maintaining their life (Miller, 1998). Despite having below-average intelligence levels, individuals with savant syndrome could have talents such as calendar calculation (Cowan and Frith, 2009), arithmetic (Heavey, 2004), poem (Dowker et al., 1996), art (Hermelin and O’Connor, 1970), memory (Treffert, 2009) and music (Sloboda et al., 1985), (in Pring et al., 2012), which is the focus of this study, too. Rimland and Fein (1988) found Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in approximately 10 per cent of the group who had savant talents (in Stanutz, 2009). It is reported that not all savants have ASD. Males could have four times more savant features in comparison to females (Treffert, 2009). The most common savant talent seen in individuals with ASD is music, and these individuals are reported to have absolute pitch (Miller, 1998). Absolute pitch, which is a very rare talent in music (Baharloo et al., 2000), is defined as the ability to identify a tone’s pitch or to produce a tone at a particular pitch without the use of an external reference pitch (Takeuchi and Hulse, 1993). Individuals on the autism spectrum, musical savants are known to have an excellent long-term memory and extraordinary melodic memory required for music (Wallace et al., 2009, in Kısaç and Tortop, 2010). However, these people do not have the basic functional skills such as social interaction, communication and self-care (Baharloo et al., 2000; Takeuchi and Hulse, 1993). Received 19 November 2018 Revised 21 January 2019 Accepted 10 March 2019 All authors declare that they have no conflict of interests. The authors would like to thank to BC, who created the present study, and his family for accepting to participate in this study. The authors also thank to Rectorate of Iskenderun Technical University (ISTE) and Directorate of ISTE Mustafa Yazıcı State Conservatory for giving the permission and support required for the data collection phase. The authors would also like to give the heartfelt thanks to ISTE Mustafa Yazıcı State Conservatory instructors for sharing their views and experiences. Sule Erden is based at the Department of Primary Education, Cukurova Universitesi, Adana, Turkey. Gonul Reyhanoglu is based at the Department of Turkish Language and Literature, Hatay Mustafa Kemal University, Antakya, Turkey. PAGE 282 j ADVANCES IN AUTISM j VOL. 5 NO. 4 2019, pp. 282-292, © Emerald Publishing Limited, ISSN 2056-3868 DOI 10.1108/AIA-11-2018-0046