Teaching Strategies for Students with Disabilities

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In my years of learning to be an educator, and specifically a music educator, I have struggled with how to teach to students with special needs. Despite taking several special education classes, I struggle with how I am going to apply these strategies I have learned into my music education classroom. With this in mind, I have noticed that several students in my observations of local music classes have disabilities, but are excelling. I did not notice any strategies being implemented by the teacher. So, I wanted to look up various strategies suggested by experts in the field.
The first paper that I discovered in my research is a study called “Conditions That Facilitate Music Learning Among Students With Special Needs: A Mixed-Methods Inquiry” by Kevin W. Gerrity, Ryan M. Hourigan, and Patrick W. Horton (2013). Their purpose was to “identify and define the conditions that facilitate learning in music among students with special needs.” They took a group of students with varying disabilities with varying severities. The most prevalent disability in this study was autism. The students were paired with a mentor teacher. The mentor teacher was an undergraduate student going into teaching, therapy, or performance. The mentor teachers were supervised by three professionals who had a combined 20 years in special education.
The study took place over ten weeks and confirmed strategies that I have already learned. Gerrity et al. (2013) learned that mixed methods teaching style was the best, but the mentors noted that repetition, student choice, and increased response time were the most effective. These three strategies have all been pushed in my special education classes. However, the mentor teachers included how they used those strategies, g...

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...urney toward inclusion. Music Education Research, 8(3), 407-416. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=0df19be4-1ad2-42b7-b63e-a841706c0412@sessionmgr4002&vid=3&hid=4208&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==
Gerrity, K. M., Hourigan, R. M., & Horton, P. W. (2013). Conditions that facilitate music learning among students with special needs: A mixed-methods inquiry. Journal of Research in Music Education,16(2), 144-159. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=775e3056-8a76-4043-8cd0-01d0015e7b1e@sessionmgr4002&vid=1&hid=4208&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==
Lapka, C. (2013). Five strategies for teaching students with disabilities in band/orchestra. Illinois Music Educator, 74(1), 72-73. Retrieved from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?sid=5eb05020-fb07-4193-8874-b2e667f7710a@sessionmgr4004&vid=1&hid=4208&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ==

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