Although there are numerous projects were young people with and without disabilities play music together, inclusive music education usually uses conventional instruments (Gerland 2016). This may be surprising, as to play a conventional instrument may is a high barrier for children with physical and physical limitations. In contrast, sensor-based digital music devices may offer potential in new forms of creative expression and identity (Partti, Sidsel 2010, Brown, Hansen 2014, Riley 2013). In this manner creative artists have already recognized the potential of digitalization for their creative work. Moreover many students with physical impairments already use electronic devices to cope with everyday life, like e-wheelchair, environmental control or even smart home tools.
In our paper we reflect upon results from the first phase of our project “be_smart” (Importance of specific music apps for participation of young people with complex disabilities in cultural education). The project is funded by Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Germany) and runs from Oct 2017 to Sept 2021. The basic assumption of the project is that digitalization holds great potential for participation in cultural education, in particular for people with complex and severe disabilities, but also new barriers and risks of exclusion.
From a theoretical point of view, be_smart is situated in the area of tension between praxeological approaches in sociology and cultural studies, educational theory concepts on educational justice and (cultural) participation. With Wulf et al. (see 2007, 2013) there is a theoretical framework for understanding the social in physical practices and performative creations in dealing with the material environment and in social situations (see Reckwitz 2003). A special challenge is "to explicate the implicit, usually unconscious symbolic orders and codes and horizons of meaning that are expressed in different human practices [...] and enable them" (Reckwitz 2004, 2). Social practices are on the one hand physically bound, on the other hand linked with artifacts and have a specific, material dimension. In educational contexts, it is therefore important to "consider the culturally specific manners of dealing with the corresponding artefacts in the context of which a subjectivation takes place" (Reckwitz 2008,139). Nohl calls socio-physical collectives in which people and things are (mutually) tuned to conjunctive transaction spaces (see Nohl 2011, 169ff.). In doing so, he distinguishes knowledge-learning and ability-learning from educational processes in the narrower sense as the emergence of transaction spaces of people and things. For the study of music pedagogical practice, this approach seems particularly fruitful. He points out that in order to explore such educational processes in the interplay between humans and things, observable practices must be analyzed below namable, institutionalized actions. This requires research methods that reduce the premature translation of observable practice into linguistic symbols.
The crucial question within the project is therefore: Which potentials and challenges offer music apps for the preservation and expansion of cultural participation of youth and young adults with complex disability?
Research design of theo project follows an explorative idea and uses grounded theory methodolgy: Beginning with qualitative telephone interviews with experts in the field.
