The Benefits of Music Education on Academic, Behavioral, and Communicative Skills with Middle School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Music education has an important place for students with special needs. Through community based arts education programs, student benefits range from social to academic. The problem is that too often music education, among arts programs, is not taught in special education classrooms. The purpose of this study was to identify benefits that music education has on students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), focusing specifically on academic, behavioral, and communicative skills. A review of the literature revealed that music is beneficial to students in a variety of ways, when they are provided the opportunity to engage in music education. Through this qualitative study, data were collected from teachers, community based master teachers, and middle school students, over a 9-week residency art programs in a public elementary/middle school in Northern California. Preliminary findings identified that music education is beneficial to students with ASD in the areas of academics, behavior, and communicative skills. Key Words: music education, academics, behavior, communication, special education, Autism Spectrum Disorde

The art of place-making on Wurundjeri Country today

This thesis moves through an old stony part of south-east Australia where Merri Creek trickles along a crack in the hardened urbanised lava flow of Melbourne’s north. I connect as a non- Indigenous woman with the First Nations Wurundjeri people here. Together we acknowledge Wurundjeri Country in the thesis through its fragmented grasslands, valleys and the remnants of indigenous plants and animals including reedy Phragmites and elusive Golden Sun Moths. In Australia, ‘Country’ with a capital ‘C’, doesn’t simply refer to creeks, rocky outcrops, or hills in ‘landscape’ terms. Rather, ‘Country’ describes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ family origins and associations with particular places and embraces spiritual, physical, social and cultural connections. The thesis began in the contemporary contact zone from relationships between Merri Creek Management Committee where I work, and Wurundjeri Tribe Land Compensation and Cultural Heritage Council. This thesis was planned with the Wurundjeri people I worked with. Noticing the lack of published work about Wurundjeri Country today motivated some of us who were working together to shape the necessary intercultural agreements so I could address the issues carefully in this academic context. We designed the thesis as a storying of the things we saw, did and made that connected us to Wurundjeri Country. The overarching research question between us became: ‘How do we see, feel and identify Wurundjeri Country in a contact zone of cultural differences, in a largely urbanised place?’ The formal study positioned me as researcher and therefore created a different relationship for Wurundjeri people and me. As researcher, I had to sharpen my attention to colonisation, my non-Indigeneity, and concerns regarding representation and the risks involved, such as the production of deficit narratives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Within the developing thesis, I began to recognise how layers of volatility contained unexpected possibilities in a contact zone of differences, boundaries, and responsibilities. I have used a relational, emergent and decolonising approach to read the materiality of Country and its objects, creatures, rocks, bark, feathers, plants and ochre. The product is a ‘deep map’ of Wurundjeri Country that includes our various ‘makings’, including necklaces, bouquets, shields and skirts, and two recorded conversations with two Wurundjeri leaders. This is all expressed alongside my etchings, letter writing, and journaling. The emergent deep map is ‘a/r/tographic’ in the sense that it combines art, research, teaching, writing, talking, making, feeling, and learning (Springgay et al., 2005). The concept of ‘the art of place-making’ produces this contemporary deep map of Wurundjeri Country with its intercultural volatilities as well as the unpredictable qualities of making, talking, and remembering. Findings unfolded by constantly going to and fro with people, ideas, places, materials and sharing draft versions of the text. A commitment to motion and a multiplicity of methods is shown to be a vital part of ethical practice in the contact zone, a momentum which built rich exchanges here and is applicable to knowing Country at the cultural interface elsewhere in Australia. In all these ways, ‘antiphonal calling’ has become the signature of this thesis. While antiphonal calling ordinarily refers to vocalising between birds or interacting choirs, here, antiphonal calling lies within intercultural encounters, and with Country. My antiphonal methodology is relational geologically, ancestrally, archivally, contemporarily, and seasonally. The antiphonal prism calls between intercultural spaces to connect in multiple ways with the crying, singing, and feeling that continues to make Wurundjeri Country knowable today

Music Education and Its Impact on Students with Special Needs

Using music in a setting that includes students with special needs can have an effect on student communication and socialization. A review of the literature indicates that little is known about the effect of music on student\u27s academic performance and behavior. Overall the research indicates that using music in a classroom, particularly with children with special needs has a positive effect on communication and socialization. Additional studies are needed to document the effect of music on student learning

The Benefits of Music Education on Academic, Behavioral, and Communicative Skills with Middle School Students with Autism Spectrum Disorder

Music education has an important place for students with special needs. Through community based arts education programs, student benefits range from social to academic. The problem is that too often music education, among arts programs, is not taught in special education classrooms. The purpose of this study was to identify benefits that music education has on students with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), focusing specifically on academic, behavioral, and communicative skills. A review of the literature revealed that music is beneficial to students in a variety of ways, when they are provided the opportunity to engage in music education. Through this qualitative study, data were collected from teachers, community based master teachers, and middle school students, over a 9-week residency art programs in a public elementary/middle school in Northern California. Results identified that music education is beneficial to students with ASD in the areas of academics, behavior, and communicative skills

The impact of regulation on market quality

This dissertation studies the impact of market structure changes on market efficiency and integrity. Thematically, it is concerned with the actual behaviour of market participants and their associated impact on key market variables such as the degree of liquidity, the size of trading costs, the quality of price discovery and the integrity of the market itself. The fundamental changes to the trading landscape brought about by fragmentation have significantly changed the way that many traders execute transactions. In light of the vast and complex changes that have recently occurred in markets, this thesis conducts an empirical investigation of these microstructure issues. These studies contribute to the understanding of modern markets, the health of which is integral for effective price discovery and liquidity provision. The four studies in this dissertation examine several key market microstructure issues, including: causes of the pre-bid price run-up ahead of takeover announcements; the impact high frequency trading has on market efficiency and integrity; and the effect of both the introduction and regulation of dark trading. The outcomes of these studies are comprehensively discussed and their contributions to the field are duly noted. Given the significant and rapid change occurring in current equity markets, the findings in this dissertation are relevant for market practitioners, exchange venue designers, and market regulators

NALNET book system: Cost benefit study

The goals of the NASA's library network system, NALNET, the functions of the current book system, the products and services of a book system required by NASA Center libraries, and the characteristics of a system that would best supply those products and services were assessed. Emphasis was placed on determining the most cost effective means of meeting NASA's requirements for an automated book system. Various operating modes were examined including the current STIMS file, the PUBFILE, developing software improvements for products as appropriate to the Center needs, and obtaining cataloging and products from the bibliographic utilities including at least OCLC, RLIN, BNA, and STIF. It is recommended that NALNET operate under the STIMS file mode and obtain cataloging and products from the bibliographic utilities. The recommendations are based on the premise that given the current state of the art in library automation it is not cost effective for NASA to maintain a full range of cataloging services on its own system. The bibliographic utilities can support higher quality systems with a greater range of services at a lower total cost

SN 2006bt: A Perplexing, Troublesome, and Possibly Misleading Type Ia Supernova

SN 2006bt displays characteristics unlike those of any other known Type Ia supernova (SN Ia). We present optical light curves and spectra of SN 2006bt which demonstrate the peculiar nature of this object. SN 2006bt has broad, slowly declining light curves indicative of a hot, high-luminosity SN, but lacks a prominent second maximum in the i band as do low-luminosity SNe Ia. Its spectra are similar to those of low-luminosity SNe Ia, containing features that are only present in cool SN photospheres. Light-curve fitting methods suggest that SN 2006bt is reddened by a significant amount of dust; however, it occurred in the outskirts of its early-type host galaxy and has no strong Na D absorption in any of its spectra, suggesting a negligible amount of host-galaxy dust absorption. C II is possibly detected in our pre-maximum spectra, but at a much lower velocity than other elements. The progenitor was likely very old, being a member of the halo population of a galaxy that shows no signs of recent star formation. SNe Ia have been very successfully modeled as a one-parameter family, and this is fundamental to their use as cosmological distance indicators. SN 2006bt is a challenge to that picture, yet its relatively normal light curves allowed SN 2006bt to be included in cosmological analyses. We generate mock SN Ia datasets which indicate that contamination by similar objects will both increase the scatter of a SN Ia Hubble diagram and systematically bias measurements of cosmological parameters. However, spectra and rest-frame i-band light curves should provide a definitive way to identify and eliminate such objects.Comment: ApJ, accepted. 13 pages, 13 figure

Dust devils on Mars: Effects of surface roughness on particle threshold

Abstract not available