Inclusion of a music learner with ASD through play-full intersubjectivity

Fun through outward play and humor: From older brother to teacher-helper

The choral ensemble included Jad (aged 16) and his sister Mya (aged 6). Jad had previously sung in another choral ensemble with Ann (11) who began to attend rehearsals of this choir in Session 4. Jad had not previously met the others. Initially, Jad approached only his little sister Mya, playfully and voluntarily offering to “guide and support . . . so that the [song] could progress to a successful culmination without interruption” (Marsh, 2008, p. 148). In the first three sessions, he seemed to empathetically attune to Mya’s musical agency. Session 4 began in the same way:

Jad addressed Mya as he heard and saw her struggle: “Listen”, modeling her vocal line in falsetto, using Curwen hand signs to show pitch, leaning down to her mouth. As others worked out their parts together, he faced Mya and guided her through rote learning of her vocal line, quietly emerging in the background of musical working-outs and problem-solving.

Then Ann, his former choral peer, arrived. Her agentive and energetic responses during warmup sessions included her playful interactions with Jad. In transitions, he leaned over to Mya or Ann and, for the first time, initiated joking dialogue, with laughter. After ten minutes, he interacted exclusively with Ann in transitions. Ann’s arrival had changed the learning environment.

In this heightened social environment, Jad began to initiate his musical agency by assuming a teacher-helper role (Hogle, 2018a, 2018b) with others, initially only with two other six-year-olds. “I can help you with yours, Zoe!” smiling at her. “Yea!” cried Zoe, smiling at Jad. He then smiled at Zoe and made eye contact. Jad then began to monitor needs of young children, offering his changed voice in falsetto as he peer-scaffolded, which prompted warm laughter from younger learners and served to encourage his subsequent use of falsetto.

Ann and Mya offered to sing a descant part. But Mya was two feet shorter than Ann, making it hard to hear. Jad had an idea. He lifted Mya up and put her on top of a stool next to Ann. Rollicking laughter permeated the ensemble. “You’re tall now!” (Session 4)

Zoe looked up at Jad, smiling, Ann giggled. He smiled and made eye contact with Zoe, lip-syncing the soprano part as they sang. Zoe laughed at him, making continuous eye contact with him. (Session 6)

In the next vignette from Session 8, Jad’s jovial and playful leadership, his self-appointed role as teacher, infused with musical and personal agency, encouraged each ensemble member to freely share his or her unique voice. He brought forth safety through his jokes, smiles, and musical playfulness along with musical unity and an intuitive scaffolding of success. I felt a lovely moment of sharing that welcomed, embraced, and cherished differences:

I told Jad he was welcome to sing in his bass range, rather than falsetto. He began to try a bit as an example and several of the girls started to sing with him, singing as low as they could. He grinned and looked away with a smile. Giggles filled the room. Later, Jad chose to begin his singing in falsetto as part of one of the groups. Although laughter interspersed along with the initial singing, the choristers sang successfully. (Session 8)

After the last session, Jad and I mused informally about his experiences in the group. Jad shared:

It was much more fun to have a sibling of mine being part of my choir. It felt like I was bringing her up, like I was making her feel comfortable. It felt different than other choirs I’ve been in, when kids were all around my own age. I guess I felt more like a leader with the younger kids there. I just wanted to help them. (Jad’s comment after Session 14)

Family creates inward comfort: Fostering empathetic responses

In Session 10, 12-year-old Pam shared: “It feels like singing with family. We have a special togetherness”. Family became another of the children’s reified terms. Family interactions can be comfortable, accepting, and understanding, shared through behaviors of laughing, smiling, and playful response to others (M. S. Barrett & Smigiel, 2007; Blair, 2009; Kenny, 2014). As in Gray and Feldman’s (2004) description of multiage learners, each of the learners often functioned like siblings as peer learning dialogues increased throughout rehearsals. Jellison et al. (2017) explain that very young children instinctively cooperate, help, and teach one another, engaging in prosocial behaviors through positive peer-assisted learning activities. Within this familial multiage context, younger and less-experienced learners initially and immediately attuned to Jad, seeking scaffolding when they felt they needed assistance in working toward shared performance goals.

In the first two sessions, multiple learners initiated and maintained continual eye gaze toward Jad as a perceived more knowledgeable other (Vygotsky, 1978), even though he did not initially reciprocate. In Session 3, he began to respond to others with brief eye contact, first with his 6-year-old sister Mya, then with other 6-year-olds, the youngest of the participants. In this session, multiple learners began to listen to and observe Jad as legitimate peripheral participants (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Marsh, 2008), facing or locating their bodies in closer proximity to him, imitating his body movements, or displaying challenged pitch through hand signs while seeking musically intersubjective congruence with him. It seemed that their intersubjective attunement as learner-helpers drew Jad out as teacher-helper (Hogle, 2018a, 2018b), agentively reorganizing the intersubjective field as they made meaning:

As Zoe worked with manipulatives to create a rhythmic composition, she made continual eye contact with Jad, looking to him as her teacher, within a small group of learners. When it became time to enact the rhythm, Jad began to point to the rhythms she had chosen, setting a tempo appropriate for her success. He had developed into a teacher-helper, a scaffolder of learning (Session 6).

Jad asked Mya, “Do you want to practice your verse with Zoe just one more time?” Mya nodded to Jad and the two six-year-olds faced one another to practice a cappella. Jad mouthed the words as he listened and corrected (Session 7).

Later, we began to sight-sing a new piece from staff notation. Jad agentively taught three six-year-olds as he sought intersubjectivity with the six-year olds.

The small ensemble successfully sang the first verse, as Jad joined the younger children in his falsetto, assisting them in a unison pitch.

Jad is continually jumping in, initiating social contact and interaction by explicitly becoming a teacher, often using Socratic dialogue and modeling, leading younger beginners. (Teacher-researcher journal).

In Session 8, instead of conducting, I played the piano. Jad grabbed Mya’s hands as they sang, helping her with choreography. At first, he continually leaned down to hear her, smiling. Then, he moved to face the choir. Eyes turned to Jad. . .as director. At one point, he forgot a particular gesture, made a face, and laughed as four choristers joined his laughter. Mya began to drift to another part. Jad immediately leaned over and used Curwen hand signs to scaffold her part as her eyes fixed on him. Then, he grabbed her hands, swaying on the beat hand in hand as the ensemble sang. He reacted afterward with a bow, sat down, and all smiled.

I remember when I conducted the group. I felt really comfortable, so I felt like I was good at that. But I never did that in other choirs. (Jad’s comment after Session 14)

Later, Jad began to figure out his vocal part.

In Session 10, we needed to review the concept behind the notation of a dotted half note before looking at the next piece, as six-year-old Tom had been absent when we talked about this. I had put notation for our upcoming piece on the whiteboard. Jad remarked, “Yeah, let’s help Tom out”. The learners tapped and counted. Jad stepped back and gestured to the younger children with his hands to welcome their answer, “How many taps did this one get?” Tom looked at Jad and then at the board. Jad spoke up, “Want me to answer?”

I quickly offered, “Want to try it again and see if you can figure it out?” Zoe jumped up and down, shouting, “Yeah!” Mya joined her and grabbed her hands. Jad offered, “Listen, ta-a-a” and tapped his foot three times as he sang. The younger children imitated him. Tom proclaimed, “Three!” Jad said, “Right! How about these guys?” as he gestured to half notes. Zoe shouted, “Two!” Jad was clearly the teacher at the moment.

In Session 11, Mya was missing, yet Jad initiated eye contact and communication with others. 13-year-old Pam exclaimed, “I have a LOT of work!” Jad tilted forward in front of her face, hands still in pockets, making eye contact. She smiled and bowed also, smirking at him. He then gestured to Tom to stand with the rest of the choir, smiled, then squatted low and smiled again, maintaining eye contact with him.

It was a smaller group than my other choirs and there was a different kind of pressure to it. It felt like it wasn’t a structured pace and you could go with the flow of things. It felt different, it felt less stressful. We could just learn as we go. I was way, way more comfortable. I know I made everyone laugh. It honestly just happened. I think I want to do music therapy or maybe be a music teacher. I might think about working with kids because having younger kids in this choir was a really fun time for me. (Jad’s comment after Session 14)

Musical agency within music-making

Because Jad often sang a bass part alone and he read notation fluently, Jad frequently found himself with rehearsal time to make choices about his own self-regulated activity. He often maintained his own agentic flow (Csikszentmihalyi, 1990), quietly fitting in his own part while others were singing, either audibly improvising harmonic ideas or his own part quietly. He verbally expressed his musical agency by volunteering for a solo after multiple instances of being peer-assigned or initiating a teacher-helper role. Learners responded with enthusiastic applause for both his volunteering and subsequent solo (Session 6).

In nearly every singing moment, Jad swayed to the beat. He rarely made eye contact with me as conductor, but matched his movement in response to tempo, regulating his interpersonal, emotional, relational synchronization through his rhythmic movement to the music. This movement became intersubjective, communicative movement as a learner-helper (Hogle, 2018b). Jad frequently represented pitch iconically, using Curwen hand signs in rhythm, or approximating conducting beat patterns, aiding younger peers. Jad’s movement as expression of musical agency contagiously spread to other members of the ensemble, fostering their own musical agency and accurate singing.

At times, Jad engaged in similar “hiding” behaviors I had witnessed in our earlier shared high-school choral learning context. Interestingly, they each took place in Sessions 7–9, at the height of his teacher-helper activity. In these sessions, he occasionally left the room to blow his nose or check his phone. In three instances, he put his hood over his face as he had done in the high-school choir setting, but immediately followed this short moment with pulling it off and actively engaging in peer scaffolding. In Session 7, self-evaluative group discussion that included his loud, emotional response preceded his “hiding”. In Sessions 8 and 9, multiple learners had initiated humorous and playful verbal interactions with Jad, making him the focus of their social attention. It seemed that his need to self-regulate a socio-emotional role of teacher-helper required him to occasionally remove himself from heightened social interaction.

Play-full learning context

In the social constructivist learning context of this study, the multiage nature of the ensemble fostered peer scaffolding, which flourished and became central to the culture of the ensemble (Hogle, 2018a, 2018b). Adamek and Darrow (2018) suggest that learners with ASD should be offered choices and flexible outcomes, with chances to serve as leaders and follow leads of others in interactive peer learning activities. These ideas align with social constructivist music education practices utilized within the ensemble.

Perhaps Jad described his experience as fun because much of what happened in this music education context could be compared with what children naturally do when they teach one another music on playgrounds or in other settings where adults are not present (e.g., Harwood & Marsh, 2012; Kullenberg & Pramling, 2016; Marsh, 2008; Salvador & Corbett, 2016). Many of the social constructivist experiences shared by participants resembled those of play: agentive personal goal setting, spontaneous, active, and voluntary engagement, and attention to a dynamic and flexible process rather than a rigid outcome or product. Although social play development is typically affected by ASD, learners with this exceptionality can develop agency and motivation from these types of experiences with play-full and enjoyable characteristics (Jordan, 2003).

Within play-like music learning experiences, learners often laughed as Jad used sporadic humor in interactions; he increasingly sought further positive responses with humorous verbal and nonverbal communication. He then voluntarily enacted his role as teacher-helper, outwardly focused and empathetically attuned to the learning needs of others, usually within playful expressions toward very young and responsive learners. As he did so, I noticed cyclically increased playground behavior across the ensemble, as Campbell (2010) describes: emotional responses of “smiles, laughs, “arms around”, and animated, buoyant expressions” (p. 29) and what Davis (2013) observed: “laughter, spontaneous dancing and physical engagement. . . intensified through expressive singing and visual connection with classmates to sing and move together in unison” (p. 34).

The ensemble classroom became a playground of working out musical problems within largely nonverbal peer scaffolding moments as learners sang. Functioning as a community of learners (Collins, 2006; Green, 2009), all participants shifted and varied their roles as resources to others, depending on their understanding of activities (Lai & Law, 2006; Rogoff et al., 1996). As in a healthy family environment, learners immediately accepted Jad, physically and metaphorically looking to him as a competent leader. In the first sessions, children initially and pervasively looked to Jad for assistance while, simultaneously, he outwardly attuned only to his little sister. By Session 4, Jad had become comfortable enough to respond to children other than his sister, initially communicating only with very young children and Ann, a friendly peer colleague who joined the ensemble. Jad described this ensemble environment as “comfortable” and “less stressful”, indicating his perceived comparison with his other choral ensemble experiences, repeatedly acknowledging that it was his “comfort” that enabled him to engage differently in this multiage choral setting.

Intersubjectivity and empathy: Musical synchronization to another

In this study, participants immediately attuned to Jad in the first two sessions, aiming to accurately synchronize their musical sound and physical movement with his as they worked toward shared musical goals, seeking cognitive and affective intersubjectivity with Jad during singing experiences. In addition, participants mirrored Jad’s facial expressions, gestures, and musical expressions between music-making interactions. By initiating and seeking musical, cognitive, and affective intersubjectivity with Jad, children seemed to intuitively and empathetically respond to Jad’s neurodiversity with acceptance and welcome, seeing him as a more knowledgeable other (Vygotsky, 1978) rather than a deficient peer. They seemed to create a secure, welcoming, and supportive environment in which Jad could feel “comfortable”. He then began to take on the role of teacher-helper with participants other than his little sister. By Session 4, Jad had responded to each participant with eye contact and humorous, play-full interactions, both verbal and nonverbal.

Within peer scaffolding experiences, Jad increasingly and empathetically attuned to the musical agency of each child, first with his sister, then with young children, then with each participant in the ensemble. As a teacher-helper, his heightened cognitive empathy and intersubjectivity surrounding shared musical goals included affective intersubjectivity as he attuned to affective responses of other children, particularly as they made mistakes or displayed learning needs. Attuning to their musical agency, Jad seemed to experience a balanced empathy toward other children, with emotional awareness of their needs as he responded with learning assistance or emotional encouragement, once his comfort had been established through playful peer scaffolding experiences in which they looked to him for assistance and responded positively to his communication.

J. R. Barrett (2014) suggests that “case study reports can aptly convey the multifaceted ecologies of life in music classrooms” (p. 114). Jad’s story offers an opportunity for readers to consider environments and experiences in which musical learners with ASD might flourish. As others (Green, 2009; Marsh, 2008; Wiggins, 2016) have also found, inclusive approaches that enable playful, collaborative small group learning experiences with flexible outcomes, abundant choices, and opportunity for peer scaffolding can aid with social communication skills and self-efficacy, areas of desired improvement for many learners with ASD. Because peer-to-peer learning requires attuned synchronicity in nonverbal and musical communication for musical success, these typical social constructivist music education experiences can help create supportive, safe learning environments for all to feel valued and honored. In learners with ASD, anxiety can be curtailed within this type of environment, as relationships develop through scaffolded interactions that facilitate musical attunement and empathy (Geretsegger et al., 2015). In Jad’s case, improvisatory and flexible learning outcomes, a characteristic of musical play (M. S. Barrett, 2016), also contributed to his less stressful feeling of an inclusive learning environment, fostering growth of his empathy and intersubjectivity.

Although Jad’s experience in the earlier high-school setting included similar small group learning opportunities, peers seemed to attune to musical accuracy within performance deadlines with a focus on cognitive intersubjectivity alone, disregarding one another’s affective states or needs for affective intersubjectivity. To Jad, this felt more stressful, perhaps overwhelmed by unconscious empathic responses toward stress of others, and he frequently hid from others in the ensemble, even removing himself from the room. In contrast, it appeared that Jad’s anxiety lessened as younger children initially engaged with him as a knowledgeable teacher-helper in the multiage ensemble, through play, humor, emotional regard, and honor.

Therefore, perhaps when like-aged peers interact in a symmetrical family of learners, fun must dominate in play-full learning experiences, enhancing musical agency in the process. In this study, musical products were rarely improvisational, but musical learning interactions became highly improvisational and play-oriented through learner choices and flexible rehearsal outcomes, as younger peers fostered continual interaction with a learner with ASD by functioning as learner-helpers, seeking his help. As learners unite in co-creating shared musical goals within repertoire learning experiences, sharing attunement to both musical products and affect with musical and movement-based intersubjective communication, collaborative learning may become improvisational space in which learners with ASD might flourish in musical ways.