Exploring ‘best practice’ in SEN/D music education 

Name: Heloise Lee
School: Music
Mentor: Sally Brown

Name of Research Event: Exploring ‘best practice’ in SEN/D music education

This was the first research seminar that I attended as part of the LEAP Programme, and it was definitely one of the most interesting and enjoyable for me. Having done modules covering music psychology and music education during my first and second years, it was great to revisit the discipline in my final year with such a thought-provoking talk by PhD candidate Sarah Mawby on the effects of adopting a ‘best practice’ approach on the music education of children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEN/D). I thought that the questions Mawby’s research was addressing were highly relevant, particularly ‘how can music be used to help pupils with SEN/D’ and ‘what are the opportunities and barriers of music education of pupils with SEN/D’, both of which are especially important to evaluate in light of current attitudes towards the place of music education in schools and whether it is a useful or necessary part of the curriculum.

Being an undergraduate, I was worried that the seminar would be too complex for me to follow properly, but Mawby explained everything really clearly and contextualised her research well, so it made sense as to how it fits within the wider discipline. She started off by outlining the small existing field of research on music and SEN/D, discussing the findings of the four main studies that have been conducted and presenting questions that stem from these. She then went on to discuss the way in which disabilities are currently viewed, comparing and contrasting the medical model with the social model. This helped lay the groundwork for her research as it raised the question of whether there is anything that can be done sociologically (which would include music education) to help those with SEN/D, or whether they can only be helped medically. Moving on to her own research, Mawby outlined her methodology and explained that her approach of talking directly to the pupils with SEN/D was quite rare—usually researchers focus more on talking to their parents, teachers or practitioners, but she wanted to gain a complete understanding of how music can be used to help them. She then detailed her main findings of how music is currently used in the classroom for pupils with SEN/D, which included as a form of signposting for the day’s events and as a way of teaching broader functional skills (e.g. communication skills).

The main focus of the seminar was Mawby’s discussion of what actually constitutes ‘best practice’. Her research suggested it could be defined as music education that is adapted to suit pupils’ needs and moods, that is fully participatory, that offers choice and provides opportunities to pupils, that is flexible in line with the current curriculum, and that puts the pupils first (‘child-centred learning’). She highlighted the factors that affect best practice, such as the available budget, the level of planning involved and considerations of staff expertise in teaching lessons using a best practice approach.

The part of the seminar that I found most interesting was Mawby’s consideration of the problematic aspects of music education in an SEN/D context. She pointed out that SEN/D pupils can often be seen as disabled children who need to be ‘fixed’ through music, but argued that they should instead be thought of as musicians (i.e. their musical capability should not be seen to be any lower). Moreover, she suggested that musical development for pupils with SEN/D must be considered of equal importance to their development in other areas, unlike current perceptions which see it as secondary or even inessential altogether. As a final point, Mawby concluded that there is no way to conclusively narrow down what ‘best practice’ actually means or how it should be used; it has many attributes and elements that should all be taken into consideration when trying to adopt a best practice approach to education.

In all, I found the seminar to be both thoroughly insightful and accessible to those who perhaps knew less about the subject area. Although the field of music education research is not one with which I am involved in my current studies, I still found the seminar stimulating from both a personal interest and wider academic point of view. I like that it encouraged me to think about how music can be used in an SEN/D environment to greatest effect, as teaching music has always been a possible career path of mine so consideration of this is really important to me.