Music curriculum for the students with visual impairment : developing a new music curriculum for grade 1 students with visual impairment

النوع : Mémoire

"All humans possess musical abilities": with these words Anderson and Laurence expressed their ideas in their book entitled Integrating Music into the Elementary Classroom (Anderson & Laurence, 2007, p.3). Since all human beings possess musical ability and have the right to learn music, students with visual impairment have also this right and the potential to learn music. When there was no Lebanese music curriculum for G1 students with visual impairment, developing new G1 music curriculum for these students became imperative to cater to their needs. The proposed curriculum was based on the hypothesis which incorporated the development of the social, psychomotor and cultural skills of the students with visual impairment and the purpose of the qualitative research. The discussion of the new curriculum and the individualized lesson plans of three case studies reflect what was discussed in current literature mainly: the criteria of writing music curriculum, various teaching methodologies for music, three different G1 music curricula from three countries, and the characteristics and the challenges of students with visual impairment in learning music. Finally, limitations and implications of this study were also included in the research. No wonder Doloris Cheslike mentioned in her article Music Instruction for the Visually Handicapped the following statement: "music, the universal language, is a bridge over the barrier of their handicap, loss of sight" (Cheslike, 1961, p. 100).