During my bachelor music education in Tilburg there was a growing interest in music education for special need students. I have experienced in various internships what music education can do for these students. In my final year, I was able to explore how music can be used as a means through trauma-informed education in the refugee camps in Greece and implement the results of this research in the refugee camp in Thermophylis. With these educational experiences in my pocket, I started in March 2020 as a music teacher at the Aventurijncollege in Bergen op Zoom. When I started teaching my first classes at Aventurijncollege in March 2020, there was a fatastic music room with many instruments, but there was no learning line, planning or teaching materials. This is where my search for a suitable working method for these students started.
The Aventurijncollege focuses on students between the ages of 12 and 18 with a VMBO level who need extra support with behaviour and/or social-emotional development. They receive a specialized educational program and often also care. In 2021, the Aventurijncollege was commissioned to become a trauma informed school. Based on the knowledge I had gained in my bachelor's research in 2020, I was allowed to coach the school team in providing trauma-informed education. Research has already shown the major impact of trauma on the brain. Dawson & Guare (2019) discuss the negative effects of trauma on executive functions in their book Executive functions in childeren and adolescents. The ARC framework – the framework on which trauma-informed ducation is based – discusses how developing and strengthening executive functions can contribute to integrating trauma into your life. On the one hand, trauma (Anton Horeweg, 2018). negatively affects executive functions, on the other hand, these functions also ensure that you can integrate a trauma into your life where the trauma hinders you less in daily functioning. Research has previously shown that music education has a positive influence on the development and performance of executive functions in children and adults (Jaschke, 2018; Villamizar, 2021). That is why, in consultation with the school board, it was decided to strengthen and develop the executive functions as a major goal of the music lessons. However, this does not answer the question of how the lessons can be filled in in such a way that they contribute to the development of the executive functions and meet the needs of students.
In the current literature, more and more is written about music education to students with special needs. Oxford University Press published the book Special Needs, Community Music and Adult Learning in 2018 (McPherson &Welch, 2018) , which devotes six chapters to music education and music therapy for an audience with special needs. In addition, a number of books have been written about music education for children with autism, such as Music Education for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder. (Scott, 2017) However, this literature does not fit into the context of the student group that this research is about. The studies that deal with music education for children with a mental disorder, behavioral disorder or trauma are about contexts in which students are taught individually, in which students are taught with multiple disabilities or in which students are taught in an extracurricular situation with a social purpose. This is a fundamental difference from the context of this research. The students of the Aventurijncollege are obliged to follow one hour per week of music lessons in groups.
In the search for alternative methods for music lessons in this context, I came across the chapter Inclusive Music Classrooms: A universal Approach (Jellison, 2016) in the book The Child as Musican (McPherson, 2016). In this chapter she describes how the Universal Design Framework contributes to inclusive lessons and suggests that this could also be useful for inclusive music lessons. The lessons are approached from the individual strengths and needs of the students. The purpose of this framework seems to describe precisely the needs of the students of Aventurijn College.
In what way can the Universal Design for Learning framework contribute to inclusive music lessons in secondary special education that encourage the development of executive functions?