Music, Sound and Vibration in Special Education

How to Enrich Your Specialist Setting

Ange Anderson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367708283
• eBook ISBN: 9781000398557
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides practical guidance on how to successfully incorporate music, sound and vibration into your special school, exploring the rich benefits that musical opportunities offer for children with physical, mental health and learning disabilities.

Music has been shown to improve mood, lift depression, improve blood flow and even ease pain, whilst musical interventions can encourage communication and enable relaxation. This book explores the physical, cognitive and mental health benefits of music use in special schools, introducing therapies and innovations that can be adapted for use in your own specialist setting.

Key features include:

• Chapters exploring a range of music therapies and technologies that allow all students to access the benefits of music, sound and vibration, from one-to-one therapeutic music sessions to vibro-acoustic therapy and sing and sign
• Case studies and anecdotes showcasing the innovative ways that special schools are using music, and providing concrete examples of how to deliver, record and access music provision
• Photocopiable policies, risk assessments and links to useful resources

Written by an author with a wealth of experience in special education, this book is essential reading for all those working in specialist settings or with children with SEND.

1 What is therapeutic music in a special school setting?

The therapeutic value of music

Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music (2019), found that music activates more areas of the brain than language. It creates more neural activity and more electrical firing reaches into greater crevices.

Not all sound is music. Yet all music is sound. Music is sound that has order and pattern. We can relate to order and pattern. I know I feel the need for order in my life and pattern exists in every phase of our lives as well as in nature and indeed the universe. Is that why I love music so much? Does it fill a need in me? In Darwin’s book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex – published in 1871 – he hypothesises that the second stage in man’s development of language (the first being development of cognitive ability) was the development of a musical protolanguage (Fitch 2009). This suggest that music has always played an important role in the development of man.

Therapeutic music is music that is used to aid the mental and emotional well-being of those listening or partaking in the music experience. Music therapy makes use of music in order to address the various spiritual, physical, cognitive, social and emotional needs of individuals belonging to all age groups.

Think about how different music makes you feel mentally, emotionally and physically. You may use up-tempo music for exercise, different types of music for different styles of dance, and calming, soothing music to relax or meditate to. Music affects us psychologically.

Eight years ago, it was a Saturday and I was on my way to school day. I was head of a special school and wanted to get on with some work in my office without being disturbed, and I felt that a Saturday was ideal. As it was a Saturday there was no clock to watch and I should have taken my time. I turned the car radio on, and the radio station was playing ‘The flight of the Bumble Bee’ by Rimsky Korsakov. As the music got faster so did my driving. I have the shame of being done for speeding on my way to school on a Saturday!

Mark Anderson, business manager at Future Education in Norwich, a school for teenagers with social, emotional and mental health needs, told me how they are working with students on analysing the statistics for music played whilst driving in relation to car accidents. He is keen for Future Education to create a VR environment for students to experience the effects safely so that it informs them for the future when they may drive a car of their own.

Music can and does influence us. I recall dating a professor of music seven years ago who composed a piece of music for me about the walk we had been on for our third date. It sounds romantic, doesn’t it? I had certainly enjoyed the walk, which was a guided walk amongst the hills of Snowdonia and had lasted six hours instead of the three advertised. I have to admit that I could see he was struggling towards the end. The piece of music he thoughtfully composed for me can only be described as a dirge. It told me more about his experience that day than words ever could.

We often take the power of music for granted. Sometimes we change the music we are listening to according to need or mood, and if we really think about how and why we have done that, then it becomes easy to understand how it can be used in a therapeutic manner to aid someone suffering with specific issues.

Music Therapists

A school is incredibly lucky if it has the funds for therapeutic music to be delivered by a qualified Music Therapist. Music Therapists have been able to demonstrate breakthroughs in achieving physical, emotional and cognitive responses from people who had seemed inaccessible to other forms of intervention. They build up relationships with their clients and learn what type of music therapy works best. When I was deputy head in a secondary special school, we had a student who was a large six-foot young man and could destroy a classroom in seconds, but every week he would sit quietly for half an hour on his own with the Music Therapist (quite a small woman) and occasionally join in on the piano. For the rest of the day he remained chilled.

Nordoff & Robins developed music therapy for children with psychological, physical and intellectual disabilities in the 1960s, and the charity now trains many Music Therapists in their approaches in England and other countries. There is a professional association – the Association of Professional Music Therapists (APMT). The British Society for Music Therapy (BSMT) publishes the British Journal of Music Therapy (BJMT). Both the association and the journal are available to support qualified Music Therapists.

Some progressive local authorities employ Music Therapists as part of their music support to schools. I wish I had worked for one of those authorities, but I didn’t. Some schools pay for a self-employed registered Music Therapist to visit their school weekly, fortnightly or even monthly depending on what they can afford. Some independent schools employ a registered Music Therapist.

Ockelford et al. (2002) stated in the findings from the PROMISE research project of 2001 that only 2% of students with PMLD or SLD received music therapy. The PROMISE (Provision of Music in Special Education) national survey in England was again completed in 2015. Of the 57 schools that took part, a third of those schools employed a Music Therapist. This suggests that more schools are now managing to deliver music as a therapy. Funding has always been the issue. Let me assure you that if every special school were offered a Music Therapist and they did not have to worry about the funding they would bite your hand off.

When I was deputy head of the secondary special school in 2000, we paid for the Music Therapist to attend one day a week, as it was all we could afford. I have inspected and supported schools recently where this practice still continues. To work as a registered Music Therapist, you must be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC). You can only register if you have completed a master’s qualification accredited by the British Association for Music Therapy (BAMT) and recognised by the HCPC.

In my experience, the school either chooses the students most in need of the therapy or the student’s statement of educational need specifies that the student requires this therapy. This is now known as an educational and health care plan (EHCP) in England. To find out about the change in statementing in other areas of the UK, go to the website https://www.contact.org.uk. All educational care plans, however they are named, are reviewed every year. The school needs to find the funding for this therapy and that may be why many schools have to prioritise – because, in my opinion, every single student benefits from therapeutic music.

A qualified Music Therapist is also able to train school staff or care home staff to continue with the programme they have devised for individuals, making it more cost friendly. It is an invaluable support, as the member of staff has been trained by someone who is qualified and who can assess progress on a weekly, fortnightly or monthly basis, depending on the budget available. If you go to www.musicastherapy.org, you can find out about some of the amazing work Music Therapists do to make music’s unique benefits available to as many vulnerable and marginalised people as possible.

When I became head of a new school in 2009, I was genuinely concerned that the school was expected to pay into a music service level agreement (SLA) with the local authority, yet that did not include access to a Music Therapist. The SLA supported the music service in delivery of music across the county and the school could therefore access, at that time, workshops, masterclasses, annual concert performances and national and international competitions. However, we found that they were geared towards mainstream student abilities and the music specialists that visited our school could not seem to adapt to our students’ levels of ability or understanding.

I was determined that our students should have the opportunity to have music delivered in a way that suited them, but the authority still insisted on deducting an SLA for music from the school but provided no music support from 2010. In 2010 I researched how I could provide therapeutic music for all students. I did not have the budget for a qualified Music Therapist; indeed, we were still paying the authority for a music service we did not receive. And then I found out about therapeutic music.

Staff training

I believe that it is a priority to give staff in a special school the appropriate training to meet the needs of the students and to understand the conditions students are diagnosed with. I would say that the professional development of staff is the key to a school’s success. Not only does it give a headteacher confidence in the delivery of an appropriate curriculum, as well as the technological and therapeutic interventions, but it also gives the member of staff confidence and makes them feel valued.

Members of staff who had no experience of working with the students attending our school were given time out of class, on a rota basis, to study free online courses to equip them for working in a special school such as ours. One such free site is www.ComplexNeeds.org.uk, which has training materials for teachers and support staff of learners with severe, profound and complex learning difficulties. There are 16 modules and a study planner. You can download materials to work offline if you need to. A free online study site provided by the NHS is www.MindEd.org.uk, which supports the study of the health and well-being of students. The open university provides a free course on understanding autism and they also provide 900 free courses on their Open Learn site. There are other free online learning providers. Our school also signed up to the online training provided by Educare (part of the TES) for training in safeguarding and any latest government initiative such as radicalisation. There is a cost, but we found the material robust, engaging and easy to use. Staff in a special school also require training in managing behaviours and supporting students with medical needs and care needs. It has always been an argument for special school headteachers that governments should give special schools more training days. Staff training takes a huge chunk out of the budget in a special school and I continually chased extra funding and other ways of meeting the training needs of the staff. Staff in our school knew they would be supported in their professional development and were very keen to develop their skills to meet the needs of the students.

Therapeutic music

I was fortunate enough to have a teaching assistant who had studied music at university and was willing to do an online Therapist in Music course. There are such courses available online and they are very reasonably priced. On average, they require 150 hours of work and so the person must really want to do it and have the academic capabilities to do the course.

As a result of the teaching assistant undertaking the training, I was able to employ her as an unqualified teacher and she enjoyed the role of therapist in music so much that after two years she went back to university to undertake training as a teacher. As luck would have it, we had another teaching assistant with a degree who wanted to take on the role and she also did the online training. She decided to retire last year, and a male teaching assistant, also with a university degree, asked if he could do the online training. He job-shared with her until she retired fully in 2019. He then took on the role full time.

Music sessions took place individually, in pairs or small groups depending on the needs of the child. The students are able to find a safe place through the music to explore their feelings and to learn strategies for managing their own behaviour. We have used the therapy to support individuals who struggle with behaviour, and one particular student would modify her behaviour knowing that she had therapeutic music to look forward to at the end of each day. The therapist also led each term’s music production and was in charge of music assessment for students throughout the school. The school has benefited hugely from having a therapist in music. It was the only way that we could afford it.

Both research and practice have demonstrated therapeutic music to be an effective means of reducing the anxieties and associated behaviours that result from emotional turmoil. This has been evident in the progress made by the students at Pen Coch who were identified as having behavioural difficulties.

I vividly recall a young boy aged nine joining us from mainstream. He had, supposedly, huge behavioural issues and the SEN advisor for the county felt that our school was his last hope. We found on his first visit to our school at the end of a summer term that he loved music and especially the keyboard, though he was unable to play a note. He joined our school in the autumn term and attended therapeutic music with Chris, our therapist in music. He did not have behaviour problems. He just could not do the work expected of him in a mainstream school. His excellent class teacher Pauline came to show me his writing that he had torn up in frustration on his first day with his new class. She was able to show him that it was just fine motor skills and she helped him to develop his computer skills to ease his frustration at not being able to produce what his mind wanted to. His favourite piece of music was from CBeebies and the Night Garden when it signalled time for toddlers to go to bed. The SEN advisor for the county and his parents attended our Christmas concert at the end of his first term. The advisor was visibly moved, and his parents cried as they watched him play that piece of music on the keyboard as baby Jesus was put in his crib to sleep.

We saw consistent improvements in behaviours through the use of therapeutic music in the ten years that I was headteacher at the school. Teachers reported that in some cases students’ social skills improved over time. The therapists worked closely with the teachers and were able to tackle specific individual education plan (IEP) targets set by the teacher in a uniquely engaging environment.

Here is a link to the amazing Chris giving a therapeutic music session: https://youtu.be/xRGHMm3poMg?list=PL-a5MUplgI4nVMUEFGUGFg4jTxjvPyLur.

The course that those wonderf...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables and downloadable resources
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 What is therapeutic music in a special school setting?
• 2 Music and technology for those with special needs
• 3 Transitional music
• 4 Singing and signing
• 5 Meditation and mindfulness
• 6 Water and sound
• 7 Vibration and the feel of sound
• 8 Health, well-being and sound
• 9 The use of sound support in schools
• 10 Assessment
• 11 Parents and carers
• 12 The effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the delivery of music and therapeutic interventions in special schools
• 13 Resources and support
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index