Stephen F. Zdzinski is currently an assistant professor of music education and director of the South Carolina Music Education Research Center. He holds the B.M. in French Horn Performance and music education from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and the M.M.E. & Ph.D. Indiana University. He was a former faculty member at Wayne State University, Indiana University, the University of Toronto and the University of Maryland, and will be joining the faculty at the University of Miami School of Music in Fall 2002. He has published numerous articles in the Journal of Research in Music Education, Contributions to Music Education, the Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Bolet‰n de Investigacin Educativo-Musical (Argentina), the Southeastern Journal of Music Education, Research Perspectives in Music Education, Technological Directions in Music Learning Ejournal, Philosophy of Music Education Review, the Pennsylvania Bulletin of Research in Music Education, the Maryland Music Educator, the New York School Music News, Music Educators Journal, and Our Children. Dr. Zdzinski has made presentations at international, national and state music education and College Music Society conferences in the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. He serves as the Research Chair and Webmaster of the South Carolina Music Education Association, and Webmaster for the Adult & Community Music Education Special Interest Research Group of MENC. He is a member of MENC, Society for Research in Music Education, Society for Music Teacher Education, International Society for Music Education, and the College Music Society.
Stephen F. Zdzinski
School of Music
University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC 29208
803.777.0791
szdzinski@mozart.sc.edu
(Portions of this article are based on an article written by this author, published in the January 2001 edition of the Music Educators Journal)
What do Andrea Boccelli, Evelyn Glennie, and Hitoshi Oe all have in common? Each of these people is a successful professional musician (a vocalist, a percussionist, and a composer who is a pianist), and all are special learners (visually impaired, hearing impaired, and mentally challenged). These people were able to realize their musical talents because music teachers adapted their instruction to meet their special needs as learners.
Teaching special learners in general music generally has been accepted in music education, but the idea of teaching piano to special learners is less common. The cognitive, physical, and social abilities and disabilities of a "special learner" provide significant challenges to a private or group piano teaching situation. The teacher will need to be aware of the instructional adaptations that will need to be made in order for these students to succeed in piano study. However, through minor modifications and adaptations of traditional piano teaching techniques and by borrowing techniques used primarily in special education, piano teachers can teach many special learners and include them in their piano studios.
Physical Adaptations
An important step in the teaching of music to special learners is to select an appropriate instrument. For mentally challenged students, for example, piano is an excellent instrument choice if instruction is carefully sequenced and controlled. For physically challenged students, the choice of piano may still be appropriate, if modifications such as holding adaptations can be made. If there is a question, students should be examined for physical suitability in consultation with an occupational or physical therapist before beginning piano study.
Adapting the Social Environment
A piano teacher who plans to work with a special learner needs to take several steps in order to ensure that the special learner will be accepted into his or her studio. The student may need instruction on proper lesson behavior, and routines and rules will need to be firmly established. Specific guidance concerning listening to the teacher, following directions, understanding teacher and student roles, and how to request assistance when needed should be provided to the student.
If the student is in a piano class, the first step is to prepare the class for your new "special" student, and assign a "piano buddy" to help the student with new rules and instructional work. In preparing the class, care should be taken to explain to your students how the special learner may be like and unlike other members of the class, as well as any accommodations that might be needed for this child in the class.
Another way to adapt the social environment for the special learner is through the use of positive image build techniques. For example, the careful selection of appropriate, incremental, and obtainable goals is important. Any progress towards those goals is reinforced, and negative pictures are blocked out, so that the special learner continues to visualize positive outcomes. It is important as well to avoid comparisons with traditional students, as their progress may be quicker and thus discourage the special learner.
Parental Involvement
One way to successfully adapt the social environment for special learners is through the informed use of parental involvement strategies. In special education settings, parental involvement is a very important part of the instructional mix. The following strategies have been found by the research in music to be related to more positive student attitudes and greater achievement in music:
It should be noted that parents who have little aptitude in music could achieve the above strategies. Parents as part of piano lessons could be given a list of these items to assist the instructional process.
Adapting Music
Another area in which piano teachers may need to make adjustments in their teaching is in the use of music. Many special learners may have difficulty with written notation. An aural approach to teaching notation may be very effective in teaching special learners to read musical notation. In this approach, aural experiences start with singing, using known songs, and then providing notation for the songs that they already know, a "picture of the song". In addition, pitch and rhythm patterns are extracted from the songs that the students are learning, and drilled using flashcards to help reinforce music reading. Another approach that may be useful with special learners is the use of color-coded notation. In color-coded notation, various note values or pitches are printed in different colors. Students using the colored notation appear to prefer it, and the use of color-coded notation may help special learners in their comprehension of musical notation, as special learners tend to learn better with information given in multiple modes.
The selection of appropriate music for special learners is also an important consideration concerning music. Known tunes and catchy tunes such as Jingle Bells, Ode to Joy, When the Saints go marching in, Bingo, or Row, Row, Row Your Boat work best with developmentally disabled students. Simplified parts may be appropriate for more difficult music, and will need to be adapted to the present ability level of the student. In a piano ensemble setting, students may responsible for only one or two pitches, and play only when those pitches are sounded in the ensemble, much in the matter of writing used in handbell choirs.
Adapting Teaching Techniques
A number of different teaching approaches may be helpful in teaching piano to the special learner. One adaptive teaching strategy is the use of task analysis. In task analysis, teachers break down complex technical and musical tasks into their prerequisite tasks, creating more manageable and more easily obtained goals. Piano performance techniques such as hand position, music reading, hands alone/together, and fingerings can be broken down into subskills that can be thoroughly taught and reinforced, and then combined after mastery. When teaching the special students various facets of piano technique, task analysis can provide the teacher the means to analyze when things go wrong, and therefore more quickly remediate problems as they occur. By breaking instruction into smaller steps, the special learner will experience more success.
Another teaching technique that might be useful, borrowed from special education, is called "Precision Teaching". Teachers using this approach continuously measure and chart student progress, and analyzing the error patterns in order to modify instruction so that the learner who is developmentally disabled makes steady progress. In precision teaching, each objective is initially set, and the special student is closely monitored using by daily testing of each goal in order to determine the student's success rate. Progress is charted on the attainment of all goals, and is recorded so that the teacher can decide if goals need to be further subdivided through additional task analysis. If the student is not meeting her or his success goal, the objective is modified so that the student makes progress. In this way, students can make slow but continual progress that can be documented and appropriate reinforcement is provided.
When working with special learners in piano lessons, evaluation techniques for these students may need to be modified. Teachers should try to include technical goals, musical content goals, and social goals when assessing student progress. Students may have unique difficulties with auditory and visual perception, or may have shorter attention spans. Anxiety may also be a problem, especially if objectives are too difficult.
Assessment should be used to help build positive images. Instruction will need to be adapted and segmented to show continuous progress. While progress may be slower, attainment of each objective should be documented and charted to show progress so that students and parents will not become discouraged.
Conclusion
Students who are special learners can be successful as long as teachers are ready and willing to help them to do so. What we need to do as teachers is to we ask them to do the right things, at the right time, and in the right way. We may have to adjust our instruction to meet the needs of these students, and may have to seek the assistance of parents, other students in the program, or perhaps using music teachers or music therapists in training to help. Other piano students in piano classes need to be prepared for the inclusion of a "special" student. Additional self-esteem enhancement and parental involvement strategies may prove useful. Complex tasks may need to broken down into simpler sub-tasks and music may need to be simplified for the student. While these suggestions may take addition effort, the rewards are great, because we can help these students to include music as part of their life.
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