Introduction
Care has become the focus for recent scholarship in music education with the publication of a book by Hendricks, Compassionate music teaching (Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2018) and latterly The Oxford handbook of care in music education (Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2023b; for other examples in education and music education, see Churchill & Hall, Reference CHURCHILL, HALL and Hendricks2025 on ‘deaf music’; Baker, Reference BAKER and Hendricks2023; Benjamins Reference BENJAMINS and Hendricks2025 on community music; Hel, Reference HEL and Olsaretti2018; Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS, Hendricks and Boyce-Tillman2021; Hendricks & Boyce-Tillman, Reference HENDRICKS and BOYCE-TILLMAN2021; Hourigan, Reference HOURIGAN and Hendricks2025; Howard, Reference HOWARD2022 on choral settings; Jackson, Reference JACKSON2025 on schools; Lehmberg & Fung, Reference LEHMBERG, FUNG and Hendricks2025 on older adults; Rabin, Reference RABIN2021 on online teaching; and Silverman, Reference SILVERMAN2012). Care in music education is sometimes misunderstood as simple kindness or lowering expectations: ‘For so long, music educators took for granted a teacher-led, directive approach to educating students in music, an approach which rarely or never questioned the superiority of the teacher’s knowledge of appropriate curriculum content, and of how to deliver that content through pedagogy’ (Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2023b, p. xvi). A more empowering conceptualization of care involves teachers and their pupils forging authentic relationships by interacting as co-learners, sharing their experiences and understandings, and negotiating goals (ibid.). Care in the music participation of disabled learners can occur within the formality of mainstream or special schools, or within the instrumental teaching studio, but it can also be integral to music-making facilitated in communities. It is something music educators and music facilitators might ponder in relation to their work with every music learner or participant encountered. This includes children and adults, and those with and without disabilities. Furthermore, understanding care means consideration of the disabled learner’s life outside the teaching room, which impacts on care within it. Care is also shaped by the disabled person’s past experiences, so, in that sense, it is biographical and historical, since confidence and self-esteem can sometimes play a part in learning and musical experience.
For purposes of positionality, it is important to state that this article is written by a non-disabled academic who has researched disability and music for over ten years leading to a professional and friendship network of disabled people. Its first part (‘Background’) provides necessary context for the ensuing discussion. It explores the causes and categories of disability, but also how published disability models (e.g., Barnes & Mercer, Reference BARNES and MERCER2004; Beaudry, Reference BEAUDRY, Cureton and Wasserman2019; Pickard, Reference PICKARD2021; Purtell, Reference PURTELL and Williams2013; Smart, Reference SMART, Riggar and Maki2004) and the terms used in relation to people with disabilities contextualise their care. The second part of this article (‘Discussion’) starts by explaining why there is a pressing need to spotlight care in music education in general terms, but also why this may be pressing when engaged in music activities with those who have disabilities. It continues by discussing how gaining mutual trust involves exposing vulnerability in the caring teacher-learner relationship (e.g., Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2018). The discussion then turns to how care bids reciprocal relationships (e.g., Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2018, Reference HENDRICKS, Hendricks and Boyce-Tillman2021, Reference HENDRICKS and Hendricks2023a), in addition to the dangers of a unidirectional approach and the challenges posed to reciprocity given disability is such a broad spectrum of health conditions and capacities. Subsequently, the notion of ‘benign neglect’ (Noddings, Reference NODDINGS2013) is explained. After this, the challenges associated with identifying and engaging disabled people as music learners are explored. Next, the article turns to how inclusion features in care by noting a naïve view that every disabled musician can and will want to participate alongside his or her non-disabled counterparts. Finally, Hel’s (Reference HEL and Olsaretti2018) ‘distributive justice’ is explored in care ethics, thus suggesting ways in which we might source the genuine experience of disabled music participants to develop more appropriate resources, policies and music education practices.
Background
Causes and categories
Disability has a myriad of causes, including genetics, illnesses and diseases, injuries, pre-natal conditions, birth complications, unexplained causes, and ageing (see e.g., Altman, Reference ALTMAN2013, Reference ALTMAN2014; Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017). It can have sensory, cognitive, intellectual, psychiatric, neurological and physical connotations, including those stemming from musculoskeletal and neuromusculoskeletal issues (ibid.). There are various points at which disabilities can occur too, with some disabled people having congenital and lifelong conditions, others encountering disabilities at a later point in life, and the presence of episodic circumstances in some (Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017). Adding further to this complexity, there can be comorbidities and complex health interactions.
There are also various benchmarks in different nations for what ‘counts’ as a disability (see, for instance, Üstün et al., Reference ÜSTÜN, KOSTANJSEK, CHATTERJI and REHM2010). Owing to this, the reported incidence of disabilities in education systems, nationally or internationally is uncertain. This is because available figures are subject to variability in standards, policies, registration benchmarks and diagnosis rates within healthcare systems across the world’s nations (see e.g. Casebolt, Reference CASEBOLT2021; Hosseinpoor et al., Reference HOSSEINPOOR, BERGEN, KOSTANJSEK, KOWAL, OFFICER and CHATTERJI2016; Mont et al., Reference MONT, MADANS, WEEKS and ULLMANN2022). For example, in the developing world, by contrast to the stronger world economies, there is a high incidence of preventable disability (for instance, refractive errors or cataracts resulting in visual impairments) (see World Health Organization, 2023b). There may also be differences between nations in stigma, including how attitudes are shaped by cultural values, and people not wanting to come forward to disclose their conditions. However, the World Health Organization (2023a) reports: ‘An estimated 1.3 billion people experience significant disability. This represents 16% of the world’s population, or 1 in 6 of us’ (online, no page numbers). The WHO (ibid.) also notes disabled people encounter: ‘structural factors’, including stigma, ableism and discrimination; ‘social determinants’ affecting their health, including employment exclusion and poverty; and issues with ‘health systems’, such as a lack of knowledge, inaccessible facilities, or discriminatory practices by healthcare workers.
Disability models
According to the ‘medical model’, disability and how it is experienced is solely caused by an aberrant, flawed human body, such as through illness, disease or trauma (see Beaudry, Reference BEAUDRY, Cureton and Wasserman2019; Smart, Reference SMART, Riggar and Maki2004). The organisation of society is not part of any problems encountered by the disabled person. This is an ableist perspective. One implication is that empowered medical professionals, specialists, educators, and social services best make decisions regarding treatment, therapy, adaptive devices, and rehabilitation to compensate. Depending on a person’s health and intellectual circumstances, this is potentially disempowering for the disabled person. Churchill and Hall (Reference CHURCHILL, HALL and Hendricks2025) have noticed parallels with how some well-meaning, yet poorly conceived care is given in music education. These authors write:
…the medical view assumes that disability resides within the individual. In line with this, special education is premised on identifying students who have some kind of condition that impedes their academic and/or social development. …the usual response to disability is to cure or minimize it as much as possible. As such, caring educational professionals and other stakeholders usually seek out effective methods to alleviate recognized deficits. However, what is often overlooked in this is the power differential, which might lead educators to discount the disabled person’s experience toward determining the best accommodative route (p. 543).
In music education therefore, Hendricks’ (Reference HENDRICKS2023b) reciprocal notion of care seems at odds with this medical view as it fails to embrace what a disabled learner might potentially contribute to shaping his or her own learning. However, a ‘social model’ has emerged, with the term coined by Oliver (Reference OLIVER1990, Reference OLIVER1996, Reference OLIVER1997; Oliver, Sapey & Thomas, Reference OLIVER, SAPEY and THOMAS2012; also see Adam & Koutsoklenis, Reference ADAM and KOUTSOKLENIS2023). This has challenged earlier ableist, medical perspectives (Barnes & Mercer, Reference BARNES and MERCER2004; Beaudry, Reference BEAUDRY, Cureton and Wasserman2019; Pickard, Reference PICKARD2021; Purtell, Reference PURTELL and Williams2013). With this, disability is proposed as a positive identity instead, with a disabled person potentially having high agency to influence his or her life, including his or her education. He or she is to be viewed as inherently ‘normal’. Rather than being attributed solely to their supposedly abnormal body, any difficulties disabled people encountered are to be attributed to improper social organisation, such as with policy, people’s attitudes, the distribution of financial and other resources, inadequacies with the built environment, or problems with how education is organised (Beaudry, Reference BEAUDRY, Cureton and Wasserman2019; Oliver, Reference OLIVER1996). Like racism or sexism, disability is considered oppression since it ‘…is the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by the political, economic and cultural norms of a society which takes little or no account of people who have impairments and thus excludes them’ (Oliver, Sapey & Thomas, Reference OLIVER, SAPEY and THOMAS2012, p. 16). A resultant social movement to this ‘…consciously engaged in critical evaluation of capitalist society and in the creation of alternative models of social organization at local, national and international levels…’ (Oliver, Reference OLIVER1990, p. 113; Oliver, Reference OLIVER1997). For music learning and participation, the thinking surrounding this social model now places a spotlight on the accessibility of physical spaces such as music teaching rooms or concert halls, but also travel to them, in addition to the accessibility of musical instruments, scores, musical genres, and approaches to teaching and learning (Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017; Castle et al., Reference CASTLE, BAKER, CHAN, TANG and BAKER2025). Caring relationships thus hinge on music teachers engaging in meaningful dialogues with their disabled learners to seek understanding about such matters.
Music education is also laden with historically entrenched thinking that could too easily be taken for granted (see e.g., Jorgensen, Reference JORGENSEN, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015). Blind and partially sighted people, for example, live against a backcloth of lore in today’s societies about ‘special dispensations’ given their conditions, including about mysterious, innate musical gifts and a predisposition to music-making in specific ways. This draws on these disabled musicians’ history with remarkable blind musicians in jazz, popular and world music in various countries across considerable time (e.g., see Baker, Reference BAKER, Creech, Hodges and Hallam2021; Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017; Blind Boys of Alabama, 2025; De Ferranti, Reference DE FERRANTI2009; Fuqua, Reference FUQUA2011; Groemer, Reference GROEMER2012; Isaki, Reference ISAKI1987; Kononenko, Reference KONONENKO1998; Lubet, Reference LUBET2011; Ottenberg, Reference OTTENBERG1996; Ribowsky, Reference RIBOWSKY2010; Shearing & Shipton, Reference SHEARING and SHIPTON2005). Baker and Green (Reference BAKER and GREEN2017) found that some music teachers drew on this backcloth of aural traditions to suppose that reading notation was unimportant for their blind music learners. Yet the imposition of this in teaching restricts learners’ prospects for inclusion in ensemble contexts where reading notation is needed, such as the school orchestra or wind band. Engrained music educator biases such as this must be unearthed therefore, if care is to lead to inclusion for disabled learners. As Jorgensen (Reference JORGENSEN, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015) observes ‘…contributive aspects of social justice require that all men and women…among the many barriers that separate people, are able to contribute musically in the many ways in which they are interested and capable’ (p. 20).
Care connotations in terms
Connotations of pity and helplessness are embedded in some of the terms that have been, in misguided fashion, used to describe disabled people (Baker, Reference BAKER and Hendricks2023; Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017). Using these, perhaps in error and without awareness, can reveal how a person identifies him- or herself as a non-disabled music educator or facilitator in relation to others within a caring relationship. A word like ‘handicapped’, for example, which implies someone who must beg whilst holding a cap in his or her hand, is largely thought unacceptable and offensive these days. It perpetuates notions of helplessness and unemployability. Personification in this manner could lead music educators to perceive erroneous limitations to their disabled learner’s potential for musical development, independent learning and participation, or to place caps on their desires for higher levels of musical study, or even careers in music. This type of thinking also diminishes the disabled person’s validity and his or her personal agency, which is vital for reciprocal care (see Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS and Hendricks2023a later in this article). Terms that arouse sympathy too, such as ‘stricken by’, ‘afflicted by’, or ‘wheelchair bound’ (as opposed to ‘a person who uses a wheelchair’) also arouse a sense of pity. Furthermore, words like ‘disorder’ or ‘invalid’ (referring to a person’s legitimacy as a member of society), highlight negativity or abnormality in line with the medical view. These are potentially damaging to caring relationships in music education (also see Baker, Reference BAKER and Hendricks2023) since these rest on mutual respect. If care in music education is to be founded on principles of mutual respect and inclusion, it would seem important that teachers do not frame disabled learners as somehow illegitimate and invalid to be automatically siloed and excluded. Instead, they would better be treated as valued members of society and its music. As such, they might, where possible, be consulted through caring relationships that seek ways forward for inclusion in music education and within music’s broader participation contexts.
Another consideration, linked to our views of the disabled person’s agency, concerns how the words used often could reinforce deficits or what a person cannot do (see Baker, Reference BAKER and Hendricks2023; Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017). Terms like ‘impairment’, as in ‘hearing impaired’, ‘visually impaired’, or ‘dis-abled’ emphasise that a person has a deficit in their functioning, and is therefore different, even abnormal. However, these terms are used widely in medical systems. For example, the UK’s National Health Service divides people who are ‘visually impaired’ (to include people who are officially registered as blind or partially sighted) into sub-categories of ‘sight impaired’ and ‘severely sight impaired’ (NHS, 2021). Music educators might too easily be drawn into this deficit perspective and, with limited training and awareness in disability, understandably lack confidence and knowledge regarding how disabled learners can access, learn and make music effectively.
There are differing opinions too regarding whether it is best to use ‘identity-first’ or ‘person-first’ language. Person-first language, for instance ‘person with a disability’ is seen to prioritise the individual rather than his or her disability (see UN, 2024). By contrast, proponents of an identity-first approach (Disability Wales, 2025) contend that the term ‘disabled person’ more explicitly denotes that the individual has been disabled by society (Disability Rights UK, 2025). This is more consistent with the social model’s worldview (i.e., that of Oliver, Reference OLIVER1990, Reference OLIVER1996, Reference OLIVER1997; Oliver, Sapey & Thomas, Reference OLIVER, SAPEY and THOMAS2012). It is used in this article; note the author’s positionality above. I take this view partly because the musical instruments, materials and practices of music, with European classical music just as one example, have developed in ways that generate challenges for the inclusion of disabled people. This is discussed later in this article.
Discussion
Reasons for considering care
In developed economies, policies mean educating disabled children where possible in mainstream schools, and in Further and Higher Education, with reasonable adjustments in place (see e.g., Atkin et al., Reference ATKIN, HOLBROOK, MACCUSPIE, MAMER, MCCONNELL, MCCONNELL, MULLER, NAGEL, RANNELLI, SITAR and STUDHOLME2003; Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017; DfE, 2012; DfES, 2001a, 2001b; United States Department of Education, 1997; Ruddock & Bishop, Reference RUDDOCK and BISHOP2006). UNESCO’s 1994 Salamanca statement recommended ‘…those with special educational needs must have access to regular schools which should accommodate them within a child-centered pedagogy capable of meeting these needs’ (UNESCO, 1994, p. viii). These policies have been implemented in line with the social model of disability (Oliver, Reference OLIVER1990, Reference OLIVER1996, Reference OLIVER1997; Oliver, Sapey & Thomas, Reference OLIVER, SAPEY and THOMAS2012). However, Hendricks (Reference HENDRICKS and Hendricks2023a) offers a bleak assessment of the mainstream educational landscape as she calls for our attention to care in music education. She notes that technologies are ‘illuminating and facilitating civil discord’ (p. 5), bullying and social isolation is rising for students (also see Haidt, Reference HAIDT2024), there is increasing economic insecurity with young people fearful for their futures, and there are extra care policies and processes related to health and wellbeing for exhausted teachers (Smith, Reference SMITH, Bradley and Hess2021). She notes: ‘It is unrealistic to assume that music learning can occur in a studio, rehearsal space, or community setting that is somehow sealed off from the rest of the world’ (p. 6). It would be awry to suggest, then, that a disabled student’s experiences in mainstream educational settings, or indeed elsewhere, can somehow be insulated from all this. However, there may be a significant additional layer of care concerns for disabled learners to which to attend too, including those related to fitting in with peers versus being othered, perceived stigma, or considerations of self-view and confidence. Thus, when we consider disabled music learners in mainstream schooling, clearly deep contemplation of compassionate care is paramount.
Vulnerability and care
Hendricks (Reference HENDRICKS2018) offers a framework so that teachers can be co-learners, welcome individual musical expressions, and foster a collective sense of purpose and musical engagement. This has dimensions enacted by music teachers as they care of: trust, empathy, patience, inclusion, community, and authentic connection. Trust and empathy within this framework, Hendricks argues (ibid.), means stepping aside from the ‘hero narratives’ of music educators (Boyce-Tillman, Reference BOYCE-TILLMAN2000) to explore vulnerabilities. As Hendricks (Reference HENDRICKS and Hendricks2023a) also notes:
…compassionate care suggests that placing the educator on a “pedestal” (or podium) of grandeur, or in a posture of reaching down to help students with alleged deficits, can (a) create a false sense of separation between teachers and students, (b) abrogate the responsibility or opportunity of students to be agents of their own learning, and (c) deny the teacher to continue learning as well (p. 13).
Engendering mutual (or relational) trust means both the educator and learner must be willing to experience vulnerability, to be honest and be open (Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, Reference TSCHANNEN-MORAN and HOY2000; also see Hendricks et al., Reference HENDRICKS, DANSEREAU and FREEZE2024; Hoy & Tschannen-Moran, Reference HOY and TSCHANNEN-MORAN1999; Tschannen-Moran & Hoy, Reference TSCHANNEN-MORAN and HOY1998). Furthermore, it means, as music teachers, we ‘…risk vulnerability in terms of our own teaching, curriculum, and perceived authority’ (Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2018, p. 127). Moreover, by allowing him- or herself to become vulnerable, each person in the learning transaction is showing confidence in the other’s benevolence, openness, honesty, dependability, and competence (Tschannen-Moran, Reference TSCHANNEN-MORAN2014). Within trusting environments, the academic, social and emotional risks needed for learning are more likely to occur (ibid.). The vulnerability involved is essentially what Palmer (Reference PALMER2017) means by having the ‘courage to teach’. As music teachers encounter children with disabilities in school classrooms, or as instrumental teachers either in school sites or their private studio, they expose and must grapple with their own shortcomings. This can feel highly uncomfortable. It can spotlight: a lack of awareness in relation to disability with its various physical, sensory, and emotional connotations; a lack of training in alternative music pedagogies; inexperience with assistive technologies and alternative music formats; or even a shortfall in understanding the wider pastoral care issues affecting their disabled student.
Reciprocity and care
Hendrick’s (Reference HENDRICKS and Hendricks2023a) ‘levelling’ of the teacher-pupil power dynamic, above, means becoming vulnerable to explore mutual solutions for an effective learning process, i.e., with the learner also ‘caring’ for the music educator by contributing to his or her understanding, professional development and personal growth. Richerme (Reference RICHERME2017) comments that contrariwise:
Solely working towards “caring for” others…has the potential to foster a sustained power imbalance. …If teachers and students provide others care without acknowledging their own limitations and vulnerabilities, they risk propagating paternalistic attitudes (p. 418; also see Edgar, Reference EDGAR2014).
A unidirectional ‘caring for’ approach can also lead to uncomfortable notions of pity as well as implications of superiority vis-à-vis inferiority (Hendricks, Reference HENDRICKS2018, Reference HENDRICKS, Hendricks and Boyce-Tillman2021; Tsui, Hess & Hendricks, Reference TSUI, HESS, HENDRICKS and Hendricks2023). Jorgensen (Reference JORGENSEN, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015) also worries that well-intentioned steps by music teachers and educational policymakers towards a socially just music education may:
…in fact patronize, diminish, and dehumanize people. …the procedures employed in the selection of musical repertoire, students for particular musical ensembles, instructional methods, and assessment methods may not be as procedurally transparent and even-handed as they need to be. …Invoking allegiance to democratic principles without a corresponding spirit of inclusiveness, mutual respect, and civility can be an evil because it disguises a lack of democracy under the mantle of humane principles (p. 21).
Given this, it would seem vital that music teachers and their disabled learners discuss and negotiate needs. Reasoned music education requires critical thinking from both music educators and their students (Woodford, Reference WOODFORD2005) in ‘…unmasking taken-for-granted assumptions and practices and forging more humane and civil approaches’ (Jorgensen, Reference JORGENSEN, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015, p. 11). However, a stumbling block can be that reciprocal care rests on disabled learners (where their condition makes this possible) feeling they can articulate these. This can be problematical for some disabled people due to any past experiences of marginalisation, shame and disempowerment. When faced with an imposing, adult, non-disabled ‘authority’ musician-teacher, for example, we might ponder how much a shy, disabled child is able to communicate individual learning needs for his or her music, share what is effective, communicate goals, articulate the pressures they face outside classroom, disclose feelings of social isolation, or disclose any mental wellbeing issues. Yet, as Benjamins (Reference BENJAMINS and Hendricks2025) remarks ‘…music has inherent personal and relational affordances that should be considered when making distinctions between the “music itself” and “non-musical benefits” ’ (p. 105). Another important consideration too, relates to music participants with Severe Learning Disabilities (SLDs), that is, those with significant intellectual issues affecting learning, independence, and communication, or Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities (PMLDs), with the former and comorbid conditions. They may not actually be capable of articulating their needs. So, this raises yet more questions relating to how care is shaped by the broad spectrum of disability, its experience, and its effect on individual agency. Whilst Noddings (Reference NODDINGS2003, Reference NODDINGS2005) remarks that care involves reciprocal relationships between ‘carer” and the ‘cared for’, with the latter bearing some responsibility, the author also admits that relationships can, in practice, be relatively equal or unequal for various reasons.
The dangers of a unidirectional “caring about”
As Pitts (Reference PITTS and Bresler2007) notes ‘…there has been growing interest in the extent to which musical learning and engagement also occurs beyond institutional contexts…’ (p. 760). A broad view of music education considers lifelong learning within and outside formal educational settings (Myers, Reference MYERS1995; Roulston, Reference ROULSTON2010). Music education is not just something that happens in schools, universities or through curricula and examinations. Facilitators of the music participation and learning that occurs in our communities ought to be cautious, however, of imposing entrenched values surrounding repertoire, aims, curricula, learning materials and procedures that are at odds with those they serve. Noddings (Reference NODDINGS2013) warns of a ‘benign neglect’ resulting from ‘caring about’ others if this is unidirectional. This can be well meaning but awry in assuming that teacher-valued knowledge supersedes that of music learners from within distinct communities. Without meaningful, reciprocal caring relationships, well-meaning initiatives, resources and funding can easily be pushed towards disabled people’s music participation and learning, but without fully appreciating their desires and real-world needs. This degrades their agency and likely impacts their sense of self-worth. It also fails to address the problems. ‘Benign neglect’ can occur, for instance, when music initiatives or community music programmes are devised without full consultation with disabled people and with short-term funding. In those circumstances, well-meaning ‘do-gooders’ swoop in and out without considering sustained social impact. ‘Benign neglect’ can also happen when assistive technology developers for music fail to start from needs and ideas their blind end-users articulate, instead imposing their own standards based on their non-disabled sensory experiences as musicians (e.g., see Baker, Fomukong-Boden & Edwards, Reference BAKER, FOMUKONG-BODEN and EDWARDS2019). Sometimes too, perhaps there is a primary focus on the publication of a related paper rather than on assistive music technology prototypes becoming commercially available and helpful to disabled end-users.
Identifying and engaging disabled people in care
‘Who is in our local community and what unmet needs do they have?’ asks Richerme (Reference RICHERME2017, p. 417). Richerme (ibid.) questions how we can encourage musical engagement to create environments where individuals can receive our care (p. 417). When it comes to the care of disabled musicians, these are important questions. Among other contexts, there are disabled children participating in music, or those who might, in mainstream and special schools. ‘Over 1.6 million pupils in England have special educational needs’, as an example (Gov.UK, 2024). There are disabled children and adults in our communities, including those within ‘disability arts’ music ensembles (e.g., see Baker & Green, Reference BAKER, GREEN, Higgins and Bartleet2018; Baluji Music Foundation, 2025; Paraorchestra, 2025). There are networks of amateur, semi-professional and professional disabled musicians connected with stakeholder charities or who gather around assistive music technology use or adapted instruments (e.g., RNIB, 2025; OHMI, 2025). Moreover, there are those living in city areas closer to specialist music teachers and other resources, and those in rural areas distanced and thus isolated from them.
When pondering lifelong learning and music (e.g., Myers, Reference MYERS1995; Roulston, Reference ROULSTON2010), it is potentially more difficult to draw in disabled people for our care. Some music facilitators and educators may simply lack awareness of available participants, but some disabled people may not want to come forward due to their social or medical pressures, or simply because this requires them to disclose personal information. Then, there may be issues with resourcing and finding appropriately equipped physical spaces (with induction loops for hearing aids, wheelchair ramps, controllable lighting for those with photophobia, a suitable acoustic for learners with attention deficits). Thus, the built environment, legal requirements, funding, societal attitudes and the favoured ‘disability model’ in place, all play a part. Other factors include the disabled learner’s mobility (which will inevitably lie on a broad spectrum from highly dependent to highly independent), their support system and family, and where they live in relation to musical opportunities plus what that means for travel (Baker, Reference BAKER2014, Reference BAKER, Creech, Hodges and Hallam2021; Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2016).
Care and inclusion
The social model of Oliver (Reference OLIVER1990, Reference OLIVER1996, Reference OLIVER1997; Oliver et al., Reference OLIVER, SAPEY and THOMAS2012) seeks to normalize disability (also see Barnes & Mercer, Reference BARNES and MERCER2004; Beaudry, Reference BEAUDRY, Cureton and Wasserman2019; Pickard, Reference PICKARD2021; Purtell, Reference PURTELL and Williams2013). Understood as an inclusive activity, likely most of us would note that music-making can lead to many social, physical, cognitive, and intellectual advantages open to anyone (see e.g., Hallam, Reference HALLAM2015). ‘Music teachers typically [also] think of their work as having to do with valuing all of their students and developing their personal confidence, self-worth, and self-respect’ (Jorgensen, Reference JORGENSEN, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015, p. 10) so doing justice ‘…necessitates a commitment to all of one’s students, irrespective of their particular characteristics’ (ibid.). Within this inclusive worldview, providing appropriate care for disabled music participants might also entail, wherever practical and reasonable, facilitating their participation alongside non-disabled people for mutual benefit. It would avoid siloing them in ‘special’ musical experiences or special educational settings.
However, this standpoint on inclusive practice in caring relationships assumes that disabled people themselves will want to participate in musical experiences alongside their non-disabled counterparts and, moreover, feel capable of doing so. That is not always correct. An example to the contrary comes from the Inner Vision Orchestra (Baluji Music Foundation, 2025), a London-based community music ensemble of blind and partially sighted musicians, some with co-occurring health conditions. Inner Vision is a ‘campaigning tool to encourage recognition of the particular problems facing blind or visually impaired performers’ (Clerk, Reference CLERK2014, p. 18). Baljui Shrivastav, the group’s founder and leader, believes this self-supporting ‘campaigning’ group has resulted from social isolation, mobility issues, disabled musicians’ lack of confidence with engaging in ensembles alongside non-disabled people, and the prevalence of musical styles that are less appropriate for non-sighted people (Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017, Reference BAKER, GREEN, Higgins and Bartleet2018).
The gravity of this latter point is significant. European society, its musical instruments, and practices have evolved over time in ways that include non-disabled people while excluding disabled people. As such, inclusion as part of caring can be a challenging prospect at times. For instance, notation and sight-reading are integral to classical music traditions. Yet, whilst a blind music braille reader can read notation, he or she typically cannot sight read. It becomes a matter of feeling the code, iterating between this and playing, to memorise the score ahead of rehearsals (Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017). Getting a braille transcription takes extra time, too, and so does digesting the musical material making the ‘playing field’ far from level and inclusion as care more difficult. However, turning to non-Western music with its aural learning traditions presents no simple alternative, or quick fix, to inclusion if music teachers and community music facilitators simply fall back on approaching these through the classical lens, which Kwami (Reference KWAMI, Philpott and Plummeridge2002) notes is ‘…the main currency of the school curriculum’ (p. 144; also see Kwami, Reference KWAMI1998). In another example of how inclusion is challenged for disabled people, it may be more difficult for some to play the standard instruments of the symphony orchestra, or those commonplace in some non-Western music too, for instance if they have non-functional or missing limbs or hands. Sometimes there have been endeavours to bridge this issue, for example, with toggle-key woodwind instruments (University of Nebraska Kearney, 2025; also see OHMI, 2025). However, those with more significant physical disabilities may, even so, be consigned to hybrid, non-traditional ensembles, genres with novel instruments. As a case in point, paralysed from his shoulders down, Clarence Adoo (Reference ADOO2025) performs the digital Headspace technology with neck movements and a blowing tube. When considering disabled people then, care that strives for social and musical inclusion across educational and community settings is far from straightforward.
Distributive justice, care and challenges ahead
Asking ‘What makes society fair?’, Hel (Reference HEL and Olsaretti2018; also see Olsaretti, Reference OLSARETTI2018) discusses ‘distributive justice’ in the ethics of care. This attends to:
…actual practices of care and to caring relations between actual persons and groups, and to the values involved. It asks whether and how societies are caring, and looks at how well, or not, the values of care are reflected in a society’s or the world’s practices and institutions (online, para. 2).
Barnes (Reference BARNES2012) continues there is a ‘…need to consider lived experience of giving and receiving care, and how the context, conflicts, and power impact the…practical tasks of care’ (p. 40). Jorgensen (Reference JORGENSEN, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015) continues that ‘…distributive justice refers to the imperative of ensuring that music education is available equitably and that particular individuals or minorities are not disadvantaged or excluded from instruction’ (p. 12). Perhaps, then, music educators should look way beyond how they serve (in a unidirectional sense) the needs of disabled music learners through pedagogies, adapted materials and assistive technologies, to a much broader view of their role that also encompasses a better understanding of the nuances of relationships, pressures on both sides, and the learner’s social context outside the teaching room. This will significantly impact learning within it. Various critical pedagogies have prioritised social justice and the learner in recent times. Drawing on Freire’s (Reference FREIRE1970, Reference FREIRE2000) work, for instance, Green and Narita (Reference GREEN, NARITA, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015) see informal learning pedagogy within music education as a dialogical negotiation and socially just way forward with ‘… “dialogues” [that] require a role and attitude from both teachers and learners that challenge many formal educational assumptions…’ (p. 303) and which require ‘…awareness of the various musical values, knowledge, and identities that both learners and teachers bring to a learning situation’ (p. 313). They (ibid.) envision that music teachers ‘…can be agents of resistance against unjust and oppressive educational situations that may overlook the knowledge and interests brought to the learning experience by the learners…’ (p. 303). Spruce (Reference SPRUCE, Benedict, Schmidt, Spruce and Woodford2015) continues:
…one of the defining characteristics of a socially just approach to music education is taken to be the opportunity for students not only to “participate” in music education, but also to be “included” in it with their voices being heard in decisions about curriculum and pedagogy and in the construction of musical knowledge, understanding, and value (p. 288).
Regelski (Reference REGELSKI, Regelski and Gates2009) further argues that music education rests ‘…in important ways on one’s understanding of what it means to be human… [wherein how] …music fits into and serves a particular student’s life thus requires much more than musical insight’ (p. 193). Beginning with the perspectives of disabled people themselves (where viable), as well as their parents, partners, music educators, and caregivers, and of course the music educators and others working with them, would seem highly important. Although very challenging, some of this can be done by music teachers and music facilitators themselves, and some by researchers to be fed into music teacher training (e.g., see Baker & Green, Reference BAKER and GREEN2017 on blind and partially sighted musicians’ life histories). Perhaps narrative and other forms of qualitative research that capture ‘lived’ experience might be useful in that way. Moreover, as part of ‘distributive justice’, researchers can assess how care in families, music teaching rooms, other educational contexts, and elsewhere, maps to policy. As Benjamins (Reference BENJAMINS and Hendricks2025) reminds us:
If encounters or spaces for dialogue are not approached carefully, dominant relationships might increase in power, further reducing the polyphony of voices into a monological, hierarchical structure. There is also a concern when encounters are assimilated into traditional or “comfortable” frameworks. Active processes of reflection and awareness, as part of an overarching framework of care, could be beneficial … (p. 111).
As a result of taking a broader, more nuanced view through care in music education, we can potentially elude ableist approaches (Campbell, Reference CAMPBELL2009) to start to develop resources, policies, and practices for music education far more appropriately than before.
Competing interests
The author declares no competing interests.
David Baker is Associate Professor at University College London where he leads the Music Education MA and has been Academic Head of Learning and Teaching. David has published on instrumental teaching, informal learning, classical soloists’ lives, disability, and assistive technologies. He was principal investigator for “Visually impaired musicians’ lives” (AHRC, 2013–15), which led to his co-authored book, Insights in sound (2017). He is currently writing his third book for Cambridge University Press.
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