Rhoda Bernard’s Accessible Arts Education brings together numerous personal experiences and insights gathered from many years working alongside music students and teachers, with a broader exploration of how a number of principles of inclusive education can be put into practice. The focus throughout is on supporting teachers to develop the skills and mindset needed to engage a population of ‘diverse learners’ – Bernard’s broad grouping includes students who may be neurodivergent or disabled, who experience specific conditions such as anxiety or who learn most effectively in what may loosely be termed ‘non-traditional’ ways. While much space is devoted to highlighting particular barriers that may prevent such students from accessing arts education and, in turn, providing strategies for their removal, Bernard also explores the processes of enquiry, collaboration and reflection that enable teachers and students to identify those barriers in the first place.
Bernard continually returns to these processes, as they form part of what is termed ‘the true artistry of teaching’ (p. 201): the habits of mind of the reflective, motivated and creative educator. Teachers are encouraged to commit to developing these ongoing observational and relational reflective processes, coupled with active planning for diverse learners. This theme of a reflective teacher responding to students who do not arrive in what Sousa and Tomlinson call ‘matched sets’ (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2017) is obviously not a new one within education: it clearly aligns with the principles of modern differentiation as discussed in numerous publications by Carol Tomlinson and Sue Cowley, including Differentiation and the Brain (Sousa & Tomlinson, 2017) and The Ultimate Guide to Differentiation (Cowley, Reference COWLEY2018). There are also further connections with Jennie Henley’s recent monograph Inclusive Pedagogy in Music Education (Henley, Reference HENLEY2025), which provides a theory-rich and rigorously argued examination of questions of difference, equity, belonging and inclusivity and identifies a similar need for reflexive and creative teachers who question their own practices and assumptions, as well as responding and relating to their students.
In the opening chapter, Bernard breaks down the key idea of teacher mindset into a series of principles, such as ‘necessary for some and helpful for all’ (p. 24), habits of mind relating to challenging educational pre-conceptions and practical teaching strategies. Here, Bernard suggests that teachers ask themselves specific questions relating to how learning may be taking place, what student engagement might look like and the forms that teaching could take (pp. 26–30). Subsequent chapters explore ideas of agency, relationships and student choice and the use of multiple modalities and teaching styles to maximise engagement. A particular emphasis is placed on the use of visual aids as both a modality and a means of support. There are two chapters which focus on specific conditions: anxiety and sensory disorders. How anxiety may present itself in the classroom is discussed, and a variety of strategies to support affected students are introduced. These include clear communication, consistent lesson structures and the use of preparatory narratives – Bernard’s development of Carol Gray’s widely used Social StoriesTM (Gray & Garand, Reference GRAY and GARAND.1993) – in order to facilitate new experiences. The chapter on sensory disorders explores the impact of conditions both commonly known (such as the sound-sensitivity often associated with autism) and less familiar (such as balance and body issues relating to vestibular and proprioceptive senses) and explores how teachers can plan appropriately. This book concludes with a recognition of the administrative burdens placed upon teachers and suggests realistic ways in which some of the ideas explored earlier can be adapted and implemented.
As part of a tradition of teaching and learning aids, one of the book’s strengths is the strong authorial voice which demonstrates a deep understanding of real-world practice. As a result, Accessible Arts Education is both easy to use and imbued with a sense of respect and care for both students and teachers. Chapters are simply structured and highly readable and include both reproducible planning templates designed to be tailored to teachers’ own situations and clear ‘takeaways’ to summarise and contextualise key points. Bernard also brings together examples of teaching experiences with summaries of research relating to diverse student learners. The connections between specific conditions, learning styles, modalities, pedagogies and teacher/student relationships are both complex and dynamic, and therefore the breadth of territory covered by Accessible Arts Education offers engaged readers an effective aid to the development of a holistic understanding and practice.
Those working in research cultures are perhaps more likely to find this broad scope, the prominence of anecdotes and summaries and the emphasis on practical application something of a limitation. Both theories and stories are at times briefly visited rather than explored in depth, and there is an associated lack of rigorous probing into some of the complexities that make up inclusive practice. One example is the link drawn between processes of informing students and developing agency, a relationship which is not as straightforward as Bernard at times implies. This sense of presenting rather than exploring also applies to the incorporation of the voices of the disabled artists that appear in the form of quotations and vignettes throughout this book. While always interesting and often inspiring in themselves, sometimes these fail to connect clearly with the main discussion: as a result, while the artists’ voices provide richness and insight, there are times when they seem more peripheral to the chapter content – which is particularly unfortunate in this context.
Despite these limitations, Accessible Arts Education is a valuable resource for those working in school music education, community settings and for instrumental/vocal teachers seeking to work more effectively with a diverse body of learners. The strong North Atlantic perspective that inevitably comes from the numerous practical examples of teaching in the US might present an initial barrier to those working in other countries, but actually emphasises Bernard’s key point that the strategies and planning suggestions in the book are starting points that need adapting to individual teaching contexts. While teachers may already be implementing some of Bernard’s suggestions as standard practice, and might find others inappropriate or difficult to implement, there is likely to be something useful here even for highly experienced educators.
This is, perhaps, in line with Bernard’s key point; the book is not a prescription for a specific set of actions, but a call for the continuing development of understanding of the multiple ways that people learn, and for the reflective and creative teacher to commit to an ongoing examination of their own practice and situation in order to ‘cocreate accessible and effective teaching and learning opportunities’ (p. 201).
