Universal Design for Learning in Elementary General Music (Part 1)
As elementary music teachers, we see hundreds of students a week - sometimes hundreds of students a day.
Within our student population there are dramatic differences in how students learn and how they will be the most successful musicians they can be in our classrooms. All our learners have learning differences because all our learners are unique, individual musicians with distinct backgrounds, preferences, thoughts, learning strengths, and learning challenges.
How can we set up our classroom learning environments to be as accessible as possible to each of our students?
Universal Design for Learning is an approach more and more educators are turning to in order to serve their students better. In this post we’ll look at who we teach, why Universal Design for Learning is necessary in elementary general music, and the core principles of this approach to teaching and learning.
Who Do We Teach?
Variability in Elementary Music Students:
The collection of factors that make students unique from each other is called variability.
Here are a few of the many ways the students we work with on a daily basis differ from each other:
Age: Many music educators work with students ranging from ages 5 - 11. The developmental differences that occur during these ages are drastic!
Musical Preferences: Our students each have musical preferences that can change from year to year. We work with students who light up at the chance to sing, and others who shy away from that particular mode of musicing. We also work with students are enthusiastic about playing recorder, and others who find the timbre of the instrument to be unpleasant. Our students also have different preferences when it comes to musical genres, artists, and specific musical works.
Skill development: In each individual class, there is a range of musical skills including aural perception, vocal development, fine motor skills, and more. Each of these has a dramatic impact on how students engage in our classrooms.
Social Interactions: Students have classmates they prefer to work with, and classmates they don’t necessarily prefer. Like adults, their relationships with peers are dynamic and evolving based on each interaction in the day.
Background: Students come to us from dynamic backgrounds. Each individual home and home life is unique. Cultural backgrounds, family dynamics, SES, parent and child roles, spiritual beliefs, family hobbies, and levels of Collectivism all play a part in how students engage with the social and musical aspects of our classrooms.
These are the variables educators are used to considering on a daily basis.
However, brain researchers have looked deeper into three important networks and how they have a direct impact on our students’ learning experiences.
Variability and Brain Networks
There are other types of variables we may not be used to considering when we think about our students.
One particular model of how the brain works can be helpful when demonstrating the variability we all have as learners. Our brains are made of complex networks, and variability in any of these areas can have a profound impact on how students engage in our music rooms.
In this model of the brain, here are the basic network areas that impact learning:
Affective: These are the networks that impact how motivated and engaged we are in a particular task
Recognition: These networks take in information and turn that information into knowledge
Strategic: These networks are responsible for planning and organizing intentional action
When we align our teaching with each network of the brain, we have students who are motivated and engaged (affective network), understand musical ideas (recognition network), and can put their knowledge into action over time (strategic network).
Variable, not Fixed
These areas of the brain aren’t static. They variable based on the individual, the individual over time, and the learning environment. In any one class of learners, we’re working with 25 or so complex humans with complex brain networks that change and adapt to the learning situation.
The “Average” Myth
With this understanding of variability, we can easily see the problem with grouping students into general categories of good at music or untalented, a good student or a behavior problem, normal or disabled. Each of us has a wide range of variables that are constantly in motion.
Each of us has strengths and challenges to learning.
The Takeaway:
There is no single profile of an average elementary musician. All elementary musicians have learning differences.
Instead of trying to make all students learn in the same way at the same pace, what if we made our classrooms as accessible as possible for all learners?
Universal Design for Learning
Universal Design for Learning poses an interesting question to consider: instead of looking at our students as having a deficit, what if we wondered if our curricula and learning context are disabling?
When a student is unsuccessful in our classrooms, what if our first step were not to look at the individual student and think about what they need to change in order to reach the demands of our curriculum? What if instead we first looked around the student at the larger context: our demeanor, our environment for learning, our curriculum, our expectations? And what if we were to think about how the curriculum and the context can be adapted so the student is set up to be successful?
This doesn’t mean we’re taking away accountability on the part of the student. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It means that we view ourselves as partnering with students to help them be more successful and take charge of their own learning.
What Makes it Universal?
Universal Design for Learning is not meant to be implemented for the sake of one single student population or one type of learning approach. When we design our teaching practices to engage more learners more deeply, everyone benefits. This is the universal part of universal design. This approach isn’t exclusively for students with IEPs, or self-contained classes, or students formally diagnosed with a learning difference.
This philosophy has its roots in the physical design for buildings, so that makes a good starting point to illustrate this idea.
Many buildings have automatic doors. If a person in a wheelchair wants to enter a building, automatic doors make it much more convenient. But automatic doors are not exclusively for people who move in a wheelchair. They’re an accommodation that benefits caregivers trying to move in and out of the building while carrying young children. They’re for people leaving business meetings with their hands full of papers and memos. They’re for people leaving the store with a shopping cart. A person who moves in a wheelchair can benefit from automatic doors. But the automatic doors aren’t only for a person who uses a wheelchair. It’s an accommodation that universally is more inclusive.
In the classroom, universal design for learning is not for one specific population of students. All students benefit when we make our teaching practices and the learning environment more accessible.
What if instead of writing the same lesson segment on half notes we always teach and then going back to retrofit it for specific students, we began planning learning experiences by thinking of ways to make learning experiences more accessible for all our students?
What if we began planning learning experiences by looking at variabilities first instead of retroactively thinking of disabilities?
The takeaway question:
How can our classrooms and teaching practices reach as many students as possible with as much of an impact as possible?
Three Pillars of Universal Design for Learning
The developers of this approach synthesized findings in the fields of brain research, education, and child development to come up with three basic pillars of Universal Design for Learning.
Multiple Means of Engagement:
Why should students be engaged in the material we teach? This pillar deals with the Affective networks of the brain, which impact how motivated and engaged we are in a particular task.
We can offer many different opportunities for students to be interested in what we teach! This is one of the reasons elementary music teachers use multiple media (singing, speaking, moving, and playing), skills (improvising, arranging, listening, reading, writing, etc.), and processes (creating, performing, responding, connecting) in lessons.
Multiple Means of Representation
What are students engaging with in our lessons? This pillar deals with the Recognition networks which take in information and turn it into knowledge.
We can offer many different opportunities for students to interact with information in our classrooms! Instead of simply asking students to memorize the shapes of musical notation symbols, we can lead them on a student-centered discovery-based sequence of learning where we explore many musical ways to represent sound - not just through standardized Western visual notation.
Multiple Means of Action and Expression
How will students show what they know? This pillar deals with the Strategic networks of our brains which are responsible for planning and organizing intentional action.
We can offer many different opportunities for students to showcase their learning! This is one of the other reasons choices in musical media (singing, speaking, moving, and playing) are so important. This is also why we scaffold musical concepts in an intentional sequence so students can create musical responses many times throughout the learning process. When we partner with students to focus on this part of the brain, they are also encouraged to use executive functions to manage impulse control.
Universal Design Action Step
In the next post we’ll look at each pillar of Universal Design for Learning and break down more ways to apply the principles in our elementary general music teaching.
For now, we’ll begin with a UDL audit.
UDL Audit
The next time you teach students - whatever that lesson structure looks like - make a note of how many variables you notice in the classroom.
Which students seem to be motivated?
Which students seem to recall information from last class?
Do you notice some students showing self control or a lack of self control?
UDL Audit:
In other words, we’ll begin by asking the question we asked at the top of the article: Who do we teach?
How to cite this post:
Boler, V. (2021, February 16). Universal design for learning in elementary general music. Victoria Boler. https://victoriaboler.com/blog/universal-design-for-learning-in-elementary-general-music
Sources and Recommended Reading:
Dalton, E. M. (2017). Universal Design for Learning: Guiding principles to reduce barriers to digital & media literacy competence. Journal of Media Literacy Education, 9(2), 17–29. https://doi.org/10.23860/jmle-2019-09-02-02
Darrow, A., (2016). Applying the principles of Universal Design for Learning in general music. In C. Abril & B. Gault (Eds.), Teaching general music (pp. 308–326). Oxford University Press.
Hourigan, R., (2015). Understanding music and Universal Design for Learning: Strategies for students with learning differences in the 21st century. In C. Conway (Ed.), Musicianship-focused curriculum and assessment (pp. 89 - 112). GIA.
McCord, K. (2013). Universal Design for Learning: Special educators integrating the Orff approach into their teaching. Approaches: Music Therapy & Special Music Education, Special Issue 5(2), 188-193. Retrieved from http://approaches.primarymusic.gr
Meyer, A., Rose, D. H., & Gordon, D. (2013). Universal Design for Learning: Theory and practice (1st ed.). Cast Incorporated. http://udltheorypractice.cast.org/
Quaglia, B. (2015). Planning for student variability. Music Theory Online, 21(1), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.30535/mto.21.1.6
