‘Sounds of Intent’: a curriculum framework for

making music with children and young people, including those with visual impairment

Adam Ockelford (University of Roehampton)Graham Welch (Institute of Education)

Evangelos Himonides (Institute of Education)Sally Zimmermann (Royal National Institute of Blind

People)

Why ‘Sounds of Intent’?

Initially, for young people like Abigail

Learning difficulties

PMLD - functioning as though in the first –3 to 12 months of ‘neurotypical’ development

SLD – functioning as though in the 12-30 months of ‘neurotypical’ development

MLD – functioning as though in the first 30+ months of ‘neurotypical’ development

autism

Approach

• Begin at the beginning - with observations of children and young people engaging (or failing to engage) in musical activity

• Many 100s of observations with different practitioners in different settings

• Examples …

Examples of observations 1

• Abigail sits motionless in her chair. Her teacher approaches and plays a cymbal with a soft beater, gently at first, and then more loudly, in front of her and then near to each ear. Abigail does not appear to react.

• Rosina is lying in the ‘Little Room’, vocalising in an almost constant drone. Occasionally a sudden movement of her right arm knocks her hand against a bell. Each time, she smiles and her vocalising briefly turns into a laugh.

Examples of observations 2

• Taybah brushes her left hand against the strings of guitar that someone is holding near to her. There is a pause and then she raises her hand and brushes the strings again, and then for a third time.

• Wendy giggles when people repeat patterns of syllables to her such as ‘ma ma ma ma ma’, ‘da da da da da’, or ‘ba ba ba ba ba’’.

• Carol copies simple patterns of vocalisation – imitating the ups and downs of her speech and language therapist’s voice.

Examples of observations 3

• Emily makes up songs with short phrases that sound connected – and when her teacher listened carefully to a recording that she had made of Emily’s singing, she noticed that one phrase often started more or less where the other one left off.

• Faisal has severe learning difficulties and hemiplegia. He plays the keyboard with his left hand only, learning material by ear. He has recently joined the school’s band, and has found a role for himself playing the bass parts. Now he not only picks up on what the left hand of the other keyboard player is doing, but he has started to improvising around the harmonies too.

The literature on ‘typical’ early musical development

• H. Moog (1968/1976)• W. Kessen, J. Levine & K. Wendrich

(1979)• W. J. Dowling (1982)• D. Hargreaves (1986)• C. Fassbender (1996)• M. and H. Papoušek (1996)• J.-P. Lecanuet (1996)• S. Malloch (1999/2000)• S. Trehub and T. Nakata (2001/2002)• C. Trevarthen (2002)

‘Zygonic’ theory

• A theory of how music ‘makes sense’ through referring to itself – through repetition – forming a ‘metaphorical narrative in sound’

(Ockelford, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2012)

Led to the conceptualisation

of six stages in musical

development …

1. ‘Blooming, buzzing confusion’

2. ‘Sound, silence and variation’

3. ‘Relationships, repetition and regularity’

4. ‘Groups, links and transformations’

5. ‘Structures, frameworks and probabilities’

6. ‘Articulating the narrative metaphor’

Types of engagement with music

• Reactive

(listening and responding to sounds)• Proactive (causing, creating and

controlling sounds)• Interactive (participation in the context

of others)

The Reactive Domain

The Proactive Domain

The Interactive Domain

Abigail

Level 3 (R, P, and I)

Romy

Level 4 (R, P, and I)

Becky

Level ?

Nick

Level ?

Derek

Level 5 (R, P, I)

Recent research underpinning the new

websiteEvangeline Cheng (PhD thesis, IoE, 2011)

Research

Ockelford, A., Welch, G., Jewell-Gore, L., Cheng, E., Vogiatzoglou, A. and Himonides, E. (2011) ‘Sounds of Intent, Phase 2: approaches to the quantification of music-developmental data pertaining to children with complex needs’, European Journal of Special Needs Education, 26(2), 177–199.

Research

Ockelford, et al., 2011

Research

Ockelfordet al.,2011

The power of information!

• Teachers/therapists/parents can track individual pupil’s progress

• You can compare the effectiveness of different approaches

• You can compare how well different cohorts of pupils react to different interventions

• We can all share ideas that work …• … and improve provision for all