Promoting the Wellbeing of Youth with Disabilities through Music Mentoring
Abstract
:1. Introduction
Study Aims
- To develop a training programme through group-based music mentoring for youth with disabilities.
- To evaluate the impact of the programme on youth with disabilities with respect to their self-esteem and efficacy as musicians.
- To determine the reactions of school pupils and teachers to the young music mentors with disabilities.
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Music Mentors
2.2. Music Mentor Training
- Make Connections: Gaining rapport with children by showing an interest in their hobbies and finding social commonalities. For some mentors, this process came naturally, whereas, for some of those on the autism spectrum, they benefitted from being equipped with question starters, such as “what is your favourite…”, or “would you rather…”.
- Praise: Finding specific elements of children’s musical performances and conveying them in an authentic way, without sounding repetitive. The mentors were encouraged to notice and acknowledge small details in children’s performances, such as their choice of notes in a melody or the unique way they might hit a drum.
- Demonstrate: The mentors’ ability to convincingly perform the musical material required for all activities on their specialist instrument, voice or dance.
- Explain: The mentors’ ability to instruct children on a task’s learning outcome and clearly outline its associated success criteria.
- Spot the Weaknesses: Ability to explain the errors in a pupil’s performance, e.g., out of time, out of tune.
- Fix the Weaknesses: Ability to target the weakness and guide the pupil to repair errors with continuous feedback and encouragement.
- Role Play: Mentors were individually tasked with facilitating classroom activities within hypothetical teaching scenarios that they were likely to encounter in their work with children. Within these roleplay scenarios, project staff and the other mentors would perform and compose to a similar level of competency as a primary school pupil, which included making mistakes and expressing confusion. These instances gave mentors practice in facilitating learning by asking questions, repairing musical errors and extracting creative ideas.
- Modelling: These tasks were normally prefaced with exemplars by project staff so that mentors were clear on what success looked like before engaging in the role play. The role-play could be differentiated according to the ability of the peer mentor engaged in the task, by presenting them with more or less complex teaching challenges to solve, providing them with opportunities to demonstrate flexibility and persistence in their mentoring.
- Review: Each task could be ‘paused’ and ‘rewound’ so that mentors could trial different instructional approaches and ask for support when needed. At the end of each role-play, the mentors who were acting as pupils would give the facilitating mentor feedback, which was mediated by the project staff.
- Video Analysis: Within small groups, the peer mentors would review video footage of real-life music activities being conducted with children. The mentors were asked to examine the explanations, demonstrations and feedback employed by the instructor on the video, and then evaluate the comparative success or limitations of each instructional decision. The mentors were then encouraged to ‘replay’ these scenarios through role-play, after which they reflected on what they could assimilate into their own practices.
- Practice Teaching Sessions: At regular intervals within their training, the mentors were tasked with mentoring small groups of pupils within a low-stakes environment, in which the children were made aware that the mentors were currently engaged in a training programme and were briefed on how to give supportive feedback to support the mentors’ development. These practice sessions were eventually termed “mistakes labs” by the mentors, which captured the attitude encouraged within the training programme, wherein failure is viewed as a natural consequence of learning.
- Disability Awareness Training: The mentor training also piloted approaches to equip the mentors with an ability to stimulate children’s curiosity about the mentors’ impairments. While the mentors expressed a desire to share their experiences of growing up as disabled musicians, they initially struggled to convey their sentiments in a structured way. After trialling several approaches, the project staff found it optimal to support the mentors in writing and producing scripted video tutorials to teach children about specific disabilities, which were followed by informal question and answer discussions.
2.3. Mentoring School Children
- High instances of free school meals (40%).
- Low numbers of pupils playing instruments (10% or less).
- Few resources, lack of music provision according to teaching staff.
- High level of commitment to the time associated with the partnership from principals and teaching staff.
- Outlining the learning outcomes associated with each classroom activity.
- Role-modelling success in music composition and performance.
- Facilitating group work with pupils to advance their experimentations with the musical building-blocks and foster sharing of ideas.
- Providing pupils with praise and constructive feedback to improve their compositions.
- Answering questions about their disability during discussions.
2.4. Evaluation
2.4.1. Music Mentors
2.4.2. Pupils
2.4.3. Teachers
3. Results
3.1. Ratings of Mentors by Project Staff
3.2. Mentors’ Self-Ratings
3.3. Inter-Relationships among the Quantitative Measures
3.4. Mentors’ Perceptions
Sparks empowers us and each other to do better. Disability people can do anything if they put their mind to it.
Way before I had low self-esteem, whenever I joined (Sparks) and met the others—it changed my confidence as a whole. Teaching the children gave me confidence.
I can now speak in public, before I could sing in public but not speak.
Sparks has developed our skills as teachers and musicians. It has taught to help our own wellbeing. Learning about yourself is important.
I’m proud of being a teacher and being part of this community.
When new mentors come in, it is important for us to be role models for them. They can be terrified, panicking, we show them they do not need to worry- watch me.
Project Sparks is like an adoptive family, we are very supportive of each other and stay connected we’re like one social bubble.
Education is important in these hard times, I’ve an amazing involvement with this community—we’ve learnt so much about ourselves.
My safe place is Sparks—I can chill and be myself. No one talks down to me
We have great craic, mess around with each other, we’re not always serious. We also have a good laugh with the children. I’m excited going to the schools.
I accept that I have a disability, but I would not change my life for the world. I don’t dwell on the past. It helps me teaching.
We’re open about our disabilities The kids in school see what people with disability can do. A student with no hands as a drummer.
After our project a pupil with a disability stood up and told his class about it. Doing what we had showed him.
Project Sparks is changing history; other teachers do not do inclusion. We’re changing the next generation to be more caring, more equal and to have more empathy.
Music is the ultimate form of expression for me. Music has been my whole life; told me how to talk.
Music is wellbeing—it makes you feel good about yourself.
My love of music grew three sizes and keeps on growing.
3.5. Pupils’ Perceptions of the Mentors
3.6. Teachers’ Perceptions of the Mentors
At the beginning, they (pupils) were quite shy and quite afraid to actually approach any of the leaders and whenever leaders would come over to chat, they were still quite shy. By the end, there was none of that at all.(T2)
They (mentors) were so tuned into the children and so enthusiastic.(T3)
(They had) a natural engagement with the children regardless of ability, or social background, or the varying sort of educational or social needs children may have, everybody was included.(T6)
They (mentors) told them, ’no matter what, if you think your question is silly, or if it’s going to be hurtful to us, just you ask it’. To give them that idea of what it was like to have maybe autism or to have a physical disability.(T5)
The facilitators (mentors) were so honest about their own situations, or their own difficulties, or their own needs, or requirements, there was an atmosphere of openness. They were able to tweak into the children’s mindset, ‘we’re all different, you’re different, you like different things, people are good at this, people are not so good at this, people get angry at this, people get not so angry’, you know, ‘we’re all different.’(T6)
What the children got of working with (the mentors) was unbelievable. It changed their whole perception of what they thought that these people could do.(T4)
One afternoon I did a circle time with a tag line of “someone who I would like to be like”. The children were all naming the leaders, the leaders with special needs.... And they were all able to give good reasons as to why: because she is always bright and happy, because he is an amazing drummer, because she is a great dancer.(T1)
4. Discussion
5. Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Institutional Review Board Statement
Informed Consent Statement
Data Availability Statement
Acknowledgments
Conflicts of Interest
References
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Leader Ratings | Before Training | After Training | T Values ^ | Effect Size Cohen’s D |
---|---|---|---|---|
Teaching Performance | ||||
Listen | 3.21 (1.12) | 4.21 (1.19) | −4.266 | 0.877 |
Communication | 2.79 (1.05) | 4.07 (1.21) | −7.870 | 0.611 |
Vocabulary | 2.14 (0.77) | 2.79 (0.80) | −3.798 ^ | 0.633 |
Tone | 3.14 (1.41) | 4.43 (1.22) | −5.828 | 0.825 |
Structure | 3.00 (1.11) | 4.07 (0.83) | −4.020 | 0.997 |
Non-verbal | 3.00 (1.18) | 4.14 (1.17) | −4.163 | 1.027 |
Total | 17.29 (5.54) | 23.71 (5.12) | −6.869 | 3.502 |
Music Performance | ||||
Accuracy/Fluency | 17.86 (6.14) | 23.93 (4.95) | −5.171 | 4.393 |
Technique | 18.14 (5.16) | 23.43 (3.65) | −4.196 | 4.714 |
Interpretation | 16.50 (6.67) | 24.86 (4.88) | −5.056 | 6.184 |
Total | 52.50 (13.49) | 72.21(12.29) | −6.189 | 11.919 |
Mentor Musical Efficacy | Leader Teaching Score | Leader Music Score | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Mentor self-esteem | Before After | 0.698 ** 0.744 ** | 0.000 0.682 ** | 0.404 0.738 ** |
Mentor musical efficacy | Before After | 0.590 * 0.737 ** | 0.529 0.678 ** | |
Leader teaching score | Before After | 0.454 0.679 ** |
Items | Before | After |
---|---|---|
What kind of teacher would you imagine a disabled person being? % rated excellent | 22.8% | 52.0% |
How smart or stupid do you imagine disabled people to be? | 7.65 (1.95) | 9.16 (1.59) |
How musically talented or not talented do you think disabled people are? | 7.87 (2.13) | 9.74 (0.66) |
How much would you want a disabled person to teach you? | 6.48 (2.57) | 9.40 (1.33) |
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McCarron, E.; Curran, E.; McConkey, R. Promoting the Wellbeing of Youth with Disabilities through Music Mentoring. Youth 2022, 2, 258-270. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth2030018
McCarron E, Curran E, McConkey R. Promoting the Wellbeing of Youth with Disabilities through Music Mentoring. Youth. 2022; 2(3):258-270. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth2030018
Chicago/Turabian StyleMcCarron, Eamonn, Erica Curran, and Roy McConkey. 2022. "Promoting the Wellbeing of Youth with Disabilities through Music Mentoring" Youth 2, no. 3: 258-270. https://doi.org/10.3390/youth2030018