For this post, we connected with another student in the PIDP 3100 course to discuss trends in our fields and in adult education in general. I was pleased to be partnered with my VCC Music colleague Dr Emily Logan, with whom I have worked closely in our home department.

For us, and indeed most departments at VCC, Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and accessibility have been big topics of discussion. Last term, for example, we invited VCC Disability Services to conduct a training session for Music faculty. The meeting was well-attended, and faculty were able to ask a lot of questions pertaining specifically to the courses they teach. I found the following UDL Guidelines for curriculum development infographic to be a helpful summary of the approach:

image: https://www.algonquincollege.com/lts/udl/the-how/

But Emily and I also discussed another issue that has been coming up in our field: is musicianship (aural skills and ear training) education in music programs inherently ableist? How do we work with neurodiverse students whose auditory processing abilities may be different from their peers? Diversity in the music classroom is a perennial topic, though much of the discussion largely focusses on issues of cultural representation in the musical examples used. The Facebook group Decolonizing the Music Room (DMTR) is a helpful resource and community in this regard . Yet I have not heard a lot of discussion about the accessibility issues with music skills courses, in which all students are essentially expected to listen and hear the same way. I found several articles outlining how disability is a highly neglected topic in music education, and indeed prevents many prospective music students from accessing an education.

I also found this YouTube presentation, “Confronting Ableism in Music Education” by Brian N. Weidner and Becca Mattson, which uses Becca’s experience as a disabled music student to outline some best practices for music programs.

This is certainly an area that needs much further development, discussion, and training in our field, and I look forward to continuing this conversation with my colleagues.