2020 Volume 2020 Issue 30 Pages 28-39
This study aimed to understand the process used by each pupil in a class for special needs education to learn joint music lessons along with regular classes. The subjects of the study were third-grade boys enrolled in a class for children with intellectual disabilities. Teaching contents included in this study were “bouncing rhythm” with warabe uta (traditional Japanese nursery rhymes). For research, we extracted portions of verbatim video recordings of the subjects’ activities that markedly exhibited the efforts from the subjects in understanding the “bouncing rhythm.” We then analyzed how the subjects recognized the teaching content. The analysis results revealed that the children learned the teaching contents by expressing the “bouncing rhythm” through trial and error and by experiencing the nuances of the rhythm through their bodies while repeatedly singing and playing during music lessons. The learning process of the subjects was elevated by their experience with traditional Japanese nursery rhymes in their life outside the music class.
The following approaches are suggested to be effective for children with intellectual disability to learn teaching contents in joint lessons (e.g., music): 1) providing educational materials that are derived from the children’s culture and connecting their life experience with learning; 2) incorporating physical and other activities as a means of complementing verbal recognition; and 3) sufficiently ensuring that the children perceive and understand the teaching contents by streamlining them.
These findings indicated that because the learning process of the children with special needs varies individually, measures that suit the learning process of each child are necessary. Furthermore, in exchange and joint learning, measures must be implemented not only to instruct the children, both with and without intellectual disabilities, in joint lessons but also consider individual cognitive development of children with special needs.
