World Drumming for Children with Autism: Collaborative Learning In and Through the Arts

School/University partnerships where local school children and college students collaborate on musical projects make public schools and universities stronger. This paper chronicles collaboration where music education majors and young children with autism worked side-by-side in a drum circle to generate original musical ideas and express personal emotions, and to perform as a soloist and as part of a group.
The goals and objectives included providing an experience in drumming that utilized culturally relevant rhythms from the African, Brazilian, and Latino traditions indigenous to the heritages of the children who participated. To prepare, music education students attended training with an expert in music experiences for children with autism. They also had in-class training in world drumming. Then, for six weeks, undergraduate music education majors from Westminster Choir College in suburban Princeton, New Jersey traveled to three elementary schools in nearby Trenton, a depressed urban center near the college campus, and joined elementary students with autism in a drum circle. Connecting to the literature on communities of practice as as well as to the social-learning theories of Vygotsky, collaboration provided opportunity for composition and improvisation by both children and college students. Together, they learned to make creative choices, explore creative ideas, concepts, and share feelings that influence musicians’ work.
Using qualitative techniques of arts-based research and narrative, the assessment examined the outcomes of this program and its impact on the children with autism and on the music education students. Connecting to the program goals and objectives, research questions considered the program`s impact on the development of personal identity, student musicianship, self-confidence through solo and group performance, and creativity evidenced by original compositions and improvisations. The authors concluded that working cooperatively in a community of practice, the children with autism learned how to appropriately express their own ideas and feelings, participate in making music, listen purposefully to music, and perform music to help shape and form their personal identity. For them, the experience provided a crosswalk between language literacy and musical literacy. For the college music education students, the experience changed perceptions about the possibilities in music education for children with autism, and created a bond that will better prepare them for teaching students with special needs when they become in-service music teachers.