We all know the benefits of making music socially, educationally and professionally. Over recent months it has been particularly gratifying to see academic studies officially backing up what we have always known but rarely had the documentation to prove.

In September 2013 undergraduate student Rie Davies and academics Dr Maddie Ohl and Dr Anne Manyande from the University of West London produced a paper demonstrating, ‘Making Music May Improve Young Children’s Behaviour’. Later that month a study was published from Ines Jentzsch, Anahit Mkrtchian and Nayantara Kansal of the University of St Andrews demonstrating ‘Improved Effectiveness of Performance Monitoring in Amateur Instrumental Musicians’. 

The facts and the evidence are at last stacking up to prove effective music education changes lives. By harnessing the power of music we can transform education and break down the barriers to entry so many still experience in and out of our classrooms.

The ethos of Mix Music Education has always been of multi sensory engagement. Our award winning JamPod™ program, our JamClassHD iPad suite and our ClassTaiko program were all developed with multiple sensory engagement at the core of the learning environment. Whilst this has created spaces students and teachers love working in, without realising it we had also empowered an often forgotten demographic in education, dyslexics.

In 2011 our Managing Director was invited to become a member of the British Dyslexia Association Music Committee. Following a long career in the classroom Dan was shocked to discover how easily a dyslexic student could be overlooked in music education.

In 2012 Dan wrote in the British Dyslexia Association’s book ‘‘Music, other Performing Arts and Dyslexia”: 

‘In all my years teaching in and out of the classroom, I wonder how many students I have taught who had dyslexia. I have a feeling the number will be substantially higher than I could possibly imagine. My thoughts then take me down a path I fear to tread. In my early years of teaching I can recall so many students who consistently could not grasp the reading of notation, or remember techniques we had covered in depth in the weeks before. They assured me that they were practising but I wondered how they could have been if they still failed to grasp the most basic concepts when others in their group were flying. I am ashamed to say that my knowledge of dyslexia at that time was so poor; I did not even consider this might be a factor in the students’ learning.

However my practices did not take me down a path of frustration with the student, the fault I felt lay with me: if they were not grasping a technique, I was letting them down. I believe whole-heartedly that we can adopt an approach which allows us to teach all our students in a way which raises understanding, attainment and enjoyment for everyone. Personally I have empowered this in my own teaching through assistive technology.

The ability to play in an ensemble, band or orchestra has always been the skill I most want to impart to my students. Developing any students ability to hear music and then process what can be extremely complex audio patterns can be a challenge. For dyslexic students this challenge may be close to impossible. What we need is a facility to separate these audio signals, thus allowing our students the opportunity to hear each part in isolation. We can then rebuild the passage of music systematically, allowing our students brains to process the audio they are hearing better and to aid the development of the musical working memory’  – To read the complete chapter you can purchase ‘Music, other Performing Arts and Dyslexia’ here.

Our unexpected journey has been the realisation of the effects music education can have on students with special educational needs, and in this case most notably dyslexia. By adopting simple techniques, we can effectively engage and teach not just our dyslexic students, but all in our classroom.

To find out more about music and dyslexia click here further information can also be found here. To find out more about the work of Mix Music Education click here.

Dan Jones will be delivering ‘Empowering ALL your students’ at the upcoming Music Mark conference, ‘Raising the Bar’.