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The Lived Experiences of Adult Musicians with

Dyscalculia: A Heuristic Inquiry
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 UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF ADULT MUSICIANS WITH DYSCALCULIA: A

HEURISTIC INQUIRY

By

Sheerin Hosseini

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty

of the University of Miami
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for
the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Coral Gables, Florida

December 2020
 ©2020
Sheerin Hosseini
All Rights Reserved
 UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

THE LIVED EXPERIENCES OF ADULT MUSICIANS WITH DYSCALCULIA: A

HEURISTIC INQUIRY

Sheerin Hosseini

Approved:

________________ _________________
Stephen F. Zdzinski, Ph.D. Carlos Abril, Ph.D.
Professor of Music Education Professor of Music Education

________________ _________________
Don D. Coffman, Ph.D. Guillermo Prado, Ph.D.
Professor of Music Education Dean of the Graduate School

________________
Jennifer Krawec, Ph.D.
Professor of Practice in Teaching and Learning

________________
Brian Powell, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Double Bass and String Pedagogy
HOSSEINI, SHEERIN (Ph.D., Music Education)
The Lived Experiences of Adult Musicians with (December 2020)
Dyscalculia: A Heuristic Inquiry

Abstract of a dissertation at the University of Miami.

Dissertation supervised by Professor Stephen F. Zdzinski

No. of pages in text. (270)

The purpose of this phenomenologically aligned heuristic research study was to

examine the lived experiences of ten successful adult musicians with a mathematics

learning disability called dyscalculia. The research questions were (1) How did the

participants’ dyscalculia affect their learning experiences in school, daily life, and career?

(2) How did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their music learning experiences in school

and their professional lives? and (3) Do musicians with dyscalculia develop or use specific

compensatory strategies to overcome learning challenges, or utilize their musical strengths

in unique ways?

This study’s findings indicated that the participants’ learning disabilities impacted their

daily, professional, and musical lives in various ways. Common daily life and career

challenges included performing mental arithmetic, driving, distinguishing left from right,

time management, and managing one’s finances. Musical challenges and coping strategies

developed pertained to reading and memorizing music, counting during resting periods,

subdivision, music theory, and motor skills.

The emergent themes discovered in this study included: Impact of Teachers, Self-

Esteem, Physical and Mental Health, Math Anxiety, Math Avoidance, Perseverance, and

Empathy. Furthermore, several trends also emerged that were common to the participants’
educational, professional, and musical experiences. These trends included comorbidity and

heredity, coping strategies, the importance of obtaining a college education, perseverance,

mental health, and parental involvement. Recommendations for further research and

implications for music teachers are discussed.

 DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to my mother, Cheryl Ann DiSario, my mentor and

best friend, who passed away in January of 2016. Despite the many health complications

she experienced throughout her life, she put her family first, especially her daughter, who

needed a little extra help. Known for her kind heart, selflessness, strong will, intelligence,

creativity, and resourcefulness, she was an inspiration all who knew her. She taught me

the importance of obtaining an education and instilled within me the study skills and life

skills I needed to overcome many challenges. Most importantly, she nurtured my talents

and taught me the importance of never giving up.

iii
 Acknowledgements

First and foremost, I want to acknowledge individuals who agreed to participate

in this study without whom this dissertation would not have been possible. Thank you for

your willingness to share your unique life experiences.

To my father, Assadolah Hosseini, thank you for always stressing the importance

of education and going above and beyond in offering support, valuable insight, and

strength throughout this journey.

I would also like to acknowledge my uncle Dominic DiSario for his generous

spirit, support of my music training, and for making sure we all had a little fun in our

lives and his wife, Debra, for her valuable advice.

To Dr. Stephen Zdzinski, my professor, dissertation advisor, and mentor. Thank

you for your steadfast encouragement, compassion, and belief in my ability to succeed

and accomplish my educational goals.

I want to offer a special thank you to my dissertation committee, Dr. Abril, Dr.

Coffman, Dr. Krawec, and Dr. Powell, for their advice, knowledge, and demonstrating

the belief in the power of music to inspire individuals of all ages.

Last but not least, thank you to Richard Berte for his support and encouragement

over the years, and to my colleagues and dear friends: Candice, Cat, Donna, Giulia,

Johanna, Kat, Laurie, Margaret, Marilia, Melissa, Nic, Rob, and Vimari, who were

always a source of encouragement and inspiration.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF FIGURES ..................................................................................................... ix

LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... x

Chapter

1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................... 1
Dyscalculia: The Lesser Known Learning Disability ....................................... 1
Connections Between Music and Mathematics ................................................ 2
Common Core and the 2014 Music Standards ................................................. 3
Music Learning Strategies and Dyscalculia ...................................................... 5
My Experience with Dyscalculia ...................................................................... 7
Statement of the Problem .................................................................................. 11
Need for Study .................................................................................................. 12
Research Questions ........................................................................................... 12
Rationale for Research Design.......................................................................... 13
The Heuristic Method ....................................................................................... 13
Definition of Terms........................................................................................... 14
Delimitations of Study ...................................................................................... 18

2 REVIEW OF LITERATURE .......................................................................... 19

Types of Specific Learning Disabilities ............................................................ 20
The Root Cause of Dyscalculia......................................................................... 20
The Network for Arithmetic ............................................................................. 21
Subtypes of Dyscalculia .................................................................................... 21
Mathematics Learning Strategies ...................................................................... 23
Dyslexia vs. Dyscalculia: Same or Different .................................................... 26
Post-Secondary Outcomes of Adults with Learning Disabilities ..................... 30
Conquering Academic Challenges .................................................................... 30
The Importance of a College Education ........................................................... 32
Overcoming Challenges in the Workplace ....................................................... 34
Negative Impact of Learning Disabilities ......................................................... 35
Positive Impact of Learning Disabilities........................................................... 36
Summary of the Literature and Implications for this Study ............................. 37

3 METHODOLOGY .......................................................................................... 40
Research Questions ........................................................................................... 40
Philosophical Framework and Methodological Approach ............................... 40
Intentionality of Consciousness ........................................................................ 41
Phenomenological Reduction ........................................................................... 41
Phenomenology of Perception .......................................................................... 42
The Heuristic Method ....................................................................................... 43
Seven Processes and Six Phases of Heuristic Inquiry ...................................... 43

v
 Six Phases of Heuristic Inquiry......................................................................... 45
Initial Engagement ...................................................................................... 45
Immersion ................................................................................................... 46
Incubation ................................................................................................... 47
Illumination ................................................................................................. 47
Explication .................................................................................................. 47
Creative Synthesis ....................................................................................... 48
Participants ........................................................................................................ 49
Facebook as a Recruiting Tool ......................................................................... 49
Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria ....................................................................... 50
Development of Survey #3 ............................................................................... 51
Interview Protocol ............................................................................................. 52
Interview Guide ................................................................................................ 53
Heuristic Data Collection, Organization, and Analysis .................................... 54
Content and Context of Dialogue ..................................................................... 55
Data Analysis .................................................................................................... 57
Theme Identification and Illumination ............................................................. 57
Theme Explication ............................................................................................ 58
Ethics in Heuristic Inquiry ................................................................................ 59
The Validation of Heuristic Research ............................................................... 60

4 PRESENTATION OF THE DATA ................................................................. 61

Skylar ................................................................................................................ 61
James ................................................................................................................. 70
Emily ................................................................................................................. 82
Hannah .............................................................................................................. 91
Paul ................................................................................................................... 104
Kristen ............................................................................................................... 111
Samantha ........................................................................................................... 116
Lisa .................................................................................................................... 125
Kelly .................................................................................................................. 142
Jared .................................................................................................................. 154

5 COMPOSITE DESCRIPTIONS ...................................................................... 173

Part I: Emergent Trends .................................................................................... 173
Disability ..................................................................................................... 173
Comorbidity and Heredity .......................................................................... 175
Synesthesia ............................................................................................ 176
Learning Style ............................................................................................. 177
Self-Esteem ................................................................................................. 178
Mental Health.............................................................................................. 181
Math Anxiety .............................................................................................. 181
Personal Strengths ....................................................................................... 182
Creativity..................................................................................................... 183
Perseverance ............................................................................................... 183
Foreign Language and Writing Skills ......................................................... 184
Parental Involvement .................................................................................. 185

vi
 Daily Life Challenges ................................................................................. 186
Post-Secondary Outcomes .......................................................................... 189
The Development of Coping Strategies ................................................ 189
Self-Disclosure of Learning Disabilities ............................................... 190
The Importance of Obtaining a College Education .............................. 192
Summary of Emergent Trends .................................................................... 193
Part II: Exemplary Portraits of Support ............................................................ 195
Lisa .............................................................................................................. 195
James ........................................................................................................... 197
Summary of Exemplary Portraits of Support.............................................. 200
Part III ............................................................................................................... 201
Musical Experiences ................................................................................... 201
Musical Identity .................................................................................... 201
Music Training ...................................................................................... 202
Music Teachers ..................................................................................... 203
Musical Challenges and Coping Strategies................................................. 204
Music Notation and Rhythm ................................................................. 204
Music Theory and Ear Training ............................................................ 205
Motor skills and Distinguishing Left from Right ................................. 206
Counting ................................................................................................ 206
Notating Music...................................................................................... 207
Form ...................................................................................................... 207
Memorization ........................................................................................ 207
Interpretation ......................................................................................... 208
Chord Charts ......................................................................................... 208
Music Teaching Strategies .......................................................................... 209
Left vs. Right ........................................................................................ 209
Movement Activities ............................................................................. 209
Rhythm .................................................................................................. 210
Multisensory Teaching Strategies ......................................................... 210
Summary of Musical Experiences, Challenges, and Coping Strategies ..... 210

6 DISCUSSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND CONCLUSION .................. 212

Emergent Themes ............................................................................................. 212
Research Question # 1 ................................................................................ 213
Theme # 1 Impact of Teachers.............................................................. 213
Math Teachers ................................................................................. 213
Music Teachers ............................................................................... 214
Theme # 2 Self-Esteem ......................................................................... 215
Theme #3 Physical and Mental Health ................................................. 217
Physical Health. .............................................................................. 217
Mental Health.................................................................................. 218
Generalized Anxiety. ................................................................ 218
Math Anxiety. ........................................................................... 218
Test Anxiety. ............................................................................. 219
Music Performance Anxiety. .................................................... 219
Theme # 4 Math Avoidance .................................................................. 220

vii
 Theme # 5 Perseverance ....................................................................... 221
Theme # 6 Empathy .............................................................................. 222
Summary of Emergent Themes ............................................................ 224
Research Questions # 2 and # 3 .................................................................. 225
Learning Style ....................................................................................... 226
Counting ................................................................................................ 226
Memorizing ........................................................................................... 227
Sight-Reading ....................................................................................... 227
Rhythm .................................................................................................. 228
Music Theory ........................................................................................ 228
Left-Right Confusion, Visual-Spatial Skills, and Movement ............... 229
Summary of Research Questions # 2 and # 3 ....................................... 230
Conclusions ....................................................................................................... 231
Additional Considerations ................................................................................ 233
Limitations and Recommendations for Further Research ................................ 236
Implications for Music Teachers ...................................................................... 237
Final Thoughts .................................................................................................. 240

REFERENCES ............................................................................................................ 242

APPENDIX

A VERBAL CONSENT FORM .......................................................................... 252

B MATH DISABILITY CHECKLIST ............................................................... 254

C MUSICAL EXPERIENCES SURVEY ........................................................... 255

D MEASURING SERIOUS LEISURE IN MUSICIANS .................................. 256

E INTERVIEW GUIDE ...................................................................................... 257

F LIST OF FACEBOOK GROUPS .................................................................... 259

G INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS ................................................... 261

H RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS 262

I JARED’S JOURNAL ENTRY ........................................................................ 263

J JARED’S DYSLEXIA AND DYSCALCULIA RESOURCES...................... 265

K CREATIVE SYNTHESIS PROJECT DESCRIPTION: LIVED

EXPERIENCE IN SOUND ............................................................................. 266

L MUSICAL COMPOSITION: LIVED EXPERIENCES IN SOUND ............. 268

viii
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Adaptive Fingering Chart for Recorder .............................................................. 6

Figure 2: Sample Questions to Consider when Developing Interview Questions ............ 54

Figure 3: Recommended Procedures for Data Analysis ................................................... 57

Figure 4: Description of Skylar’s Counting Method ......................................................... 67

Figure 5: Highlighting Important Changes in the Music .................................................. 68

Figure 6: Galaxy ............................................................................................................. 102

Figure 7: Math Anxiety.................................................................................................... 102

Figure 8: Nashville Number System Chord Chart .......................................................... 136

Figure 9: Example of Sheet Music Transcribed for Guitar............................................. 144

ix
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Description of the Participants ........................................................................... 62

x
 CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

According to the National Center of Educational Statistics (2020), 7.1 million

children between the ages of 3-21 received special education services under the

Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA is a law that makes available a

free appropriate public education to eligible children with disabilities throughout the

nation and ensures special education and related services to those children (U.S.

Department of Education, n.d.). The National Center for Educational Statistics website

(2020), claims that:

In 2018-19, the number of students ages 3-21 who received special

education services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
(IDEA) was 7.1 million, or 14 percent of all public school students.
Among students who received special education services, 33 percent had
specific learning disabilities.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5;

American Psychiatric Association, 2013) defines a specific learning disability as

“difficulty learning key academic skills, including reading, writing, and mathematics” (p.

65). The focus of this dissertation is the mathematical learning disability called

dyscalculia. Dyscalculia can be defined as “a serious impairment of the learning of basic

numerical-arithmetical skills in a child whose intellectual capacity and schooling are

otherwise adequate” (Kaufman & von Aster, 2012, p. 767).

Dyscalculia: The Lesser Known Learning Disability

The Czechoslovakian psychologist, Ladislav Kosc, first introduced the term

dyscalculia in 1974. There are two types of dyscalculia: primary dyscalculia and

secondary dyscalculia. Primary dyscalculia is associated with impaired brain mechanisms

for processing numerical magnitude information (Price & Ansari, 2013). Secondary

1
 2

dyscalculia, on the other hand, is characterized by mathematical deficits stemming from

external factors such as poor teaching, low socio-economic status, and behavioral

attention problems or domain-general cognitive deficits (Price & Ansari, 2013).

Rubinsten (2015) and Butterworth (2019) note that developmental dyscalculia is a

learning disability not widely recognized by governments, educators, researchers, or

clinicians. As a result, it has been the focus of relatively little research. They also agree

that in comparison to other cognitive disabilities, researchers, clinicians, and educators

have disregarded the development of numerical abilities. Despite this fact, a significant

problem exists in education because dyscalculia, as a legitimate disability, is not widely

addressed in schools, directly impacting our students’ learning outcomes and teaching

practices. Dyslexia has received more coverage in music education than dyscalculia,

which indicates a need for further research in music education on this topic.

Connections Between Music and Mathematics

One may wonder how music and math are related. Understanding this relationship

is critical because children with dyscalculia may experience difficulty comprehending

certain musical concepts. According to Liu and Toussaint (2012), music and mathematics

may seem incompatible to one another because music expresses “emotions of the heart in

a phenomenological world,” while mathematics explores the “precise and rigorous

structures of the Platonic universe” (p. 261).

Since Pythagoras, the ancient Greeks pondered the connections between music

and mathematics (Beer, 2008). During the middle ages, for example, music was not

considered an art form. Instead, music was categorized as one of four sciences called the

liberal arts. The liberal arts linked music with geometry, arithmetic, and astronomy (Ball,
 3

2008). Bahna-James (1991) acknowledges that while music and mathematics share

certain concepts, the similarities are between mathematics and music theory and not

between mathematics and music. Bahna-James (1991) asserts that the idea of rhythm is

the foundation of fractions necessary for basic mathematics in the elementary school and

higher-level arithmetic in high school or college.

Common Core and the 2014 Music Standards

The Common Core State Standards Initiative, “a set of high-quality academic

standards in mathematics and English language arts/literacy,” delineate what a student

should know and be able to do at the end of each grade (New York State School Music

Association, 2013). When examining the 2014 Music Standards (National Association for

Music Education, 2020), one can see the multidisciplinary connections between the two

fields. The 2014 Music Standards apply to Pre-K-8 general music, composition/theory,

music technology, guitar, keyboard and harmonizing instruments, and ensembles. The

standards at each grade level from K-8 focus on fifteen essential questions at the

following levels: novice, intermediate, proficient, accomplished, and advanced in

Creating, Performing, Responding, and Connecting.

The New York State School Music Association (2013) website includes a

document containing a chart illustrating how the Common Core State Standards for

mathematics are aligned with the concepts typically taught in the music classroom. The

mathematic domains relating to the standards include: (1) counting and cardinality, (2)

operations and algebraic thinking, (3) number and operations-fractions, (4) measurement

and data, (5) geometry, and (6) ratio and proportional relationships.
 4

Bahna-James (1991) posits that among the most basic mathematical concepts in

music theory is rhythm. The first mathematical domain, counting, and cardinality is

associated with learning number names and counting. In music class, beginning

musicians learn the rhythm value of notes and rests and count basic rhythms. The second

mathematical domain, operations and algebraic thinking consists of representing addition

and subtraction with objects and generating and analyzing patterns. This concept is

connected to performing math problems using note values, performing rhythm and tonal

patterns, and understanding musical form.

The third mathematical domain, number and operations-fractions is related to the

standard understanding of fractions as numbers and fraction equivalents. The musical

concepts associated with this standard are rhythmic values of notes and rests, duple and

triple meter, measures, subdivision, and the rhythm pyramid.

The fourth mathematical domain, measurement and data includes classifying,

counting the number of objects, working with time, measuring lengths, describing and

comparing measurable attributes to represent and interpret data. This standard concerns

the musical concepts of time signature, the organization over the rhythmic aspect of time,

intervals, and the science of sound, including frequency and sound waves. The way that

mathematics relates to this standard includes the physical properties of sound. According

to Loy (2006), these physical properties include frequency, intensity, onset, duration, and

wave shape (p. 9). Math is also related to the musical concept of intervals which can be

compared by making a ratio of their frequencies (Loy, 2006, p. 15).

Other musical concepts students learn in music class include form, melodic

contour, the timbral and pitch qualities of instruments depending on the instrument’s size,
 5

string length, the overtone series, and acoustics. These musical concepts are associated

with geometry, the fifth mathematical domain. Within this domain, students should be

able to identify and describe shapes, graph points to solve real-world problems, and make

inferences and justify conclusions from observation.

Finally, the sixth domain, ratio and proportional relationships, deals with ratio

concepts and reasoning to solve problems. This domain is related to the linear rhythmic

relationships, including melodic construction- augmentation, diminution, and vertical

arrangement of rhythmic such as rhythms lining up between parts. Despite the numerous

connections between music and mathematics, it is surprising that these connections have

not been explored in-depth regarding how difficulties understanding mathematical

concepts may result in music learning challenges.

Music Learning Strategies and Dyscalculia

Despite the numerous connections between music and mathematics, it is

surprising that these connections have not been explored in-depth regarding how

difficulties understanding mathematical concepts may result in music learning challenges.

McCord (Blair & McCord, 2016; McCord, 2017; McCord & Fitzgerald, 2006) is one of

the only specialists thus far that has included information in her articles and books about

dyscalculia. Blair and McCord (2016) provide information about and strategies related to

dyscalculia. Blair and McCord (2016) explain the three different subtypes of dyscalculia,

as outlined by Geary (2004) and the musical challenges associated with each subtype.

Blair and McCord (2016) posit that children with the visuospatial subtype of

dyscalculia will most likely struggle with reading traditional fingering charts. This issue

occurs because when children observe the fingering chart on their music stand, it may be
 6

confusing to understand how each diagram depicting the correct fingering relates to their

hand position. After all, they must mentally invert the diagram to transfer the information

correctly. Blair and McCord (2016) suggests using adapted fingering charts illustrating

the fingerings according to how a student views the chart from playing position, rather

than from the angle the instrument is held. An example of an adaptive fingering chart for

recorder is provided in her book Exceptional Music Pedagogy for Children with

Exceptionalities (See Figure 1).

Figure 1

Adaptive Fingering Chart

Note: From Exceptional music pedagogy for children with exceptionalities. Oxford
University. This figure was obtained with permission of the author via Facebook
Messenger.

Furthermore, McCord (2017) notes that children with dyslexia and dyscalculia

may have trouble reading standard music notation left from right. McCord (2017)

suggests that students use cardboard devices called Reading Rulers or Reading Helpers.

This tool guides the students to read ahead by moving the window on to the next word or
 7

sentence and reading music. McCord (2017) offered another strategy to input music in

electronic software, set the desired tempo, and read the music as the file silently plays.

My Experience with Dyscalculia

Dyscalculia permeates every aspect of my life. Many people who I talk to about

dyscalculia are unaware of what it is. Furthermore, when learning that dyscalculia is a

mathematical learning disability, they are surprised when I explain the other challenges

individuals may face that significantly impact their daily lives.

The impression that many people may get when they interact with me is that of an

accomplished musician, music educator, and scholar. They are unaware of the daily

struggle I face with basic tasks such as distinguishing left from right, telling time, making

change, and calculating tips and taxes when making a purchase. Not to mention that I

have a very poor sense of direction, and losing and forgetting objects is something I’m

known for among family members. Sometimes getting through the day can be difficult

because I waste so much time and energy franticly trying to backtrack my steps to find

the items I have left behind. Some of these items include books, bags, jackets, my phone,

keys, and wallet. Sometimes I am lucky to find them, and sometimes they are gone for

good.

My dyscalculia is the outcome of being born three months premature. As a result,

I suffered from the most severe form of intraventricular hemorrhages in the brain’s

parietal and occipital regions. According to the Columbia University Department of

Neurology (2015) website, “Intraventricular hemorrhage (IVH) is bleeding inside or

around the ventricles, the spaces in the brain containing the cerebral spinal fluid.”

Furthermore, IVH is most common in premature babies, especially those weighing three
 8

pounds, five ounces, and nearly all IVH occurs in the first three days of life (Columbia

University Department of Neurology, 2015). I weighed two pounds, eleven ounces.

My mother suspected I had a math learning disability from the time she first

taught me to count. She told me that I would count out of order and did not understand

the concept of counting objects. I struggled with math all through elementary school, but

my mother tutored me extensively to ensure I obtained average grades.

In eighth grade, after expressing my difficulties with algebra and elective classes

such as sewing and woodshop, I was given a psychological assessment by the school

psychologist and diagnosed with dyscalculia. As a result, I was provided with an

Individualized Education Plan (IEP) and received accommodations, including extra time

on tests and given a reduced amount of math problems for homework.

High school was a challenging time for me for numerous reasons, both musically

and academically. When I told my math and science teachers about my learning

disability, I often heard a typical response: “I don’t see it.” It is important to remember

that learning disabilities are invisible, causing students to feel frustrated and even drop

out of school. I was lucky, however, to have mathematically talented family members.

My paternal uncle, in particular, tutored me all through high school.

Storing and retrieving mathematical facts may be difficult for individuals with

dyscalculia due to deficits with semantic memory. For every problem I had to complete,

my uncle would have to review the most basic material until I had reviewed enough to

attempt the homework problems. These tutoring sessions often lasted well into the night.

However, due to my uncle’s assistance, I was able to earn B’s and C’s on my exams.
 9

Another way dyscalculia affected my life, which may be surprising to some, is

how I learn and process musical concepts. When I was five years old, I received a

keyboard as a gift for Christmas. I spent hours listening to the songs included with the

demo feature, playing along by ear and improvising. When I began taking piano lessons,

however, I had trouble learning to read music. As a result, I quickly became bored

because I could play at a more advanced level when using my natural aural skills.

I joined my city’s band program in the fifth grade, beginning with the flute. One

of my strengths was memorizing musical facts and concepts. I also excelled technically at

the flute and wanted more of a challenge and switched to the French horn. I continued my

musical studies in the band until high school, and I learned other instruments along the

way, including clarinet, saxophone, and trumpet. My compositional abilities began to

flourish in middle school. By the time I finished high school, I had written quite a few

piano pieces and performed them in the junior varieties shows as both a junior and a

senior.

Despite my musical successes, I experienced numerous musical difficulties due to

my dyscalculia in counting rhythm, dealing with compound time signatures, and losing

count during resting periods. Sometimes my band teacher would stop the band because I

missed an entrance and single me out in front of the class.

As a result of these challenges, I began to develop coping strategies, even if I was

unaware of it. I quickly memorized my parts and those of everyone else and learned to

feel my place in the music. I listened for key moments before an entrance and found

written cues helpful. To understand complex rhythms, I conducted while clapping the

rhythm and counted aloud.

 10

Performing with the marching band was the most stressful and negative musical

experience I had in high school. As a result of the damage I experienced as an infant, I

had significant trouble interpreting drill charts, locating my spot on the field, and

memorizing my sets. My name consistently boomed over the loudspeaker and was

spoken to in such a negative way that I experienced anxiety.

From the time I was in the fifth grade, I developed an interest in conducting. I

auditioned for the position of student conductor in the seventh grade. While I did not win

the audition, my interest in conducting pursued throughout high school until I auditioned

for and became the drum major in my senior year.

My symptoms with dyscalculia sometimes created challenges. For example, when

leading marching drills in block formation, I had to take a moment before dressing the

band because I had to orient myself to which way was right and which way was left. To

do this, I would turn in the direction that the students were facing.

I obtained a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in music education, graduating with

a 3.9 GPA. When I became a music teacher, the daily difficulties I experienced, however,

sometimes affected my career, especially when my colleagues noticed my struggle with a

seemingly simple task. These issues usually resulted in confusion or disbelief on their

part. Every human being experiences life differently. I chose to share my story because

there may be other musicians with dyscalculia who are also struggling to process musical

concepts. Unless more research is conducted to investigate musicians’ experiences with

dyscalculia, this information will be impossible to obtain.

 11

Statement of the Problem

In examining the special education resources in music education concerning one

can find resources about dyslexia in the forms of books, (Miles & Westcombe, 2001;

Miles et al., 2008; Orglethorpe, 2002), journal articles (Bryson, 2013; Heikkila & Knight,

2012; Lind, 2001; Miles & Westcombe, 2001; Miles et al., 2008; O’Brien-Vance, 2013),

and dissertations, (Nelson, 2014; White, 1993) to name a few.

For example, Nelson (2014) conducted a study examining the music coping

strategies of five musicians with dyslexia. The purpose of this comparative case study

was to gain insight into the perceptions of professional musicians as they reflected on

their music learning experiences throughout their life. Two research questions were

posed: (1) What strategies have five professional musicians used to overcome the

challenges associated with dyslexia? and (2) What are the perceived abilities and traits

the participants believe they have developed in music because of their diagnoses of

dyslexia?

Nelson found that the participants utilized various strategies, including

multisensory learning and teaching, small group and private instruction, technology such

as recordings, isolating musical components, and learning and performing other music

genres with less emphasis on standard music notation. In terms of the participants’

strengths and weaknesses, four out of the five participants felt their dyslexia contributed

to their musical strengths. The common weaknesses expressed by the participants

included low self-esteem and music reading ability. Nelson’s dissertation is one of the

only study within the field of music education, examining the coping strategies employed

musicians with dyslexia.

 12

All disability types are worth learning about, but we cannot help students with

dyscalculia if we are not aware of what it is and how it can affect the way children learn

music. Raising awareness of the challenges associated with dyscalculia will provide

music teachers with a better understanding of the social, mental, emotional, and physical

challenges associated with this learning disability.

Need for Study

The need for this study can be justified in the following ways: (1) information on

dyscalculia is virtually non-existent in the field of music education, (2) music educators

are less aware of dyscalculia than other types of disabilities, (3) providing vital

information about dyscalculia is essential to increasing awareness of dyscalculia, and (4)

engaging in dialogue with individuals with dyscalculia can offer valuable insight into

how they overcame any musical challenges or used their strengths in unique ways, thus

creating a knowledge base of coping strategies that can be expanded upon in future

research studies. Finally, Butterworth (2005) summarizes these points succinctly when he

states, “... only with a better understanding of the nature of developmental dyscalculia

devise effective ways of helping the millions of our fellow citizens whose lives are

blighted by it” (p. 465).

Research Questions

The purpose of this study is to examine the lived experiences of adult musicians

with dyscalculia. This dissertation is guided by the following research questions:

1. How did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their learning experiences in their

daily lives, education and career?

 13

2. How did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their music learning experiences in

school and their professional lives?

3. Do musicians with dyscalculia develop or use specific compensatory strategies to

overcome learning challenges or utilize their musical strengths in unique ways?

Rationale for Research Design

To best answer the research questions guiding this study, I will implement a

qualitative research design. According to Creswell and Creswell (2018), qualitative

research is “an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or

groups ascribe to a social or human problem” (p. 4). Researchers who use a qualitative

research design are interested in the meanings humans make when engaging with their

world (Creswell & Creswell, 2018, p. 8). Adopting a phenomenological approach is the

most suitable way to address my primary research questions. To carry out this task, I

adopted Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s (1945/2012) existential-phenomenological approach

and Clark Moustakas’s (1990) heuristic research method.

The Heuristic Method

Heuristic Inquiry is defined by Sultan (2019) as “a qualitative, social

constructivist, and phenomenologically aligned research methodology inspired by the

primary researcher’s autobiographical experience.” Moustakas (1990) describes heuristic

inquiry as a painstaking process that requires the researcher to return to the data in

“timeless immersion.” Sultan (2019) acknowledges that this is might not always be

practical when conducting a formal study due to time restraints. Therefore the researcher

should set parameters with room for flexibility regarding how long each interview will

take.
 14

Furthermore, Moustakas (1990) states that existential phenomenology and

heuristic inquiry are complementary because heuristic inquiry is a phenomenologically

aligned method. The aims of existential phenomenology and heuristic inquiry are to

uncover the meaning of the lived experience. Therefore, the philosophical assumptions

and methodological approach guiding this study prove to be an appropriate way to

explore this phenomenon. I based the methodological design for this study on

Moustakas’s (1990) book, Heuristic Research: Design, Methodology, and Applications,

and Sultan’s (2019) book Heuristic Inquiry: Researching Human Experiences

Holistically.

Definition of Terms

Bracketing: Refraining from judgment (Husserl, 2004, p. 109).

Creative Synthesis: A heuristic inquiry data representation that represents a researcher’s

integration of the multiple themes of the topic into a cohesive whole, usually using some

form of creative interpretation (Sultan, 2019, p. 260).

Dyscalculia: “A serious impairment of the learning of basic numerical-arithmetical skills

in a child whose intellectual capacity and schooling are otherwise adequate” (Kaufman &

von Aster, 2012, p. 767).

Dysgraphia: Difficulties with spelling accuracy, grammar or punctuation accuracy,

clarity, or organization of written expression (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

 15

Dyslexia: A pattern of learning difficulties characterized by problems with accurate or

fluent word recognition, poor decoding, and poor spelling abilities (American Psychiatric

Association, 2013).

Essence: The core meaning of an individual’s experience that makes it what it is (Kafle,

2011, p. 182).

Existential Phenomenology: Subjective human experience as it reflects people’s values,

purposes, ideals, intentions, emotions, and relationships (Jun, 2008).

Explication: A researcher’s exploration of emergent themes and fine-tuning of those

themes in preparation for the creative synthesis (Sultan, 2019, p. 261).

Focusing: A process of inner searching as a method of self-inquiry and self-awareness

(Sultan, 2019, p. 261).

Heuristic Inquiry: A qualitative, social constructivist, and phenomenologically aligned

research methodology inspired by the primary researcher’s autobiographical experience

(Sultan, 2019, p. 262).

Incubation: A researcher’s temporary and deliberate withdrawal from the research

question or topic to allow seeds of new knowledge to sprout (Sultan, 2019, p. 262).
 16

Indwelling: a process of turning inward or dep introspection to arrive at insight into a

central phenomenon (Sultan, 2019, p. 262).

Initial Engagement: A researcher’s first encounter with a topic of extreme interest

through an autobiographical experience, that, though it is internal and personal to the

researcher, it is of potentially social and universal significance (Sultan, 2019, p. 262).

Illumination: A researcher’s awareness (usually intuitive) of previously undisclosed

information related to the research questions, often coupled with altered perception of the

topic (Sultan, 2019, p. 262).

Immersion: A researcher’s full commitment to living a question or topic, in all

dimensions of life, as the question becomes the primary focus of the researcher’s

attention (Sultan, 2019, p. 262).

Intentionality (Transcendental): dialectical interdependence of the subject and object

(Stoll, 1980, p. 81).

Intentionality (Existential): A state of pre-reflective consciousness (Stoll, 1980, p. 100)

Lived Experience: A term used in phenomenological research to describe firsthand

involvement in human experience (Sultan, 2019, p. 260).

 17

Phenomenological Reduction: Setting aside the limitations to knowledge essentially

involved in every nature directed form of investigation (Husserl, 2013, p. 43).

Presupposition: Suspension of beliefs (Farber, 1966, p. 45).

Primary Dyscalculia: Impaired development of brain mechanisms for processing

numerical magnitude information (Price & Ansari, 2013).

Reflexivity: The process by which researchers place under scrutiny the research process,

the intersubjective dynamics between the researcher and the participants, and the extent

to which their assumptions influenced the process of inquiry (Sultan, 2019, 263).

Secondary Dyscalculia: Mathematical deficits stemming from external factors such as

poor teaching, low socio-economic status, and behavioral attention problems or domain-

general cognitive deficits (Price & Ansari, 2013).

Specific Learning Disability: Difficulty learning key academic skills, including reading,

writing, and mathematics (American Psychiatric Association, 2013).

Tacit Knowing: Implicit knowing or knowing that lies beyond what may be readily

observed or articulated (Sultan, 2019).

 18

Transcendental/Pure Phenomenology: A science that investigates the essence alone,

and not as concerned with the investigation of existence or with self-observation (Farber,

1966, p. 34).

Qualitative Research: An approach for exploring and understanding the meaning

individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem (Creswell & Creswell, 2018,

p. 4).

Delimitations of Study

One main delimitation of this study was the inability to ensure that all participants

have received a formal diagnosis of dyscalculia. Mazzocco (2007) explains that a lack of

consensus regarding the definition of dyscalculia exists among experts. This fact is

further complicated because different terminology has been used to refer to dyscalculia.

Mazzocco (2007) notes that mathematical learning disabilities (MLD), mathematical

difficulties, and dyscalculia refer to the same construct. Accurately diagnosing

dyscalculia is also compounded by the wide range of diagnostic tools and criteria used to

identify children with dyscalculia, resulting in inconsistencies in both research and

educational contents. For these reasons, I included participants who had self-identified as

having dyscalculia for this study.

 CHAPTER 2
REVIEW OF LITERATURE

In this chapter, I provide background information about dyscalculia, describe

mathematic strategies used to help children with dyscalculia in the classroom, and review

pertinent literature about the post-secondary outcomes of individuals with learning

disabilities. Dyscalculia is one type of specific learning disability. The Diagnostic and

Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) defines

a specific learning disability as “difficulty learning key academic skills, including

reading, writing, and mathematics.” The DSM–5 states that there are four key features of

specific learning disabilities. First, specific learning disabilities are characterized by

persistent learning difficulties with academic skills and do not improve with remediation

or extra help. Second, a child must be performing well below grade level. Third, learning

difficulties will become noticeable during the child’s primary school years. For other

children, their learning disability may become apparent in secondary school when they

begin to take more abstract math courses.

Finally, a learning disability can be considered specific when it is based on four

additional factors: (1) children with a specific learning disability and an IQ score greater

than 70 will exhibit average levels of intelligence, (2) the learning difficulty cannot be

due to external aspects such as socioeconomic status or lack of education, (3) the learning

disability is not attributed to other conditions such as neurological and motor disorders or

vision and hearing impairments, and (4) the learning disability is domain-specific. The

term domain-specific means that a child may be achieving well below grade level in a

particular academic area but may possess strengths in other academics or extracurricular

activities.

19
 20

Types of Specific Learning Disabilities

Adamek and Darrow (2018) assert that specific learning disabilities describe a

heterogeneous group of disabilities. Three common categories of specific learning

disabilities include dyslexia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia. Dyslexia relates to difficulties

in reading, writing, and spelling. Dyscalculia refers to problems trouble understanding

basic mathematical skills. Dysgraphia is associated with challenges in written expression

and handwriting.

The focus of this dissertation is the mathematical learning disability called

dyscalculia. Dyscalculia is characterized by problems processing numerical information,

learning arithmetic facts, and performing accurate or fluent calculations (American

Psychiatric Association, 2013). Often, when individuals with dyscalculia try to explain

their learning disability to others, they may describe it as “math dyslexia,” but are the two

conditions the same? Miles and Westcombe (2001) assert: “There is no agreement as to

whether dyscalculia should be considered as a distinct and separate syndrome or whether

its manifestations are all part of the dyslexia syndrome” (p. 6). This notion is inaccurate

when examining the neuroscience literature exploring the similarities and differences

between dyslexia and dyscalculia. Before describing the characteristics of dyscalculia.

The Root Cause of Dyscalculia

The most current resource on dyscalculia is Butterworth’s (2019) book

Dyscalculia: From Science to Education. Butterworth is Emeritus Professor of the

cognitive neuropsychology department at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience at

University College London. He asserts that humans are all born with a cognitive “starter

kit” containing two types of tools to learn arithmetic: domain-specific tools and general
 21

domain tools. Domain-specific tools are what Butterworth (2019) refers to as the “the

number module”–the cognitive tool specific to numbers and arithmetic. On the other

hand, Domain-general tools are cognitive capacities that applies to a wide range of tasks,

including all curricular subjects. Both types of tools are needed to develop arithmetical

competence (Butterworth, 2019).

The Network for Arithmetic

According to Butterworth (2019), within the human brain exists a network for

arithmetic, including the intraparietal sulci located in both the left and right hemispheres.

This brain region is involved in the processing of numerical magnitude information (Price

& Ansari, 2013). Butterworth (2019), notes that different brain areas are responsible for

calculating different arithmetical tasks. For example, there is one additional area on the

border of the left parietal lobe below the intraparietal sulcus called the angular gyrus. It is

this area of the brain that is more active when retrieving simple arithmetical facts.

Simultaneously, the frontal lobes are responsible for executive function and are relatively

more active when arithmetical strategies are required. This region of the brain is involved

in several processes: semantic processing, word reading and comprehension, number

processing, memory retrieval, attention and spatial cognition, reasoning, and social

cognition (Seghier, 2013).

Subtypes of Dyscalculia

There are two different models used to explain the subtypes of dyscalculia. Geary

(2004) proposes a model consisting of three subtypes. These subtypes include procedural,

semantic, and visual-spatial. Procedural deficits are characterized by using

developmentally immature counting strategies such as finger counting compared to their

 22

typical peers, which results in numerous counting errors when solving simple arithmetic

problems (Geary, 2004).

The second subtype of dyscalculia is semantic deficits characterized by

difficulties retrieving stored arithmetic facts from long-term memory. Geary (2004)

posits that this may be one of the defining features of arithmetic forms of dyscalculia.

While these children can retrieve some facts, they often do so with many more errors than

children without dyscalculia. Finally, the third subtype of dyscalculia is visuospatial. This

subtype is characterized by difficulties spatially representing numerical and other forms

of mathematical information (Geary, 2004).

Karagiannakis et al. (2014), propose a four-subtype multidimensional model,

which includes the following categories: (1) core number, (2) memory (retrieval and

processing), (3) reasoning, and (4) visual-spatial. The main difference between these two

models is that Geary (2004) associates each subtype to basic cognitive processes, such as

working memory, long term memory, or executive functions. Karagiannakis et al. (2014),

on the other hand, believe that each subtype is domain-specific. The children studied did

not belong to any particular subtype, but instead demonstrated characteristics about

different subtypes.

Often, when individuals with dyscalculia try to explain their learning disability to

others, they may describe it as “math dyslexia,” (Frye, 2020), but are the two conditions

the same? Miles and Westcombe (2001) assert: “There is no agreement as to whether

dyscalculia should be considered as a distinct and separate syndrome or whether its

manifestations are all part of the dyslexia syndrome” (p. 6). This notion is inaccurate

when examining the neuroscience literature exploring the similarities, differences, and
 23

overlaps between dyslexia and dyscalculia. In the next section research examining the

connections between dyslexia and dyscalculia will be described.

Mathematics Learning Strategies

According to Jiménez-Fernández (2016), the first step a teacher should take is to

develop a specific educational intervention to identify the child’s particular deficits and

abilities to establish clear and quantifiable objectives. Once a child’s specific symptoms

are identified, the teacher can begin to individualize instruction. According to Kumar and

Raja (2012), early identification and intervention strategies are essential to this process.

Witzel and Mize (2018) describe several empirically validated practices to help

children with mathematical difficulties, including (1) task analysis, (2) explicit

instruction, (3) multisensory instruction, and (4) field-dependent approaches. Task

analysis refers to the process of breaking down a task into small steps and sequentially

prompting students at each stage (Wadlington & Wadlington, 2008; Witzel & Mize,

2018). Kumar and Raja (2012), for example, suggest that individuals with dyscalculia

should be presented with bite-size information in a sequential manner. Furthermore,

Jiménez-Fernández (2016) asserts that both the teaching and learning process should be

built on sequences that go from the concrete to the abstract using tangible materials

(Wadlington & Wadlington, 2008).

Witzel and Mize (2018) describe explicit instruction is the “process by which

knowledge is gradually released from teacher to student” (p. 34). Explicit instruction has

a high effect size for students with disabilities and at-risk concerns in both reading

(Gersten et al., 2008) and mathematics (Gersten et al., 2009). Jiménez-Fernández (2016)

notes that procedures should include guidance by direct demonstration and verbal
 24

instructions and consecutive attempts by the child with feedback. In particular, Jiménez-

Fernández (2016) recommends that teachers show strategies, verbalize all steps, and

explain why the chosen approach is preferred. This method establishes clear rules

necessary for the child to work independently.

Teaching new content through multiple representations has long been supported

as an effective approach for students with learning difficulties (Witzel & Mize, 2018).

Kumar and Raja (2012) posit that children with dyscalculia or dyslexia need help from a

teacher, tutor, or specialist training in using a multisensory approach to teaching using a

systematic and explicit method involving several senses at the same time.

Kumar and Raja (2012) stress that teachers must match their teaching style to

their students’ learning styles. In doing so, teachers can create a wide range of learning

opportunities by using visual representations of pictures, diagrams, and kinesthetic

experiences, such as working with real objects and models. Ultimately, remedial

instruction caters to the needs of diverse learnings by adopting different ways of

presenting the information in the classroom.

Kumar and Raja (2012) posit that one-way multisensory instruction can be

employed is through the innovative use of technology. For instance, computer-assisted

instruction can help children with dyscalculia overcome their disability to a large extent.

Jiménez-Fernández (2016) notes that as computation can grow tiring for a child,

educational software is useful in providing students with repetitive practice to achieve

automatization.

According to Witzel and Mize (2018), “Field-dependent approaches rely on

progressive scaffolding of fully worked examples to help guide a student through a

 25

process of understanding” (p. 35). For example, the steps would initially be presented

using a graphic organizer. Next, the teacher would explain all of the steps to the student

except one. The faded supports continue until the child can complete the work

independently (p. 35). Jiménez-Fernández (2016) asserts that teachers should adopt a

multisensory approach when scaffolding.

Kumar and Raja (2012) posit that remedial instruction is useful for children with

dyscalculia. Remedial instruction involves differentiated instruction that employs

different instructional techniques and a variety of instructional materials. These authors

assert that children with disabilities need a great deal of structured activity and immediate

corrective feedback to develop children’s numerical skills. Repeated reinforcement and

specific practice of mathematical ideas can make understanding easier. Many students

need individual attention to grasp certain concepts fully. Teachers must provide them

with personal care and attention to help them cope with their learning through remedial

programs. Effective remediation involves assessing the students’ needs, providing

intervention, and evaluating student outcomes. Successful remediation programs adjust

the instruction based on the student’s response to the intervention.

Strategy instruction interventions have also proved to be a practical approach for

children with learning difficulties. For example, Monei and Pedro (2017) found that

examining the effectiveness of specific arithmetic interventions to improve mathematical

skills was the focus of numerous studies (Codding et al., 2011; Fischer et al., 2013;

Gersten et al., 2009; Kroesbergen & van Luit, 2003; Xin & Jitendra, 1999). Some useful

strategy instruction interventions include providing customized and individualized

training to children with mathematical difficulties (Fuchs et al., 2008; Re et al., 2014),
 26

providing children with tools and techniques needed to understand and learn new

materials or skills (Fuchs et al., 2010; Swanson et al., 2013; Swanson et al., 2014).

Moreover, according to Swanson et al. (2013), it is vital that cognitive sessions

direct children’s attention to the relevant propositions within word problems related to

accessing the appropriate operations and algorithms for obtaining a solution (Swanson et

al., 2013). Number combination (NC) skills, another strategy instruction intervention,

have been reported as a strategic counting instruction that involves teaching students with

mathematics efficient counting procedures (Fuchs et al., 2010). Finally, small group

interventions are also useful with children presenting with dyscalculia in primary school

(B. R. Bryant et al., 2016; D. P. Bryant et al., 2008).

Dyslexia vs. Dyscalculia: Same or Different

Researchers have studied the cognitive relationships between dyslexia and

dyscalculia in the following areas: working memory deficits (Schuchardt et al., 2008),

naming speed (Willburger et al., 2008); cognitive inhibition (Wang et al., 2012),

specificity and overlap in skills underpinning reading and arithmetical fluency, (van Daal

et al., 2012), cognitive bases of comorbidity (Wilson et al., 2015), and brain activity

during arithmetical tasks (Peters et al., 2018). Researchers have proposed that

differences, similarities, and overlaps exist between dyslexia and dyscalculia. For

example, Willburger et al. (2008) investigated four groups of 8- to 10-year-olds,

including 42 students in the control group, 21 students with dyslexia, 20 students with

dyscalculia, and 26 students with both learning disabilities. The students were measured

on phonological awareness, phonological and visual-spatial short-term and working

memory, naming speed, and basic number processing skills.

 27

Dyslexia and dyscalculia were found to be associated with two largely

independent cognitive deficits: A phonological deficit in the case of dyslexia and a

deficiency in the number module in the case of dyscalculia (Rubinsten & Henik, 2006;

van Daal, et al., 2012; Wilson et al., 2015). Furthermore, when examining the patterns of

deficits in working memory in children with dyslexia and dyscalculia, Schuchardt et al.,

(2008) found that children with dyscalculia demonstrated deficits in visual-spatial

memory. In contrast, children with dyslexia showed deficits in phonological and central

executive functioning.

Regarding the cognitive inhibition abilities of children with dyslexia, dyscalculia,

and control students, Wang et al. (2012) evaluated 45 students with dyslexia, 45 students

with dyscalculia, 45 age-, gender-, and IQ-matched control students. Students were

evaluated on six cognitive inhibition tasks, which were further restructured into three

categories: graph inhibition, number inhibition, and word inhibition. The results support

Willburger et al.’s (2008) theory that dyslexia and dyscalculia are associated with two

largely independent cognitive deficits in the following ways.

First, Willburger al. found that control students performed better than dyslexic

students on graphic inhibition tasks, but students with dyslexia outperformed students

with dyscalculia. Second, students in the control group performed and students with

dyslexia on the number inhibition task. However, the control group and the dyslexia

group performed better than students with dyscalculia. Finally, in relation to the word

inhibition task, the control group performed the same as students with dyscalculia.

Students in the control groups exhibited shorter response times and made fewer errors

than students with dyscalculia. This study’s results indicate the complexity of the
 28

different cognitive inhibition abilities displayed by students with dyslexia, dyscalculia,

and those in the control groups.

Re et al. (2007) investigated the extent to which some children with dyscalculia

and dyslexia share some features among two children with dyslexia, two with

dyscalculia, and three children with comorbidities. Impairments were discovered in

mental and written calculations, retrieval of arithmetical facts, number comparison and

alignment, and identification of arithmetical signs might appear with an average reading

capacity and independently of a short-term verbal memory deficit. These findings further

support evidence that the more distinctive characteristics of dyscalculia are functionally

independent of dyslexia.

Additionally, some research studies concluded that individuals with dyslexia and

dyscalculia might exhibit additive deficits in other cognitive systems (Schuchardt et al.,

2008; van Daal et al., 2012; Willburger et al., 2008). For instance, when examining the

patterns of deficits in working memory in children with dyslexia and dyscalculia,

Schuchardt et al. (2008) discovered that deficits in working memory in children with

dyslexia and dyscalculia did not suggest independent patterns of deficits in children with

both learning disabilities. Instead, the results indicated that these children exhibited

comorbidities.

Wilson et al. (2015) attempted to establish a cognitive phenotype of comorbidity

in adults measuring core cognitive components involved in numerical cognition and

reading. Not only did Wilson et al. (2015) discover that dyscalculia and dyslexia showed

independent domain-specific deficits, they also found evidence for general domain

symptoms connected to both disorders, such as deficits in phonological processing. In a

 29

similar vein, Willburger et al. (2008) found that individuals with dyslexia and dyscalculia

were found to have additive deficits related to the processing of symbolic and non-

symbolic magnitudes.

van Daal et al. (2012) set out to examine: (1) which factors are specific for

problems in reading and arithmetic fluency, and (2) which factors are common to reading

and arithmetic fluency problems. van Daal et al. (2012) found that students with

comorbidities experienced disability-specific problems and shared commonalities. For

example, it was suggested that a combination of number fact fluency and sound

manipulation accounted for the overlap between reading and arithmetic difficulties.

Finally, in comparing the neural correlates of 62 children with dyslexia, dyscalculia, and

a combination of both dyslexia and dyscalculia between the ages of 9-12, Peters et al.

(2018) found a substantial similarity between children with both learning disorders at the

neural level.

The results of the studies reviewed in this section illustrate that there are notable

similarities, differences, and overlaps in the cognitive function of individuals with

dyslexia and dyscalculia. There are also noteworthy differences that indicate that dyslexia

and dyscalculia have different cognitive profiles. Given these neurological differences it

is important to know how dyscalculia may impact lives of individuals with this disability

in their education and career, however, research on this topic specific to dyscalculia is

scant. There is more general information regarding the lived experiences of individuals

with learning disabilities which I describe in the next section.

 30

Post-Secondary Outcomes of Adults with Learning Disabilities

Despite the amount of neurological research on dyscalculia, there is a shortage of

studies addressing the post-secondary outcomes of individuals affected by dyscalculia.

Instead, several studies addressed post-secondary outcomes of individuals affected by

learning disabilities, while others focused on the post-secondary outcomes of those with

dyslexia. In examining the literature pertaining to this topic, several themes stand out

including: (1) successful individuals with learning disabilities develop coping strategies

to overcome challenges (Greenbaum et al., 1995; Heiman & Kariv, 2004; Heiman &

Precel, 2003; Reis et al., 2000; Stage & Milne, 1996), (2) the importance of a college

education for individuals with learning disabilities (Madaus, 2006; Madaus et al., 2001),

(3) individuals with learning disabilities feel that it is through a significant amount of

effort and the belief in their ability to achieve contributes to their overall success both

academically and in the workplace (Ebo, 2016; Greenbaum et al., 1995; Heiman & Kariv,

2004; Heiman & Precel, 2003; Madaus, 2006; Madaus et al., 2001; Reis et al., 2000), and

(4) the fact that individuals with learning disabilities may experience a sense of

inadequacy in comparison to their peers (Ebo, 2016; Heiman & Kariv, 2004; Heiman &

Precel, 2003; Masover, 1999; McNulty, 2000; Stage & Milne, 1996; Vogel et al., 2007).

Conquering Academic Challenges

Many adults with learning disabilities experience several academic challenges in

college. Greenbaum et al. (1995) and Stage and Milne (1996) found that common

challenges faced by individuals with learning disabilities included reading, reading

comprehension, writing, spelling, mathematics, organization of thoughts, handwriting,

composition, organization, information processing, and note-taking. However, several

 31

researchers have found that individuals with learning disabilities who have achieved

success in their education and have developed coping strategies to overcome college

challenges achieved success (Ebo, 2016; Greenbaum et al., 1995; Reis et al., 2000). Reis

et al. (2000) examined the compensation strategies employed by high-ability students

with learning disabilities to address and overcome different academic challenges.

To examine the ramifications of dyslexia on the lives of adults with dyslexia,

Masover (1999) set out to understand the feelings of people with this learning disability

and the coping mechanisms they used in managing their relationships and career. The 18

participants, between the ages of 25-52, described a wide variety of dyslexic symptoms,

which fell into five major categories: emotional difficulties, memory problems, issues

with reading and writing, and perceptual problems. Masover (1999) discovered that two

of the challenges the participants’ experienced included trouble with multiplication and

division and solving word problems. Other issues mentioned were difficulties with

directions (Shessel & Reiff, 2011), remembering left from right, disorganization, auditory

processing, sequencing problems, physical coordination problems, spatial

comprehension, and hand-eye coordination.

According to these researchers, students’ typical study and performance strategies

included note-taking time management and cognitive/learning strategies such as

mnemonic devices and flashcards. They also used compensation supports such as word

processing, computers, books on tape, and environmental accommodations such as test-

taking accommodations. Additionally, successful students utilized counseling services

and support groups (Masover, 2009; Stage & Milne, 1996) and disability and academic

services (Ebo, 2016; Greenbaum et al., 1995; Heiman & Precel, 2000) Moreover, they
 32

pursued self-advocacy efforts (Reis et al., 2000) and developed individual plans

incorporating a focus on metacognition and executive function (Reis et al., 2000), and

learning how they learned best (Stage & Milne, 1996).

Furthermore, Greenbaum et al. (1995) found that successful college students had

mild-to-moderate rather than severe disabilities, possessed an IQ and higher than average

socioeconomic status, and were well-informed about their disability. Motivation,

dedication, the development of excellent work habits as well as the belief in one’s ability

to succeed were essential factors in their success (Ebo, 2016; Greenbaum et al., 1995;

Heiman & Kariv, 2004; Heiman & Precel, 2003; Madaus, 2006; Madaus et al., 2001;

Reis et al., 2000). Success was also related to the support, guidance, and encouragement

from the participants’ families, parents, and friends, significant others, or faculty

members as well as access to effective support systems (Ebo, 2016; Greenbaum et

al.,1995; Stage & Milne, 1996).

Stage and Milne (1996) examined the experiences of college students with

learning disabilities and how they adjusted to college. Participants’ most common

strategy was to expend a considerable amount of effort compared to their classmates,

adopt exercises to relieve stress, employ various types of study schemes, and implement

methods for managing their sense of inadequacy.

The Importance of a College Education

Greenbaum et al. (1995) found that obtaining a college education represents a

significant accomplishment for students with learning disabilities. For example,

successful individuals utilized the disability services offered at their institution

(Greenbaum et al., 1995; Reis et al., 2000). Other students felt that their success was due
 33

to their hard work, motivation, and dedication. In addition, these students put forth a

considerable amount of effort than their peers (Reis et al., 2000; Stage & Milne, 1996).

Another strategy for success, developed by almost all participants, was acquiring

excellent work habits in response to difficulties. A dedicated attitude was needed to

succeed in a challenging university system. Many students emphasized their strong belief

in their potential and a willingness to go to great lengths to realize that potential. The

majority believed their capacity for hard work was their greatest asset.

Greenbaum et al. (1995), Madaus et al. (2001), and Madaus, (2006) assert that

obtaining a college education represents a key accomplishment for students with learning

disabilities, particularly in their ultimate success. Vogel et al. (2007) were surprised to

discover that among nine professional educators, almost three times as many educators

with learning disabilities had earned a graduate degree compared to other professionals

without learning disabilities.

Madaus et al. (2001) explored the outcomes of postsecondary outcomes of

graduates with learning disabilities in the age range of 21 to 51 and over. This

investigation resulted in a generally positive picture of the postsecondary school

outcomes for a sample of university graduates with learning disabilities. The employment

rate, levels of income, and levels of benefits earned by the sample are comparable to

those of the general workforce in the United States at the time.

Furthermore, Madaus et al. (2001) declared that these results are much more

favorable than data available on adults with learning disabilities who do not attend

college (Madaus, 2006). Overall, this study’s results substantiate that the attainment of a
 34

college degree is beneficial for the employment outcomes for adults with learning

disabilities (Madaus, 2006).

Madaus (2006) conducted a follow-up research study previously conducted by

Madaus et al. (2001), which examined the postsecondary outcomes of 1,348 graduates

with learning disabilities from six postsecondary institutions throughout the country.

Similarly to the findings of Madaus et al. (2001), Madaus (2006) posits that individuals

with learning disabilities are transitioning successfully into the world of work, at rates

comparable to their non-disabled peers, at rates that far exceed their peers without

learning disabilities without postsecondary degrees.

Masover (1999), for instance, found that the participants’ levels of education

directly affected their career choices. All of the respondents in Masover’s (1999) study,

except one, could not meet their career goals. According to Madaus (2006), a successful

postsecondary college experience can make a crucial difference in individuals with

disabilities experiences in the workplace.

Overcoming Challenges in the Workplace

Individuals with learning disabilities also reported experiences difficulties at work

in a variety of areas. Madaus et al. (2001) explored graduates’ postsecondary outcomes

with learning disabilities between the ages of 21 to adults over 51. Difficulties

encountered in the workplace, including time management, organizational skills, and

mathematical computation. Regarding whether their disability impacted their work,

70.2% of participants responded that it did, compared to 27.2%, that it did not.

This finding is inconsistent with results by Shessel and Reiff (2011), who found

that while at first, participants in their study did not immediately think that their
 35

disabilities impacted their daily lives. Upon further reflection, however, they

acknowledged that symptoms of their disabilities resulted in difficulty completing daily

tasks and played a role in their abilities to carry out their responsibilities. Madaus et al.

(2001) and Madaus (2006) found that the most commonly reported strategies used to

overcome workplace challenges were self-advocating, arriving at work early, managing

time, and setting goals and priorities.

Negative Impact of Learning Disabilities

Numerous researchers have discovered that individuals with learning disabilities

feel embarrassed to disclose their learning disabilities in school and the workplace. Ebo

(2016) found that college students with dyslexia typically kept their learning disabilities

to themselves, except when they needed disability support services. Vogel et al. (2007)

examined nine educators‘ general professional experiences with learning disabilities.

Some participants did not feel that their instructors understood their learning needs and

were not always receptive to granting special needs requests. Other concerns included

low self-esteem, difficulties maintaining employment, being highly emotional, and

experiencing intense anxiety after taking exams (Masover, 1999).

One of the most critical findings of Madaus et al. (2001) and Madaus (2006) was

the number of graduates who did not reveal their learning disability to their current

employers out of concern for job security or the negative impact this might have on

relationships with co-workers or supervisors. Masover (1999) found that the participants

in her study did not feel comfortable disclosing that they had dyslexia to anyone other

than their significant other.

 36

On the other hand, Vogel et al. (2007) found that only half of the other

professionals with learning disabilities did not feel comfortable disclosing their

disabilities at work. A large majority, however, 88% of the educators felt comfortable

doing so. This finding is inconsistent with the Madaus et al. (2001) and Madaus (2006)

studies. Other concerns included low self-esteem, difficulties maintaining employment,

being highly emotional, and experiencing intense anxiety after taking exams (Masover,

1999). The participants in Shessel and Reiff’s (2011) study reported difficulties in daily

living, the impostor phenomenon, social isolation, and emotional health damage.

Furthermore, Vogel et al. (2007) explored the general professional experiences of

nine educators with learning disabilities, the unique skills and challenges attributable to

their experience, their experience of schools as an employment context, and their daily

lives. Upon reflection, however, the participants revealed how they hindered their ability

to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities. Some of these problems involved difficulty

understanding what they read retaining the information read, and the speed with which

they could read effectively and go to the bank. Problems related to visual-spatial

difficulties, however, were less noticeable.

Positive Impact of Learning Disabilities

Other researchers have examined the positive impact of learning disabilities.

Shessel and Reiff (2011), for example, reported that six participants indicated five areas

in which their learning disabilities had been a positive influence: (1) helping them to be a

better person, (2) allowing them to think creatively, (3) increasing their sensitivity to

others, (4) making them better professionals, and (5) developing in them the desire to

help others. Finally, the researchers hypothesized that schools would disabilities provide
 37

an adequate employment context for those with learning disabilities because education

professionals possessed knowledge and experience about individuals with special needs.

In contrast, only one participant in Masover‘s (2009) study felt that his dyslexia

contributed to his ability to think creatively.

Vogel et al. (2007) found that some participants initially reported job-related

difficulties regarding social interaction with co-workers and supervisors, interpretation of

job requirements, and performance feedback. Moreover, their learning disabilities

interfered with their social lives. They expressed significant concerns with emotional

health in terms of stress, anxiety, negative self-concept, shame, guilt, embarrassment,

depression, and anger. However, six participants had come to possess relatively positive

perceptions of who they were and their abilities.

McNulty (2000) found that in terms of their negative early childhood experiences,

as participants transitioned into young adulthood, they sought acceptance by searching

for other young adults like themselves, which enabled individuals to pursue areas of

interest and strengths and led to an increased sense of ability. However, failure to find a

group of like-minded individuals resulted in continued difficulties in work or school and

low self-esteem.

Summary of the Literature and Implications for this Study

This literature review provided fundamental information about dyscalculia,

explained the common strategies that are used to help children with dyscalculia in the

classroom, illustrated that there are notable similarities, differences, and overlaps in the

cognitive function of individuals with dyslexia and dyscalculia, and described the post-

secondary outcomes of individuals with learning disabilities. Given that there are
 38

noteworthy differences that indicate that dyslexia and dyscalculia may have different

cognitive profiles, the research findings presented in this section suggest that it is not safe

to assume that the same music learning strategies will work for individuals with dyslexia

as they will for dyscalculia. As a result, compensatory strategies must be developed to

target students’ specific challenges with dyscalculia. Therefore, further exploration of

dyscalculia in the field of music education is necessary.

There is a significant amount of research discussed in this literature review

examining the post-secondary outcomes of individuals with learning disabilities in

academic and career contexts. Several researchers have discovered that individuals who

put forth a considerable amount of effort to overcome academic challenges and obtain a

college education experience more success in their endeavors (Greenbaum et al., 1995;

Reis et al., 2000; Stage & Milne, 1996). Sometimes, however, these individuals

experience challenges in the workplace when their challenges, such as time management

and organization, interfere with their ability to carry out their work responsibilities

(Madaus, 2006; Madaus et al., 2001).

Furthermore, research suggests that learning disabilities can negatively impact the

lives of individuals with learning disabilities, particularly regarding self- esteem (Ebo,

2016; Heiman & Kariv, 2004; Heimen & Precel, 2003; Masover, 1999; McNulty, 2000;

Stage & Milne, 1996; Vogel et al., 2007) and mental health (Aro et al., 2019). On the

other hand, in some instances, individuals with learning disabilities view their disability

as an advantage in certain respects. For example, some individuals with dyslexia may

view themselves as more creative than their peers (Shessel & Reiff, 2014).
 39

A clear implication garnered from the literature review on the topics discussed

indicates that this study will provide necessary information about dyscalculia and the

musical challenges students with dyscalculia may face. Furthermore, developing a

knowledge base of music coping strategies can provide music educators with the tools

they need to help their students with mathematical difficulties overcome musical

challenges. In turn, these children will remain engaged in musical learning and allow

their musical strengths to flourish.

 CHAPTER 3
METHODOLOGY

The purpose of this chapter is to describe the philosophical assumptions and

methodological approach employed throughout this dissertation, including Merleau-

Ponty’s (1945) existential phenomenology and Moustakas’s (1990) heuristic research

method. This study was guided by the following research questions.

Research Questions

1. How did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their learning experiences in their

daily lives, education, and career

2. How did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their music learning experiences in

school and their professional lives?

3. Do musicians with dyscalculia develop or use specific compensatory strategies to

overcome learning challenges or utilize their musical strengths in unique ways?

Philosophical Framework and Methodological Approach

Phenomenology has its roots at the beginning of the twentieth century. It can be

thought of as a philosophy, a research methodology, and an overarching perspective from

which all qualitative research is sourced (Kafle, 2011). The two types of phenomenology

pertaining to this study’s philosophical framework are German philosopher Edmond

Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and French philosopher Merleau-Ponty’s

(1945) existential phenomenology.

German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1839-1938) is considered the father of

phenomenology. His theory of transcendental phenomenology, or pure phenomenology,

was created to challenge the Cartesian idea of dualism, which he felt to be objective,

empirical, and positivist (Sloan & Bowe, 2014). Husserl defined pure phenomenology as

40
 41

a science that investigates the essence alone and is not as concerned with the

investigation of existence or with “self-observation” (Farber, 1966, p. 34). According to

Kafle (1980), “essence is the core meaning of an individual’s experience that makes it

what it is” (p. 182).

Intentionality of Consciousness

According to Stoll (1980), the concept of intentionality is perhaps the most

significant contribution to phenomenology. Husserl viewed consciousness as a means of

understanding knowledge, and his focus was on the everyday world, or lifeworld, as lived

by the person. Husserl (2013) writes, “We understood under Intentionality as the unique

peculiarity of experiences to be the consciousness of something” (p. 242).

Husserl’s phenomenology is not limited to a philosophical doctrine about the

nature of consciousness and the essences that are directly given to it. Instead, Husserl’s

phenomenology proposes a method to isolate the directly given essences, which

constitute meaning. This concept is called phenomenological reduction–the central

concern of phenomenology.

Phenomenological Reduction

Central to the idea of pure phenomenology is the method of phenomenological

reduction, which Husserl describes as setting aside the limitations to knowledge

essentially involved in every nature directed from of investigation (Husserl, 2013).

Husserl believed that for transcendental phenomenology to be a new science, it is

necessary to maintain a presuppositional stance. The word presupposition means to

suspend one’s beliefs, a concept that Husserl (2013) refers to as “bracketing” or

“disconnecting” and a “certain refraining from judgment” (p. 109). Langdridge (2007)
 42

acknowledges that the process of reduction leads to the transcendence of subjectivity.

This allows the researcher to see the phenomenon as it really is.

Phenomenology of Perception

French philosopher Merleau-Ponty expanded existential phenomenology in his

seminal work, Phenomenology of Perception (1945/2012). In this text, he defines

phenomenology as “the study of essences” (p. xx). Merleau-Ponty based his work on the

writings of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger (Dowling, 2007). Merleau-Ponty was

not in complete agreement with Husserl’s phenomenological themes. While Husserl

viewed intentionality as a state of reflective and cognitive consciousness, Merleau-Ponty

believed the relationship between the subject-object is not solely cognitive but a pre-

reflective consciousness, which is “an ontological relationship, or a relationship of being”

(Stoll, 1980, p. 100).

According to Reuter (1999), Merleau-Ponty’s concept of intentionality is the body

subject’s concrete, spatial, and pre-reflective directedness towards the lived world. The

pre-reflective moving body is in itself intentional, “reaching out towards the world” (p.

72). In order to understand intentionality, it is important not to abstract the mind from the

body, but to see how they are intertwined.

Given Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intentionality, it is no doubt that he interprets

Husserl’s concept of reduction in a different manner. Merleau-Ponty believes that lived

experience is indeterminate, ambiguous, and opaque, and not fixed, as Husserl believed.

In this way, he asserts that lived experience cannot be reduced to its complete essence

because there is no distinction between the self and the world. This concept is evident in
 43

the heuristic research method regarding how the researcher does not take a

presuppositional stance but is intimately involved in the research process.

The Heuristic Method

Moustakas (1990) states that the term heuristic comes from the ancient Greek

word heuriskein, “meaning to discover or to find” (p. 9). As stated by Sultan (2019),

heuristic inquiry is “a qualitative, social constructivist, and phenomenologically aligned

research methodology inspired by the primary researcher’s autobiographical experience”

(p. 3). Patton (2004) asserts that two focusing elements of heuristic inquiry exist within

the broader framework of phenomenology: (1) the researcher must have personal

experience with an intense interest in the phenomenon under study, and (2) others (co-

researchers) who share an intensity of the experience with the phenomenon. Utilizing

heuristic inquiry leads to discovering the qualities, themes, and meanings of a particular

human experience (Sultan, 2019, p. 3). To accomplish this goal, the researcher must

engage in seven processes and six stages of heuristic inquiry.

Seven Processes and Six Phases of Heuristic Inquiry

The seven processes and six phases of heuristic inquiry are used to conduct

heuristic research and are designed to function mutually. As such, they do not operate

independently of one another. As a result, Sultan (2019) declares:

Thus, you may experiment with some degree of chaos in that you may
engage in the following stages in whichever order that makes the most
sense to you, determining your direction based on the needs of your
research while not straying from the actual processes and phases of
heuristic inquiry.

The seven processes of heuristic inquiry include: (1) identifying with the focus of

inquiry, (2) self-dialogue, (3) tacit knowing, (4) intuition, (5) indwelling, (6) focusing,

and (7) the internal frame of reference. The first process is identifying with the focus of
 44

inquiry which refers to the researcher’s need to focus intensely on the research question,

this task requires the researcher to immerse him or herself in exploring the personal

experience under investigation. Moustakas (1990) writes, “All heuristic inquiry begins

with the internal search to discover, with an encompassing puzzlement, a passionate

desire to know, a devotion and commitment to pursue a question that is strongly

connected to one’s own identity and selfhood” (p. 40).

The second process is self-dialogue, a highly reflective process which, according

to Sultan (2019), “is all about communicating with yourself—and with your

phenomenon—about your phenomenon” (p. 85). For Moustakas (1990), self-dialogue is

the critical beginning in that if an individual wants to understand the constituents and

qualities that make up an experience, then one must begin with him or herself.

The third process, tacit knowing, is the foundation for all heuristic discovery

(Moustakas, 1990). Tacit knowing involves uncovering a hidden dimension of knowledge

that plays a primary role in heuristic research involved in the meaning-making process.

Moustakas (1990) describes intuition, the fourth process of heuristic inquiry, as

“the bridge between the explicit and the tacit—or the realm in-between” (p. 23). Intuition

is related to what one might call a hunch independent of reason and logic (Bach, 2002).

Intuition, Moustakas (1990) declares, “is what guides the researcher in the discovery of

patterns and meanings that will lead to enhanced meanings and deepened and extended

knowledge” (p. 24).

Indwelling, the fifth process, is one in which the researcher attempts to gain a

better understanding of the meaning of a particular quality or theme of experience. This

process is accomplished by turning one’s gaze inward (Moustakas, 1990), which

 45

according to Bach (2002), “requires a conscious, sustained attentiveness to one’s

thoughts, feelings, wonderings, and tentative knowing” (p. 93).

The second to last process of heuristic inquiry is focusing, which, according to

Bach (2002), is “a body-centered process” (p. 94). Moustakas (1990) describes focusing

as the act of getting rid of mental or emotional clutter that may cloud the researcher’s

perception of reality.

According to Moustakas (1990), heuristic processes relate back to the internal

frame of reference, which is the seventh process in heuristic inquiry. He posits that to

understand the core elements of any human experience, one depends on the internal

frame of references of the person who has experienced the phenomenon. Also, Moustakas

(1990) asserts that it is only the participant upon reflection of their own experience who

can “validly provide portrayals of that experience” (p. 26). The researcher must

remember that even if a person’s actions or behavior seems illogical, they must

understand and be openminded to the fact that the individual is sharing their story

through his or her point of view.

Six Phases of Heuristic Inquiry

In addition to the seven processes, the researcher must engage in six phases of

heuristic inquiry, which include: (1) initial engagement, (2) immersion, (3) incubation,

(4) illumination, (5) explication, and (6) creative synthesis.

Initial Engagement

The initial engagement phase occurs when the researcher participates in internal

exploration to identify a meaningful topic. Moustakas (1990) states, “Within each

researcher exists a topic, theme, problem, or question that represents a critical interest and
 46

areas of search” (p. 27). Through self-dialogue, tacit awareness, and the use of intuition, a

research question is formulated. The researcher then begins the process of finding an

autobiographic connection to the topic.

My first encounter with dyscalculia occurred when I was diagnosed with a

mathematical learning disability in middle school. Since that time, my interest in

dyscalculia has persisted throughout my life as I experienced academic, emotional, and

social implications associated with this learning disability. My interest in this topic and

the desire to learn more about how it impacts others is the inspiration for this dissertation.

Immersion

Immersion involves moving altogether into the topic or question. Depth and

breadth of knowledge are obtained through intensive explorations of the self and

interviews with others who have experienced the subject matter. The immersion phase

was one in which I devoted my attention to the research question throughout the data

collection, analysis procedures, and transcription process. This lengthy process involved

watching and listening to each video recording multiple times, typing each interview

verbatim, and rechecking for accuracy.

I created separate documents for each participant’s interview transcription in

which I made comments, noted essential details, and compared and contrasted the

participants’ experiences. I also reflected on my own experiences and documented

similarities and differences between the participants’ experiences and my own. The

immersion phase continued as I reviewed each transcript to write the individual and

composite depictions.
 47

Incubation

In the incubation phase, the researcher deliberately withdraws him or herself away

from the intense and focused attention they have devoted to the research question. As the

researcher’s thoughts begin to shift from the problem of interest, their internal processes

are at work to allow for the creation of new connections and meanings to emerge. This

phase occurred as I took breaks from transcribing and writing the narratives and went on

with my daily life. Further insight was gained during my advising meetings in which I

discussed and reflected on my progress, took notes, and allowed this information to

percolate.

Illumination

In the illumination phase, knowledge that may have been previously unknown

becomes apparent to the researcher (Sultan, 2019). Also, information that the researcher

has misinterpreted can be corrected as new aspects of the experience are incorporated

with their prior understanding, which may alter the researcher’s internal frame of

reference. When engaging in numerous cycles of illumination, I listened to the recordings

and reread the transcripts. Through this process, there were instances in which my

previously held ideas about dyscalculia changed and biases were revealed.

Explication

The penultimate stage of the heuristic inquiry process is called explication. In this

phase, the researcher examines all of the data and knowledge they have obtained from the

data analysis process, including information provided by the researcher, participants, and

any other documented sources. It was at this point that I engaged in a brainstorming

exercise in which I created diagrams of all of the commonalities related to the

 48

participants’ experiences. These categories were termed internal and external factors.

Once the factors were defined, I made lists of all of the topics associated with each one.

These diagrams were modified as themes changed, or new themes emerged (Appendix

G).

The internal factors included in the diagrams were: (1) Disability, (2) Learning

Style, (3) Musical Identity, (4) Self-Esteem, (5) Challenges, (6) Strengths, (7) Mental and

Physical Health. On the other hand, the external factors refer to people, places, and things

that shaped or influenced the participants’ experiences. The external factors included (1)

Experiences with Numbers and Math, (2) Parental Involvement, (3) Education, (4) Music

Training, (5) Daily Life, and (6) Career.

Creative Synthesis

The final stage of heuristic inquiry is creative synthesis. This stage represents the

outcome of all the knowledge acquired throughout the entire research process integrated

through tacit knowing and intuition. According to Sultan (2019), creative synthesis is a

personal undertaking of the researcher in which they consider all of the raw data and the

findings to generate an interpretation that accurately represents the experience as a whole

in some creative form.

Throughout the incubation, illumination, and explication phases, an idea for a

musical composition began to emerge and evolved as I pondered over the participants’

experiences and emergent themes. The analysis of this composition and the

corresponding score can be found in Appendices K and L, respectively.

 49

Participants

Approval to conduct this study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board

at the University of Miami. All participants who wished to take part in this study

provided verbal consent. The consent form (Appendix A) included the following

information: the purpose of the study, the research procedures to be carried out, the

possible risks involved, the potential benefits that may arise as a result of participating in

the study, and the procedures for maintaining participant confidentiality and anonymity.

Moustakas (1990) notes that the more participants included in a study, the richer,

deeper, more profound, and more varied meanings can be achieved (p. 47). He suggests

that a sufficient number of participants for a heuristic research study is about 10-15

participants. Sultan (2019) notes, however, that “it may not be necessary to include so

many or it may prove necessary to include more” (p. 117). I used Facebook as a

recruiting tool to find and select participants to take part in this study. My aim was to

recruit 10 participants.

Facebook as a Recruiting Tool

One may question whether or not Facebook is a viable source to recruit

participants. Kosinski et al. (2015) noted that it is unfortunate that Facebook has largely

been overlooked as a research tool in the social sciences because it offers many tools to

recruit many participants from diverse backgrounds in an inexpensive manner.

Butterworth (2019) acknowledges that many conversations are happening on Facebook

about dyscalculia. I used Facebook groups related to instrumental, choral, general music,

and dyscalculia and other learning disability-specific groups as a recruitment tool

(Appendix G).
 50

I posted comments on each Facebook group using a written explanation approved

by the Institutional Review Board in which I introduced myself and provided a brief

description of the study. I then monitored the comments section and made a note of

interested individuals. Next, I contacted each person via Facebook Messenger to further

engage in conversation and obtain their email address. The participants were sent

information to determine their suitability for inclusion in the study.

Inclusion and Exclusion Criteria

To take part in this study, the participants had to be at least 18-years of age,

identify as an instrumentalist or vocalist, and complete three surveys. I created an Excel

spreadsheet to keep track of the information provided, including names, email addresses,

and survey results. Next, I color-coded the data in the following way.

The participants who chose not to participate in the study were highlighted in red.

Participants who agreed to participate and who indicated the most symptoms of

dyscalculia in the first survey were highlighted in green, and those participants who

indicated they might be interested in participating were highlighted in yellow.

The first email sent contained the verbal consent form (Appendix A), and the first

survey, a 13-item questionnaire based on the dyscalculia symptom checklist provided on

the website dyscalculia.org (Appendix B). To determine the severity of dyscalculia

symptoms, I selected participants who indicated the most symptoms on the dyscalculia

checklist. These individuals were sent the next two surveys.

The purpose of the second survey, the Musical Experiences Questionnaire

(Appendix C), was to determine if the participants had experienced particular musical

challenges or possessed musical strengths, as noted by Blair and McCord (2016) and
 51

Nelson (2014). Some of these challenges included reading music notation, learning

instrumental fingerings, and processing rhythm. Musical strengths included the ability to

play by ear, memorize music, and compose or improvise.

Development of Survey #3

The third survey, Measuring Serious Leisure in Musicians, (Appendix D) was

designed to measure the extent to which the participants in this study viewed music as

serious leisure and was developed according to the ideas of Gates (1991), Jorgensen

(1993), and Stebbins (2013). Stebbins (1992) defines serious leisure as the “systematic

pursuit of an amateur, hobbyist, or volunteer core activity that is highly substantial,

interesting, and fulfilling and where, in the typical case, participants find a career in

acquiring and expressing a combination of its special skills, knowledge, and experience”

(p. 3).

Based on these criteria, ideal participants for this study were those who identified

music as serious leisure and subscribed to the Professional-Amateur-Public system

developed by Stebbins (2013). This system is one in which professionals and apprentices

exist in a social system made up of music with a set of agreed-upon values and who

ultimately view music as work.

Gates’s (1991) theory of music participation proposed six types of participants:

professionals, apprentices, hobbyists, recreationists, and dabblers. Gates (1991)

associated the first three types of participants as those who view music as serious leisure,

and amateurs and hobbyists as casual leisure. Furthermore, Gates (1991) identified

dabblers as those individuals who are curious about an activity but will likely discontinue

their participation once their curiosity has been satisfied.

 52

Jorgensen (1993) disagreed with the way Gates (1991) classified some of the

participants and proposed a reclassification. Jorgensen (1993) argued that it is more

accurate to categorize Gates’s six types of participants as four types according to their

view of music. For example, she asserted that professionals and apprentices view music

as work, amateurs view music as serious leisure, hobbyists view music as serious leisure,

and recreationists and dabblers view music as play. Jorgensen (1993) believed that

hobbyists and dabblers are not reinforced by the Professional-Apprentice-Public system.

Therefore, individuals who identified as such were not included in this study.

To create the third survey, I reduced an 18 item, 9-point Likert type scale

(anchored to “completely agree” to “completely disagree”) developed by Gould, et al.

(2011), to a 6-point response scale (anchored to “strongly agree” to strongly disagree). I

included only the first six statements, which were reworded using music-specific

language. I consulted Gould via email to discuss my adaptation of this survey purely as a

tool to determine which participants should be included in the study.

On the same form, participants also indicated the answer to the following

question: I most identify as an: (a) professional/apprentice, (b) amateur, (c) hobbyist, or

(d) recreationist/dabbler. This question was based on Jorgensen’s (1993) reclassification

of Gates’ six musical participant types which include the following categories: (1)

professional, (2) apprentice, (3) amateur, (4) hobbyist, (5) recreationist, and (6) dabbler.

Interview Protocol

Once the ten participants were confirmed, I scheduled an interview time and date

with each one that best fit both of our schedules. As the participants were from multiple

geographic locations, the interviews were conducted via Skype or Facebook. Each
 53

participant took part in one interview and a second interview was scheduled for the

purpose of member checking. Artifacts were shared, and any additional questions were

addressed through Facebook Messenger. I used an interview guide to ensure that that

interview was focused. Once the transcription was completed, each participant was sent a

copy via email to ensure that the write up accurately reflected their experience.

While the participants were told that the first interview would last approximately

90 minutes, the majority of participants indicated that they had blocked off enough time

to complete the interview in its entirety. As a result, each interview averaged about 2

hours. In a few cases, some of the participants needed to stop the first interview by a

certain time, and another date was scheduled to answer the rest of the questions.

Interview Guide

The interview guide (Appendix E) contained two parts. The first section consisted

of questions pertaining to the following topics: (1) the participants’ general education

experiences, (2) the impact of dyscalculia on the participants’ general educational

experiences, (3) the impact of dyscalculia on their daily lives. The second part of the

interview guide was to examine how dyscalculia affected the participants’ musical

experiences. Questions relating to the following topics were included: (1) the impact of

dyscalculia on participants music education experiences, (2) the participants’ musical

strengths and challenges, (3) the participant’s coping strategies used when learning and

processing music, (4) the participants’ general career experiences, and (5) the impact of

dyscalculia and the participants’ experiences in their professional lives. Participants

chose or were assigned a pseudonym to maintain anonymity.

 54

To create the interview questions, I followed Moustakas (1990) recommended

examples of the types of questions that a researcher may ask participants (See Figure 2).

Figure 2

Sample Questions to Consider when Developing Interview Questions

• What does this person know about the experience being studied?
• What qualities or dimensions of the experience stand out for the person?
• What examples are vivid and alive?
• What events, situations, and people are connected with the experience?
• What feelings and thoughts are generated by the experience?
• What bodily states or shifts in bodily presence occur in the experience?
• What time and space factors affect the person’s awareness and meaning of the
experience?
• Has the person shared all of the significant ingredients or constituents of the
experience?

As I developed the interview questions, I interpreted bodily states or shifts in

bodily presence to include thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. I considered the

concept of time as a specific point in time (past or present) and over a particular time

frame (i.e., how did the participants’ perceptions of an experience change over time).

When interpreting the concept of space, I considered who was present with the

participant at the time of their experience, where it occurred, and how the nature of the

particular space shaped the experience. Furthermore, I considered the interaction between

the participants and the people and objects around them and their thoughts, emotions, and

bodily sensations that arose during the experience.

Heuristic Data Collection, Organization, and Analysis

According to Sultan (2019), data organization includes becoming deeply familiar

with the content through several immersion ∞ incubation ∞ reflexivity cycles. Sultan
 55

(2019) uses the ∞ symbol to represent nondual, fluid relationships. I engaged in repeated

immersion ∞ incubation ∞ reflexivity cycles each time I revisited the data, took breaks to

reflect on what I learned, and allowed new ideas to come to light until thematic saturation

was achieved.

The concept of reflexivity is integral to qualitative research and is defined by

Sultan (2019) as “the process by which researchers place under scrutiny the research

process, the intersubjective dynamics between the researcher and the participants, and the

extent to which their assumptions influenced the process of inquiry” (p. 263).

According to Sultan (2019), analyzing the transcription of interviews entails the

following procedures: (1) vertical and horizontal reading of notes, journal entries, and the

content of correspondence between the participants and myself, (2) vertical and

horizontal review of artifacts, (3) vertical and horizontal listening to audio and video

recordings. Sultan (2019) uses the terms vertical and horizontal to mean achieving both

deep and broad understandings of the data.

Engaging with the data in this way, Sultan (2019) posits, allows for the

exploration of the individual meanings the experience has for each participant and the

broad, mutual, and potentially universal meanings the experience may have for those

outside of the research team.

Content and Context of Dialogue

In a heuristic research study, the researcher is concerned with words and

meanings related to the dialogue’s content and context rather than how frequently certain

words or concepts emerge. Content includes the responses generated through the central

research questions, other research-related questions, and non-research-related discussion

 56

applicable to the study, including words, phrases, symbols, images, metaphors, analogies,

examples, and repetition. Context refers to interpersonal dynamics (self ∞ self),

interpersonal dynamics (self ∞ other), and sociocultural/environmental dynamics (self ∞

world).

Sultan (2019) asserts that maintaining a holistic view of the raw data is vital and

cautions against deliberately seeking patterns, which may cause the researcher to look for

patterns where they do not exist. Remaining conscious of this prevents the researcher

from being influenced by their biases instead of the dialogue’s actual content.

Sultan (2019) provides an extensive list of questions to consider when

deciphering potential themes to encourage the researcher to think deeply, critically,

creatively, intuitively, and thoughtfully about the raw data. Some of the questions that

made me think beyond the participants’ surface-level responses and consider the raw data

elements included questions the participants or I intentionally or unintentionally avoided

and ideas that the participants proposed or discussed unrelated to the topic. I also

considered the similarities and differences that emerged within each participant’s account

of their lived experience. It was also essential to notice the participants’ nonverbal

behaviors, their significance, and the broader intrapersonal, interpersonal, and

sociocultural and environmental dynamics.

Exploring the questions provided by Sultan (2019) provided ample opportunities

to reflect upon my experiences as an individual with dyscalculia versus those of the

participants. Ultimately, this process allowed me to break away from my own biases and

preconceived notions of dyscalculia and view the phenomenon from each participant’s

perspective.
 57

Data Analysis

The primary purpose of heuristic data analysis is “to understand, with a vision to

co-create new knowledge, make meaning, and foster individual and collective

transformation” (Sultan, 2019, p. 146). I followed Moustakas (1990) recommended

procedures for data analysis (Figure 3).

Figure 3

Recommended Procedures for Data Analysis

1. Gather all data from the first Skype interview) which will be audio and video
recorded.
2. Transcribe each interview verbatim.
3. Review data generated from first transcription
4. Identify qualities or themes manifested in the first transcription
5. Organize the qualities and themes according to research question.
6. Submit initial themes to participant for reliability and changes.
7. Conduct second interview with each participant for clarification and corrections.
8. Participant validates identified themes
Repeat 1-8 with each participant.

Theme Identification and Illumination

Heuristic data analysis consists of two parts: (1) theme identification and

illumination, and (2) theme explication. Heuristic data analysis is a means to “unravel the

essential nature of a profound human experience” (Sultan, 2019, p. 146). My quest to

better understand the musicians’ lived experiences began with the examination of all of

the data, including transcripts, reflections, and artifacts provided by the participants.

Formalized data analysis occurs after all transcripts, and other artifacts are

collected and organized. Heuristic data analysis requires a holistic approach when

reviewing data for themes. In examining the written content, listening to the video
 58

recordings, and reviewing artifacts, I identified the salient qualities and themes from each

individual’s account of their life experiences related to dyscalculia.

This procedure allows for exploring individual meanings the experience has for

each participant and the broad, mutual, and potentially universal meanings the

phenomenon may have for those uninvolved in the study (Sultan, 2019). For example, the

implications discovered in this study could be of interest to music education researchers,

music performance majors, music education majors, and, most importantly, in-service

music teachers and others interested in connecting learning differences and music

learning.

To identify the emergent themes, I created a new document consisting of each

transcribed interview to engage in a process I called editing for themes. I typed where

each interview question and interview guide topics were addressed to refer to the

transcripts easily as I compared the participants’ accounts. This information emerged

through the indwelling, focusing, and self-disclosure phases. I ensured that I attended to

my awareness, feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and judgments leading to this new

understanding from the conversations with participants.

Theme Explication

The second part of the data analysis process, theme explication, involves creating

a series of in-depth narratives. According to Sultan (2019), theme explication is

connected to four representations of creative synthesis in which the data is represented in

the form of individuals depictions, composite depictions, exemplary portraits, and a final

creative synthesis project which created once all of the depictions and portraits have been
 59

developed. This process involves transforming the data from its original format into a

creative medium.

Individual depictions present each participants’ background information and

experiences with dyscalculia in their education, music education, and daily life. The

composite depiction brings all of the descriptions together in a collective whole to reveal

a “unifying representation of core themes” (Sultan, 2019, p. 152). Exemplary portraits are

then created by further developing the individual portraits of two to three participants s

who best embody the phenomenon of interest, both individually and as a gestalt whole.

After the theme explication stage, I returned to the data to describe the

preliminary qualities and themes and organized them by research question. To

accomplish this, I followed Sultan’s (2019) advice, which is to remain open to specific

words, phrases, or symbols that offer “nuanced description of the topic of inquiry and

encapsulate its essential nature in response to your research within the various categories

of data” (p. 147). During this process, the essence of experience was refined in

preparation for the creative synthesis phase.

Ethics in Heuristic Inquiry

According to Sultan (2019), in heuristic research, ethics is applicable to a variety

of issues, including but not limited to becoming aware of a topic, proposing the study,

and gaining approval to conduct it. Furthermore, ethics plays a role in the way the study

is designed, the relationships are managed, and in the way the results are communicated .

In abiding by a clear code of ethics, I ensured that I cared for the well-being of the

participants.
 60

The Validation of Heuristic Research

According to Moustakas (1990), “The question of validity is one of meaning:

Does the ultimate depiction of the experience derived from one’s own rigorous,

exhaustive self-searching and from the explications of others present comprehensively,

vividly, and accurately the meanings and essences of the experience?” (p. 32).

Furthermore, Moustakas (1990) notes that it is only the primary heuristic researcher who

can make this judgment because it is they who have engaged in the heuristic inquiry

process from beginning to end.

The process of validation in inherent in the heuristic research design in that the

researcher repeatedly returns to the data through a series of steps to ensure the depictions

of the experience and the discovered meanings the researcher has found through intensive

examination of the data reflect the essential meanings of the participants’ experience.

According to Moustakas (1990), it is the heuristic researcher’s “constant appraisal

of significance” and “checking and judging” facilitate the process of achieving a valid

depiction of the experience being investigated (p. 35). This process was further improved

as I engaged in member checking with each participant to follow up with any questions

or concerns requiring clarity. In the second interview, I sent each participant their

narrative and composite depictions for them to review my conclusions and ensure that the

transcribed interviews were complete and accurate from their point of view. Aside from

the second interview with each participant, member checking was also conducted through

email correspondence and Facebook Messenger.

 CHAPTER 4
PRESENTATION OF THE DATA

The presentation of the data is organized into four different representations of

creative synthesis, as recommended by Sultan (2019). These four representations include

individual depictions, composite depictions, exemplary portraits, and creative synthesis.

The individual portraits are presented in this chapter. The composite depiction and

exemplary portraits are depicted in Chapter 5. An analysis of the Creative Synthesis

Project in which I transformed all of the raw data into a musical composition entitled

“Lived Experience in Sound” can be found in Appendix K. The corresponding score can

be found in Appendix L. Ten musicians took part in this study. Table 1 provides a brief

explanation of each participant.

Skylar

Skylar is a 22-year-old senior majoring in percussion performance at a university

in the Pacific Southwestern part of the United States. At his university, Skylar studies

general percussion. He stated that his school “has a cool program where they have West

African music. They have music from the Caribbean—so steel drum music from Trinidad

and Tobago.” Skyler performs with the wind symphony, symphony orchestra, and plays

in the West African ensemble, and the steel drum orchestra. Other ensembles in which he

participates include the university brass ensemble, which is “just percussion playing with

a brass chamber group.” He also “started the All Musicians Club to give other people the

same experience I had—a community of musicians mainly for the rock band medium.”

61
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Table 1

Description of Participants

Participant Description
Skylar A college senior majoring in classical percussion performance with
mathematical difficulties from the Pacific South Western part of the United
States
James A general music teacher from the Southeastern part of the United States with
ADHD, dyslexia, and mathematical difficulties
Emily A general music teacher from the Mid-Atlantic/Northeast region of the
United States with ADHD and mathematical difficulties
Hannah A general music teacher from the Southeastern part of United States with
mathematical difficulties
Paul A music education professor and musicologist from the Southeastern part of
the United States with mathematical difficulties
Kristin A musicologist from the Southeastern part United States with mathematical
difficulties
Samantha A music educator, vocal coach, and graduate student from the Midwest with
mathematical disabilities
Lisa A singer-songwriter who lives in the Southeastern part of the United States
with dyslexia and dyscalculia
Kelly A singer-songwriter from the Southeastern part of United States with ADHD
and dyscalculia
Jared A music educator and rock musician from the United Kingdom with dyslexia
and mathematical learning difficulties

At one point, Skylar was majoring in both percussion performance and music

education but chose to drop the music education major. He described why he decided to

pursue a performance degree, rather than music education, “I was thinking that for a good

chunk of my life, I want to be a conductor. I figured if I had an education degree, I can

easily learn a lot about conducting.” Since the music education program only offered two

classes in conducting, he chose only to study percussion performance. Since the time of

this study, Skylar graduated college with a Bachelor of Music degree in percussion
 63

performance. Skylar wants to take some time off from furthering his education but plans

to go to graduate school eventually.

Skylar was never formally diagnosed with dyscalculia. Instead, he asserted, “No.

It was just more bluntly put as this kid sucks at math.” However, Skylar finds it funny

because his father is an aerospace engineer. He stated of his father, “so he knows all the

math.” In general, though, Skylar remembered feeling apathetic about math in school and

preferred other subjects.

For elementary school, math was just the subject I did not care for at all.
Even before I got into music, I enjoyed history, English, and science. The
abstract nature of science was more appealing to me, but whenever we had
math, I was like aww, we have to do math? For the amount of homework,
they’d send us home with I was like, ugh, I just don’t want to do this.

In middle school, Skylar noted that he never had close relationships with any of

the math teachers. He recalled a meeting between his parents and his middle school math

teacher, who told his parents, “your kid is not doing good in my class.” The teacher

arranged the meaning to discuss why Skylar was doing poorly in math. He asserted that

the meeting “was just more upsetting for me, and just upsetting for my parents.” He went

on to further state, “How I did in math was between the teacher and me, but when my

parents got involved, it was just annoying and shameful.” He described how he felt, “It

was kind of humiliating. It was basically like you need to do something about this. And

then she was telling my parents, this is what’s going on, and it’s like, this shouldn’t be

happening.”

As a result of this meeting, Skylar received extra help after school, but it was not

helpful. He explained:

I had to be dragged there. I didn’t want to be there. I already didn’t like

math to begin with, but having to do more of it, and remediate it just made
it not fun at all. It just reinforces the stereotype that I just wasn’t good at it.
 64

After the meeting, Skylar’s father helped him more with his homework. Of these

sessions, Skylar claimed, “at times, it did help, but it was just so much time away from

other things that I wanted to do.” However, Skylar described his father as an influential

person in his life at that time because “he was the one willing to sit down and explain all

these different math concepts.” While Skylar was grateful for his father’s help, he posited

that for his father, “it’s completely easy to understand because he studied electrical

engineering before getting into aerospace.” Skylar added, “I just have a different way of

thinking. I’m more of the artistic side, not the heavy math side.”

Of his grades, Skylar stated, “Pretty much every semester I got a C, except when I

took AP stats where I got a D in the class. It was just extremely difficult for me.

Everyone in my class seemed to understand it.” Skylar recalled that he took Advanced

Placement Statistics because he was told how easy it was. He declared, “but it’s easy to

them. It probably didn’t translate to it’s going to be hard for me.”

As far as his present experiences with math, Skylar stated, “Even with basic math,

I rely on the calculator,” particularly with “multiplication and division.”

Just even now, basic math isn’t easy. Like trying to calculate the tip, or
dividing a check at a restaurant, I have to really think about it, or just
figure out what I have to do. I always double-check my work because I
could have messed this up somehow.

At the time of this study, Skylar admitted that he is “terrible with money” and is

financially dependent on his parents, who live abroad. Skylar described that while he

knows he should be more aware of his financial situation, “it hasn’t quite hit me yet, even

as an adult, that I need to be smart about spending.” While Skylar acknowledged that he

needs to understand how to save and invest, he disclosed, “Sometimes when I get a large

check from a gig, it goes to either percussion equipment or gear that I want to own, or get
 65

my hands on, or even use. I use a good chunk of it.” He went on to state, “but I feel it’s

going to hit me eventually. I’ll make the switch, but right now, it’s just like ignorance is

bliss kind of thing.” After completing the interviews, Skylar revealed that he has

improved his skills managing personal finances.

Some of the daily challenges individuals with dyscalculia experience are

difficulties with driving, following directions, and telling time. Skylar expressed that he

is usually very good about remembering where he came from but said, “if I’m not super

one hundred percent familiar with where I’m going, I’ll have Google maps just on.”

Skylar sets all of his devices to military time because he “grew up playing

Pokémon as a kid,” and that is how time is represented in the game, a concept he grew

fond of. He elaborated, “It kind of makes more sense, like, oh, I’ll see you at twenty-

hundred. That to me is more definite because you could say, I’ll see you at nine. 9 AM? 9

PM?”

Two main challenges Skylar reported experiencing are managing his time

effectively and forgetting things. Concerning time management, Skylar conveyed,

“There’s times where it’s like I really need to do this, but I just want to do something

else. Its hard to prioritize certain things within the amount of time I have to do that.”

For example, he noted, “I’ll forget this time, or I’ll forget this detail that was

discussed, or I’ll forget to take out the trash or call this person, and stuff like that.” To

clarify, Skylar added, if the day and time of an event is told to me, I’m less likely to

remember it, but if I read it, it sticks. As a coping strategy, Skylar keeps notes on his

phone and uses the calendar app. “This way,” he revealed, “I can make sure if I see it,

and when I do it, I just take it off.”

 66

Of his strengths, Skylar expressed that he is very good at English and history and

described himself as “an out of the box thinker.” He uses this trait “to get things done” or

help people solve problems. He continued, “I’m a very helpful and empathetic person.

That’s just a big part of who I am.”

Skylar became involved with music at the age of 10, starting with drum set

lessons. He went on to play in his middle school band, high school marching band, high

school wind ensemble, and the jazz band. Additionally, he described something called

Musicians Club, “which was like the rock band sort of outlet.” Skylar also participated in

a youth orchestra and took part in honor band conferences.

Skylar has developed coping strategies to deal with numerous musical challenges.

I inquired, “Did anyone ever say well you’re a musician you should be good at math?”

Skylar replied, “It’s more like, you’re a percussionist, you should be good at counting.”

Skylar described counting as an “art form.”

Because we’ll have to calculate say 40 bars of rest. Sometimes, it’s just
straight up like 40 with a rest. No phrases at all, and we just have to pop it
out and count it, but I would count it okay.

Skylar utilizes a variety of different strategies when he gets lost when counting.

One of these strategies is to recalculate the math. He described his thought process, “I got

lost here. I think these many bars have passed, or this is the phrase so far.” Skylar also

feels where the musical phrases begin and end and adjusts accordingly. However, Skylar

expressed that when he knows the piece well enough, he does not even “need to count

anymore.” Skylar shared that his teacher taught him a counting system (See Figure 4),

which he explained as follows:

The finger counting method is based on using the pads of skin between the
creases in the hand. The palm below the pointer finger is 1, the pads
between 2-3, and the fingertip pad is 4. Rinse and repeat in the sequence
 67

of pointer finger, middle, ring, pinky, and then flip the hand. The thumb is
always placed down on whatever number is counted to, keeping track of
the count on a physical level.

Figure 4

Skylar’s Counting Method

Another strategy Skylar relies on is prediction. He stated, “if I know I’m coming

in at a big part, I’ll just hear the music building up. The conductor usually has cues that

tell me where to play, just like winding up, crash!” Other strategies include writing in

cues and writing the number of times the same pattern repeats over each measure.

Furthermore, Skyler uses a systematic method to highlight his music using

different colors. He described this method as follows:

I’ll highlight dynamic changes in orange and time changes in green, or

major phrases like letter A, or rehearsal 24 or 27 in the color blue. So,
color adds a dimension to it so I can easily follow. And again, with my
eyesight, that means change.

Skylar explained why using this system makes the most sense to him:

If a dynamic change comes up, I’d want a brighter color to be like, this is
something right here right now (snaps). Or if it’s blue, which is just with
the rehearsal number—blue is just more of a softer color. So, it’s just
indicating what is what. And then green is just more of an easy color to
 68

catch. Green is my favorite color, so that helps with time changes (See
Figure 5).

Figure 5

Highlighting Important Changes in the Music

When Skylar sets out to learn a new piece of music, he noted, “I wouldn’t just get

the sheet music, I wouldn’t try to learn it without listening to a recording, or different

people’s interpretations of it.” Skylar describes himself as an auditory learner who can

play “mostly by ear.” He continued to explain:

Even in lectures, if I’m not writing notes, or even paying attention, I’m
still learning because I’m passively hearing specific information, and just
knowing what it sounds like. Okay, I can replicate that, such as a stylistic
emphasis, or rhythmically how it’s supposed to sound. I could try to read
it, but if I hear it, then I emulate it better.

Skylar recalled learning to read rhythm “relatively well.” If there is a rhythmic

phrase that he finds confusing, however, he will write in the counts and mentioned, “As

I’m playing, I’ll process how it’s supposed to be counted, and I’ll play it correctly.” In

general, though, he noted, “it just goes back to I just make too many careless mistakes
 69

sometimes.” He attributed these mistakes to initially interpreting the rhythms as easy, but

then “minutes, seconds later,” he finds he is in a completely different place, or that he

missed the entrance. Skylar described his approach to learning a piece is to “hack at it,

crash and burn a little bit, and then perfect it.”

Skylar links the careless mistakes to the amount of effort he has invested over the

years. He admitted, “I rarely ever practice sight-reading. So, when it comes time to read

on a percussion instrument, I kind of struggled a little.” Mostly though, Skylar attributes

these mistakes to the fact that he is extremely nearsighted. He noted that even with

glasses, “printed black and white is kind of blurry.” However, enlarging the print proves

to be helpful, a strategy recommended by Hammel and Hourigan (2017).

Skylar has a unique way of perceiving his life thus far. He stated that he sees his

life “in different arcs and sagas, like a TV series.” “Usually,” he continued, “there’d be a

major performance, or major event sort of a thing going on musically, that will define

that period of time.” He elaborated:

For myself, I think of myself as the main protagonist, just going through
all these different adventures, these scenarios, and just going through all
these events, or concerts, I guess. It’s usually seen as an obstacle, just
seeing, going through it, getting it done with all the different people, and
then going on to the next thing.

Some notable events Skylar experienced included playing in honor orchestras at

the All-State Conference and the All-Southern Conference and when his youth orchestra

celebrated its sixtieth anniversary. He noted that moving to college and the performances

he engaged in are considered an “arc in my book.” Furthermore, he regards the trip the

wind symphony took to London and his junior recital as “big milestones.”

According to Skylar, these memories are “just big scale events, and so that’s

always something that defined that time for me.” Of the London tour, he remarked, “It’s
 70

not often you tour with your band at school to go to a different country, and that was such

a big event for us, and I guess for myself too.”

James

James is a 46-year-old elementary general music teacher and trombonist from the

southeastern part of the United States in his twenty-third year of teaching. Growing up,

James struggled with a variety of learning challenges, including mild dyslexia, problems

with spelling, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), poor penmanship, speech difficulties,

and trouble understanding abstract mathematical concepts.

Presently, James struggles with spelling, performing mathematical calculations,

and time management. James also mentioned that his son has dyslexia and Attention

Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), and his daughter has severe dyslexia. He,

however, noted that his form of dyslexia is not as severe.

James has developed numerous coping strategies to deal with everyday

challenges. For example, when typing, James relies on spell-check. He described how,

when writing his dissertation, he had difficulty spelling the word decision, “I bet I’ve had

that thing twenty-thousand times in my dissertation, and I misspelled it eighty-thousand

times trying to get it. It doesn’t matter how many times I cannot spell that word right.”

Another strategy implemented by James is he avoids writing by hand unless it’s

necessary. He clarified:

Whenever I write, if I want it to be legible, I had to just make a specific

effort writing anything legible, and I tell my kids, and the faculty at my
school know this, if you see something handwritten from me, it’s
desperate because usually, I will type everything.

James also relies on the use of technology, such as Excel, calculators, and

computers, to perform mathematical calculations. He explained, “Also, I’ll tell you even
 71

with a calculator or computer, I will run it two or three times to make sure I get the same

answer.” During his doctoral degree, James described taking statistics and found great

difficulty in performing handwritten calculations. However, his dissertation involved

advanced statistical techniques. In general, though, James avoids tasks that require math,

but as his wife is a bookkeeper, he does not need to deal with numbers very often.

James expressed that time management can be challenging, and as a result, prefers

to stick to a routine. He remarked, “I’m more like an autistic person, I keep pretty much

the same schedule most days.” However, when things do not go according to plan, James

stated, “even if I don’t have it written down, I’ve got it planned out step by step in my

head.” To keep himself organized, James relies on checklists to keep track of everything

he has to do. He stated: “I’ve got a nice pad beside my desk that says, To-Do Now on one

side, and To-Do Later, with this check thing that I got in Staples.”

While James has areas in which he struggles, he does well at tasks requiring

three-dimensional thinking. Therefore, he does not have problems driving and getting

lost, as many individuals with dyscalculia do. James began applying geometric concepts

at an early age helping his father build and fix things around the house. James stated,

“We were all the time tinkering with stuff, and that was about half the time where I

learned my fractions and stuff.” While James thought he was just having fun, he was

learning about geometry without realizing it.

Thinking back to his educational experiences in primary school, James described

it as “old school” because he had many teachers who learned to teach in the 50s. When

asked if he counted on his fingers when performing basic arithmetic as a kid— a key

symptom of dyscalculia. James recalled:

 72

Oh yeah, but that was so frowned upon after first grade that that kind of
crutch was ripped away because that was considered too much of a
support. It was a time period where the supports weren’t necessarily there.
It was still very much that old school style of you can’t do this think of the
old TV shows where they’re slamming a yardstick on the desk, and that
sort of stuff.

James explained the disciplinary actions his teacher took to manage his behavior

in school. He stated, “Then the ADHD was solved by my first-grade teacher. It was

called a wooden paddle. Two or three times a day plus the switch when I got home with

my parents. I learned real quick to control myself.”

James described himself as “one of those kids that was constantly shoveled off to

special ed.” In the fourth grade, the extra help he received in school was discontinued. He

stated, “At that point, they basically cut off services, and you were in class, and you

either got it, or you didn’t cut it.” James was not formally diagnosed with any type of

learning disability during his elementary school years. He described that in the 70s and

early 80s as “a different time period,” there was not much information about learning

disabilities.

Another area in which James struggled was pronunciation. In first and second

grade, James’ pronunciation was so bad that he had to perform tongue exercises. He

recounted this experience:

They were so bad they literally had me doing exercises with my tongue. I
remember I had these strings that had these little weights that I would have
to, with my tongue, pull the string up into my mouth, and then I’d have to
put it back down. It was wild, some of the things I had to do.

While James also struggled with symptoms of dyslexia and dyscalculia in

elementary school, his illegible handwriting— possibly as a result of dysgraphia, made it

difficult for his teachers to notice “if he was turning stuff around.” He noted that most of

his teachers did not care as long as he could verbally tell them the right answer.
 73

James’ parents were supportive and spent “quality time” helping him with his

homework. In particular, James remembered his parents helping him to memorize his

multiplication tables through a process he calls “drill and kill.” He asserted, “Yeah, drill

and kill was my only savior. As long as I could get hold of a calculator, I could generally

do okay.” In this way, James was able to hide the fact that he was having problems with

math due to all of the rote memorization he was doing at home.

James’ problems with mathematics became worse during late middle school and

early high school. He could do the basics of math, he recalled, but when math became

more complicated, and “you had to go beyond those basic calculations,” he began feeling

lost with formulas and had trouble “comprehending the flow.” James’ freshman algebra

teacher stood out as a significant person in his life during this time. Not only did his

teacher take the time to work with James, but he also checked in with his parents about

his progress on the weekends as they all attended the same church.

James went on to describe that his school had a “hard and fast rule” that to pass

algebra for the year, he must receive a grade of 85.0%. Given that James failed his

assignments at the beginning of the year, and even though he earned B’s for the

remainder of the course, his final grade for the year was 84.5%. James’ teacher argued

that James was ready to take geometry, but the principal and guidance counselor would

not let him do so. As a result of failing Algebra, James was put in a remedial math class.

James recalled “feeling dumb:”

I hated it because there were only about ten of us in there, and I hate to say
it this way, but I’m going to say it, I was in with a bunch of losers that
didn’t want to be at school, period, and that that was just how they passed
the time. They thought it was fun to kind of pick on me.
 74

James remarked that there were some aspects of the class he enjoyed. Along with

reviewing basic math concepts, the class also covered a little bit of geometry and

trigonometry. In general, though, James expressed that he did not belong in the class

because of the poor behavior of the other students. While James acknowledged that he

was slower at processing mathematical concepts, he stated, “I had no business being in

there because once I got a concept, I could do it.”

Regarding his musical experiences in elementary school in the late 70s, James

remembered feeling lucky to have had a music teacher all through elementary school

with whom he is still in touch with today. He claimed that she was one of the first Kodály

teachers to go to Hungary and receive musical training. Musically, James struggled to

keep a steady beat, which he stated, “what was surprising about my beat not being that

strong was we had all of that.”

In junior high, James joined the band and was selected to play the trombone,

which he noted always came naturally to him because he was “tall and skinny.” He

recalled, “That’s the reason I was drafted to trombone because I had long enough arms to

reach sixth and seventh position.” In high school, James participated in the concert band,

marching band, and jazz band. During this time, he experienced many highs and lows.

As a high school freshman, James described himself as “a horrible trombone

player,” but by the start of his sophomore year, he began to improve. He stated, “My

director would just point out these little things and work with me, and I got into the jazz

band and stuff. I went from being the weakest player to the strongest player without

private lessons.”
 75

James doesn’t remember when exactly when, but “all of a sudden stuff started to

click.” James began to use the fifteen-minute break before band class to practice rather

than socialize with the other kids. He recalled, “I would get my instrument out and start

playing. Fifteen minutes every day is better than nothing.”

Marching band, on the other hand, was challenging. It was then that James began

experiencing problems distinguishing left from the right, which “he had that beaten into

him in marching band.” He recalled, “When I got into high school is when my big

problem really started showing up” James’ band director was understanding and took the

time to work with him one-on-one before or after rehearsal despite his challenges. He

explained:

My band director would also spend time working with me, before or after
class, before or after rehearsal. So, he gets out there and says, “Do this. Do
this. Let’s try this.” At one point, what we ended up doing, and I still do
this when I hit recorders and stuff. We ended up putting a band-aid on my
left hand, because the band-aid, I could feel, and that would help me
remember left and right.

Although James loved playing in the marching band, he experienced trouble

memorizing his band music.

The whole show plus all the drill was a nightmare because literally, we
would start in August. Mid-September, we had to play all of our marching
music really from the heart, well our music from memory one at a time in
front of the whole band and march it in place.

While the older students knew to expect a test to see if they had their music

memorized, the freshman remained in the dark. On testing day, the band director drew

names out of one hat and different sections from the pieces from another. James recalled

this experience:

He’d point at a senior and said, “Play it,” and then he’d say, “How did you
learn it?” And they said oh, we just did it through repetition. We’ve been
 76

playing music for two and a half months at that point, so it was just sheer
repetition where we would memorize.

Despite his difficulties, James managed to pass every time. James’ band director also

gave his students a good reason to practice. James remembered, “I guess I was playing

for survival because the penalty it was you owed the band twenty bucks if you forgot the

music.”

James shared another memory that he found significant. In his senior year, the

jazz band went to play for the elementary schools. According to James, his band director

was always telling us:

Well, make sure you got your music. Make sure you got your music. Well,
I went off one day, and I left my music at the high school. When we were
kind of getting through, and I’m kind of reading over the bari-saxes, a
couple of spots that I knew were the same, but I played pretty much the
whole show from memory. He came up to me afterward and said, “That’s
the best you’ve ever sounded!”

By the time James was a senior in high school, his trombone playing had

improved to such an extent that he went from being the worst player in the band to the

best. As a result of his hard work, James won the award for “Most Improved Player” two

years in a row. He remarked:

So, that gave me a lot of confidence, and that’s voted on by the members
of the band, is the way that is. The director’s out of that one totally. So, I
won it two years in a row. So, that tells you that I went from that freshman
year, where I was the worst player, into my junior year, I was the best
player in the band.

Winning the award showed James that his band director believed in his ability to

succeed musically at the college level. This experience would eventually influence his

decision to study music as a serious pursuit. Furthermore, James stated, “in 125 years of

an award for the most improved, and out of 125 years, I’m the only person who ever won

it twice.”
 77

At the age of 18, James went to college but did not enroll as a music major.

Instead, he started as a computer engineering major, which “lasted for about half a

semester.” He explained, “I got so mad at a computer, I threw it all the way down from

the third floor, and watched it smash to the ground.” He continued, “I was actually trying

to make it run a math formula at that point and just couldn’t get it to do it. It was just that

old of a computer.” As to why he switched his major to instrumental music, James

remembered:

I just enjoyed playing too much and wanted to do it more. And some of
my best friends were majors and stuff, so I just decided that night that I
got so mad at the computer, threw it out the window. It was time to switch,
so I just switched.

James went on to explain:

I was an instrumental major, but at the time, they said, Oh, if you take
these two classes, you can also graduate with a vocal/general and an
endorsement from the state. So, I was stuck waiting on a class, but because
of the way, the infamous way music classes go, where you miss one out of
order and got to wait another year to get it. So, I took the class.

There were times when James experienced other musical challenges, including

keeping a steady beat, counting rhythm, getting lost in the music, and sight-reading.

James developed numerous coping strategies to deal with these issues. For example,

James described the traditional counting system used in instrumental music as difficult.

Instead, James uses the Takadimi method. According to James, the Takadimi method

made it easier to “transpose the one and two in the standard counting system.” This, he

declared, “resolved ninety percent of my problem snow you’d stick anything in front of

me, and I can just about sight-read it.”

When performing in an ensemble, James often lost count during long rest periods.

In college, he took a conducting class and studied score reading, and he realized that
 78

listening to multiple recordings while making notes in the score was a helpful strategy.

He stated, “I just basically memorized auditorily, the pieces.”

As a trombonist, James found playing brass instruments came naturally to him.

James noted that in the big band he plays with, he has played all brass parts except for the

first trumpet. James, however, found learning woodwind instruments difficult and

described himself as clumsy with fingerings. Some of the difficulties he experienced

included reading treble clef and transposition.

James also expressed difficulty learning to play guitar, and despite having great

teachers, he remarked, “I physically couldn’t get my fingers to do what they needed to do

it.” James recently started teaching himself to play the ukulele and is teaching it to his

elementary music students. He recounted, “I tried ukulele for years off and on,” without

success. He continued, “And just something in the past couple weeks it clicked, and now

I’m finally starting how to get it”

As far as his learning style goes, James described himself as a visual learner who

can “play by ear somewhat.” He stated, “I’m just more comfortable if you put the music

in front of me with key changes and stuff. I know what I can do, and that just comes from

that basic memorization.” He also noted that improvising comes easily but prefers to play

with groups. While memorizing music was always a challenge for James, he found that

taking Orff and Kodály classes have helped.

James also conveyed that sight-reading was difficult and declared, “For the

longest time, sight-reading was terrible.” When James began to learn more about the

Kodály approach with John Feierabend method of sound to sight, “where we learned all

these concepts and learned them a different way,” was very helpful. The Feierabend
 79

method was also effective in helping him relearn some of the musical concepts he

struggled with, especially when keeping a steady beat. James recalled:

When I was in college, I was fussed at because I couldn’t keep a steady

beat at times, because I went with what I felt. In fact, it was so bad that
one of my professors said I needed to change my major, and I’d never be a
music teacher.

James found that using the Takadimi method solved ninety percent of his

problems with rhythm. He shared that the Takadimi method made it “really easy

transpose the one and two in the standard counting system, but for some reason, it just

clicked with me. Now you’d stick anything in front of me, and I just about can sight-read

it.”

When sight-reading piano music, James takes a systematic approach to learn new

pieces. When learning new music, James takes a systematic approach to sight-reading.

He described that sight-reading was challenging due to the visual-spatial nature of music

reading, combined with his motor skill challenges. He described his process:

I have to do it slowly Don’t ask me to start reading the thing that’s going
to be both hands at once. It’s not going to happen. I had to have one part,
then I have to learn the other, and then I can finally put them together.

James described the day he graduated with his doctorate as “fun” and

“bittersweet” because his professor, the one who told James that he would never make it

as a music teacher, was leading the commencement ceremony. Of his professor, I

inquired, “Did he say anything?” James replied, “Oh, I said, Hi! I just smiled and just

went on in.” He continued:

But again, it was that I’m not giving up. What he did just made my drive
that much more. He may have known that was how I operated. Knowing
him, he probably did it on purpose because his nickname was Lord Vader.
 80

Perhaps what has made James successful as a musician and educator is his will to

press on no matter the obstacles before him. James stated, “I tend to be stubborn, and if

you tell me I can’t do something, just get out the way it’s going to get done.” James

further stated, “Strong will, you know, stick-to-it-ness, I can’t stand to be told no, you

can’t do that because you’ll never understand.”

As a result of his various learning struggles, James uses the compensatory

strategies he has developed when teaching his students. For example, when he encounters

students who have trouble remembering to put their left hand on top when playing the

recorder or holding the ukulele, James employs several strategies. He explained:

They’re all facing in a certain way, and I’m just starting ukuleles with
them, so you want your left hand over, so I have a set of maps on my left
side of the room, and I’ll say the right use the hand that’s closest to that.
I’ll say use your left hand, and some of them will get better, and we’ll do
the old trick of the L and R.

If James’ students still have trouble putting their left hand on top after four or five

lessons, he has his students put band-aids on their left hand, a trick he learned from his

high school band director. He described the band-aid as ‘a physical reminder that they

can feel, they can take off after class, no one knows or thinks anything about a band-aid,

and we’ll go from there.” James stated that when his beginning recorder students forget

to put their left hand on top, he turned it into a game of “Simon Says.” He declared, “We

turn it into a game to hide the fact, because I understand, and I remember what it was like

to be embarrassed about not knowing your left and right.”

When teaching dances to his students, James remarked, “It takes me longer to

learn a dance well, because I learned it where I’m mirroring it for me, and I just take it

slow, where it’s the exact mirror, and that is extremely hard for me.” He described his

teaching strategy:
 81

A lot of the times, we’ll learn it like we’re all together in a big country line dance.
We’ll learn all the movements together and repeat the dance steps, do as we go,
and then we get it where’s all credible about going in one direction. Then we’ll do
it in the correct formation, and it kind of goes.
James compensates for this difficulty by teaching the students who take dance

lessons first who then model the dance in front of the class, while James remains in the

back to help struggling students. The fact that mirroring is difficult for James can also

make reading fingering charts difficult. James prefers not to look at fingering charts but

will have it in front of him in case he needs it. He noted, “it’s not going to be something I

refer to real quick and instantly do it.” For example, James is currently teaching the

ukulele to his students for the first time and stays a few weeks ahead of the class. He

asserted, “I’m learning how to do some of those basic fingerings, and just make sure I’ve

got those most basic notes down. Again, drill and kill because I know what works.”

When practicing the ukulele, instead of looking at the note names, James looks at

the tablature, “where your fingers go.” James further described this process, “I’m

memorizing the number orders instead of the note names.” James liked this approach to

how he memorized his scales when playing the trombone, “I don’t remember B flat-C-D-

E flat-F. I remember one-six-four-three-one-four-two-one.”

As a result of struggling to memorize music James offers both his students and his

children helpful advice. He advocates for the educational strategy of wait time, and

described the advice he shared with his 16-year-old daughter for auditions:

When you’re doing the auditions, they give you thirty or forty-five
seconds. Even if you’ve got it in the first five seconds, you don’t start.
You take the full time and make them tell you, okay now it’s time to start
and do it a couple more times because you may find that you misread
something.
 82

Reflecting on his own educational experiences James remarked, “I think part of that also

comes from knowing that, or maybe that was what processing when I was doing the math

stuff, and all that other stuff was I just needed the time to process.”

James revealed that his administration at the school where he works, and his

colleagues are well aware of his dyslexia. He described his administration as supportive

and is even asked to help students experiencing symptoms of dyslexia. He conveyed:

When the reading specialists get stuck with a kid, and I think that they’re
dyslexic, but the parents won’t agree to go do testing for it, they’ll send
them to me to let me work through some tricks and stuff with them, and
I’m usually, I’m able to get them working through that sort of stuff. Math
is the same way. It’s just that I’ve built all these coping mechanisms that I
probably got a lot I haven’t talked about. It’s just is related to whatever
problem I’m seeing at that time.

Thinking back on what he felt contributed to some of his problems with math,

James stated, “I think what I felt got me in trouble in math, he said, “was just one way.”

For example, he explained, “for the drill, as I was learning, I would memorize two to

three different ways to do something.” James asserted that when working with students,

it’s a matter of finding what would “work for the kid because they, doing one way, may

not be the way that works with them. They just may need a different way.” James

described his ultimate goal for his students:

One of my things is I want all my students to succeed. I tell them, you may
not get it the first lesson, you may not get in the 10th lesson, but you will
get it before you leave here, and generally, I’m successful with that.

Emily

Emily is a 29-year-old K-5 elementary music teacher from the Mid-

Atlantic/Northeastern part of the United States. She graduated high school in 2009 and

obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in music education. After graduation, she taught in
 83

a private school and worked in behavioral health for two years. She has taught

elementary and middle school for seven years.

In college, Emily was a voice major. She also played the violin and the trumpet.

Emily described herself as an active musician who does some performing with a choral

group and also “picks up gigs for the violin.” In her spare time, Emily volunteers as an

Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) for a rescue squad. To obtain her credential,

Emily attended a six-month program to become an EMT—something she pursued for

fun.

Emily described math as “one of the biggest things” that’s holding her back from

going to grad school because she would have to take the Graduate Record Examination

(GRE). She recalls that when taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT), her reading and

writing scores “were fantastic.” She goes on, “So, my reading and writing was really

high, but my math was down here.”

If Emily did not have problems in math would have chosen a career in medicine.

She said, “One of my biggest reasons for avoiding getting my BSN/RN was because I

knew I had to go and do pharmacology, and chemistry, and physics, and things like that,

and the fact that I have a hard time doing math. I can’t do medicine because I can’t do

math.”

If she does pursue a master’s degree, Emily would like to learn more about the

“neuroscience of music,” especially in children with autism because she teaches a mixed

level self-contained autism class. She described her students:

I have some kids that are toilet trained, verbal, that you were passing on
the street they seem like normal kids. I have some kids that are nonverbal.
I have kids that are not potty trained. I have some kids that do echolalia.
Yeah, they’re all over the place on the spectrum.
 84

In her other classes, Emily noted many of her students have different types of

disabilities. “I’ve got emotional/behavioral kids. I’ve got kids with dyslexia. I’ve got high

functioning autism. Basically, you name it, I’ve got it in my classroom.”

Emily identifies as having Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), but did not receive

a formal diagnosis until her senior year of college. By that point, she shared, “I learned to

cope with my learning disabilities, so I knew what I need to do in order to learn.” Emily

recalled, however, that in the second grade, she underwent some testing with the school

psychologist to see if she had a learning disability. It was at this time she began

experiencing trouble with math.

I would just fail math, and I just couldn’t do it, so I underwent testing with
the school psychologist in 1997, and she never gave me a straight
diagnosis. She just said and I quote, “my thoughts went too fast.” So, I
was never diagnosed with anything. But I should also note that my brother
is autistic, and I’ve learned that if a family has a child with more severe
disabilities at the other child if another child the other child has disabilities
that tends get swept under the rug. Just because you triage in a way. So I
sort of began to wonder if I had dyscalculia.

Emily asked her parents what the school psychologist meant when she said that

her thoughts moved too fast, but they were unable to provide her with any additional

details. Emily stated:

I sort of interpreted that as ADD because you know, back in 1997,

ADD/ADHD was mostly seen as a male-centric learning disability but
were hyperactive and stuff. But I wasn’t hyperactive. I just - my thoughts-
or at least the way I describe it is I have thoughts floating through my
head, and I can’t grab on to them. Or, I have a lot of static in my brain, and
I just can’t grab on and look at my thoughts.

Emily experiences some challenges in her daily life as a result of her ADD and

problems with mathematics. One of these challenges is memorizing directions when

driving. “I’ll have to plug [a destination] into my phone three or four times before I can

navigate it without Google maps.” Since Emily is prone to forget and lose things, she also
 85

says that one of her “biggest coping strategies” is writing things down and stated, “Post-it

notes are my best friend.”

Emily also shared that she has an anxiety disorder, and losing things feeds into

her anxiety. She stated, “I’m very neurotic about certain things. Do I have my keys? Do I

have my phone? Do I have my lunch? Do I have this done? Do I have this done?” Emily

described herself as “very pictorial.” She finds it distracting when an instructor reads

something from a textbook. She stated, “I would much rather sit down and read it myself

instead of listening to someone else.” Of her ADD, Emily noted, “I think, for the most

part, I’ve outgrown it, or I’ve learned how to cope with it.”

One of her coping strategies when listening is to do something kinesthetic. This,

she revealed, helps her listen and focus better. According to Emily, this is because,

“that’s occupying the ADD part of my brain, so I’m able to listen and focus better.” “Like

in church,” she shared, “I cross stitch, and cross-stitching, it’s pretty mindless, you just

count how many squares you’d make a certain color, and just go.”

Emily also expressed her belief that her ADD affects her social skills at times. For

example, when having a conversation with someone, she acknowledged that she gets so

much auditory input from the other person that she loses track of her thoughts. She stated,

“I need to get that thought out immediately, or else it’s going to go away.” Emily

continued:

All I can do is just hang on to this thought. Hang on, hang on, and hang
on. And trying to get it out which so often comes out as me being
interruptive or rude or something like that. So, it’s hard for me to have
multiple thoughts, but if you asked me to write out my thoughts, I can do
that easily, no questions asked.

Emily indicated that she needs to listen to music when working. She usually

listens to “some sort of popular music” because she finds classical music distracting. “I’ll
 86

listen to rock. That’s another coping mechanism,” she stated. When studying, however,

she prefers silence.

One of the reasons that Emily might find classical music distracting is because

she analyzes the melody. She stated, “I’m tracking the melody in my head, I’m like, Oh,

that was deceptive cadence. All kinds of things.” Another reason may be because she has

synesthesia, which, according to Emily, makes it “really fun to listen to symphonies and

stuff because I can see the melody. And the different timbres have different colors and

different motives.”

Emily also divulged that “certain words have colors, and names have colors.”

However, Emily does not get distracted by seeing colors when listening to music. She

expressed, “I like to listen to symphonies and tone poems because it’s very rich and

many-layered, and just it makes me enjoy it more. It’s not terribly distracting now. It’s

just fun.”

When thinking back to her primary and secondary school years, Emily recounted

several vivid memories related to math. For example, she remembered her second-grade

math teacher in a negative light. Of her teacher Emily recalled:

She would get so angry at me. I have memories of her standing in front of
me, doing multiplication flashcards, and her just moving them. And I’m
looking like I don’t know, I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know. She just
kept going and going, I would just get so angry and so frustrated. That
really stands out.

Emily also described her Algebra 2 teacher, “Because she can’t teach, I can’t

learn, and honestly, she probably should have failed me for Algebra 2, but she passed me

with a 70.” Emily took calculus because she thought it would help her on the SAT, “but it

didn’t.” However, Emily remembered her calculus teacher as being “amazing” and a

“great guy.” She elaborated:

 87

But I remember he would spend so much time in class sitting down with
me trying to explain it. I just looking I’m like I can’t, I’m sorry. I don’t
know. He’s like, what do you need help with? I’m like, I need help with
everything. I don’t know what to do. And he would spend so much of his
time trying to help me.

Of her grades, Emily stated

That’s interesting, and again, this is another thing I get upset about the
adults in my life at that point because my grades were actually you know
A’s and B’s and some C’s, mostly because my ADD kicked in. And I
forgot to turn homework, or do homework. And my parents were just like,
do you have homework? Yes. No.

When speaking of math, Emily often stated that she “just couldn’t do it.” She

described some of her particular challenges when doing her math homework:

It’s like I think I can kind of do it, and then we’ll go the next day, and I
look at the same page we just did, and I have no idea where to even start. I
don’t know how to do that. I’m like okay, I’m going to try to do the step
by step process, and I just couldn’t. It was literally looking at Sanskrit or
Thai, or some foreign language that’s not even using the same alphabet.

When Emily went to college, she had to take one math class, which she described

as “basically math for dummies.” Although this was the first math class, she had taken in

three years, Emily was hopeful that she could do better this time around. She described

her thought process: “I’m in college now. This is the first math class I’ve taken in three

years, maybe I can, you know, get it right this time and I still couldn’t.”

Emily went to her parents for help, whom she described as “blue-collar workers

of sorts” Her mother has a biology degree and works as a paramedic and office manager.

Her father is a truck driver, but they could not help her. She explained:

My dad would try to help me. He got frustrated, walk away, and then my
mom was trying to help me, and she would get frustrated as well, and
eventually, my ADD would kick, and I’m like okay, I’m bored, they’re not
really helping me anymore, so I didn’t get a lot of support at home with
math either.
 88

Emily described herself as “extremely competitive as a musician.” In her state,

she explained, “You can start playing an instrument in fourth grade, but third grade in my

school you can learn recorder.” Emily recalled how her music teacher really wanted her

to play the violin and said she had a natural aptitude. By the fifth grade, Emily could play

both violin and trumpet, and in middle school and high school, she “started learning

about county and district and state competitions.” Emily competed on trumpet, violin,

and voice. Emily described why she was so competitive:

A lot of myself value was wrapped up in myself as a musician, and I

thought if I am able to go and do this ensemble, and this festival, and get
you know these accolades that’s value, I’ve given value to myself. And
eventually, when I got to college, and I realized I couldn’t do everything,
and I didn’t get everything I did audition and get into it, that’s how I
learned that failure is okay, and you know, it is what it is.

When Emily got to college, however, she realized that competing at the college

level was difficult. She stated that in college, she found “a whole different meaning of

competition.” She elaborated:

Because you have concert choir, and chamber choir, and jazz ensemble,
and opera workshop and worship team. It’s not about being in as many
things you can. It’s finding your own path and doing your own thing, and I
found my niche in opera, which is a fairly small niche. I didn’t have
anyone to compete with but myself.

As far as her other music courses went during this time, Emily noted that she

“struggled so badly with music theory.” While that Theory I and II was a review of what

she already knew, Theory III and IV, she declared, “was awful.” “Harmonic analysis I

could do,” she noted. However, she expressed:

I think once we started getting into romantic and twentieth-century music,

I had a very, very hard time analyzing that and figuring out what this was.
Like what a Neapolitan fifth was, or serialism, whole tone, I just couldn’t
grasp it.
 89

Emily also had to take three semesters of sight-singing and aural training. She

acknowledged that while she was “pretty good at sight-singing for the most part,” hearing

chords was difficult. She recalled:

I don’t play any chord-based instruments like piano, or guitar, ukulele, or

whatever, and I would just hear these chords, and I have no idea what
chords they are (high voice), and they’re trying to say, well you know,
listen for the bass note, listen to what the interval is between that, and go
to the next one. I’m just like, you’re going too fast for me to (high voice)
figure it out, (chuckles).

Presently, Emily noted, she still has a tough time hearing chords, but remarked

that it is better now” because:

I play ukulele and piano so much more that I can just sort of hear it and
know so okay, this is a fifth, this is a V-IV-I, or whatever it is. And even
then, I can’t really describe how I know, I just know it is because I
practice those chord progressions so much.

For Emily, her synesthesia makes it challenging to hear chords. She stated:

As far as the chords are, I have a hard time separating each chord note in
my head. Now, if you were to arpeggiate, it would be easier, but if you
play it all together, it just sounds like a cluster of notes.

To deal with this issue, Emily’s coping strategy is to “play the chord progressions

and listen.” She noted:

I know a IV chord is always going to be bluish-green. I know a V chord is

always going to be yellow, I know a I is going to be red. I know a minor
second is always going to be green.

Emily remembered having a hard time hearing intervals unless they were

common. She stated:

I know it’s a fifth, I know that’s a third, I know that’s a fourth, I know
that’s the tri-tone, but anything outside of that I have a really hard time
hearing intervals if it goes outside of basic triads, and you know step-wise
motion, and starts doing leaps and things like that. That’s where I start
struggling.
 90

As a coping strategy, Emily indicated that she usually relies on the “triad, or the

do, mi, sol, do,” and goes from there.

Emily also remembered. grappling with the concept of rhythm. She noted, “There

was a song we did in the chorus I was with last year, and I got so frustrated with the

rhythm. I was almost in tears. I was just so frustrated because I just can’t figure it out.”

As far as other musical skills, Emily can play by ear, “depending on how complicated it

is.” Emily conveyed her strategies when faced with challenging rhythms:

I can think of it a couple of different ways. I can think of it as you know, 1

& 2 & 3 & 4 &, or I can revert to Kodály. And Kodály, as far as it’s not
super ridiculously complicated, I can usually figure it out.

Furthermore, she mentioned that she can “improvise pretty well on the violin as

long as she has a lead sheet in front of her so that she knows “the chords that are being

played.” As far as sight-reading goes, she stated, “I’m a better instrumental sight reader

than I am a vocal sight-reader.” She explained that with vocal music, “it goes back to

hearing those interval things again because you got to solfege it out.” She continued, “But

if a song is based around a triad, or it’s just repetitive intervals, I can get it, but if it’s

really out there switching from major to minor, I really struggle with that.”

Emily recalled that sight-reading piano music could be difficult as well, especially

hymns, and took extra piano lessons in college. However, Emily stated, “if you put a

simple piece of piano classical music in front of me, I could probably figure out and play

it pretty well.” Emily described that reading lead sheets is what she does best because she

“practices this is my five; this is four. This is this and that, but basically, what I struggle

most is with hymns.” One of her coping strategies when playing hymns is to “play the

alto soprano line and chunk the bass and tenor, or just play the bass line.
 91

Emily’s shared that one of her “biggest coping strategies” is to listen to a

recording of the piece she is learning. While noting that when playing the trumpet or the

violin, she does not have many resting periods, if she does lose her place, she listens “for

instrumental cues or the cues for when to come in.”

When conducting Emily stated that she “can do a pattern, I can do your basic left

hand, but I have a hard time grounding my body as a conductor, and does not use as

much space as she could.” She continued, “And sometimes, (humor in voice) I will be

conducting, and I’ll lose track of the count, or be like, “Oh, wait, my pattern is off. So

yeah, that happens.”

While Emily has experienced some challenges in her life due to her ADD and

mathematical difficulties, she stated:

I’m very creative. I can improvise quickly. I can improvise musically, but
I could be in a lesson and just come up with something on the spot and go,
or I could create this new activity as a way to reinforce the lesson all on
my own. I do a lot of writing. I do some photography. I think well under
pressure. I don’t really panic or anything, which is good as an EMT
because of you know, I don’t let my feathers hit the fan. I can usually keep
cool and think through things, and I guess I’m a very empathetic person.

Hannah

Hannah is a 29-year-old general music teacher from Southern United States. She

graduated from college with a Bachelor of Music Education with an emphasis in voice.

Hannah has taught for six years and noted that she has worked with just about all the

ages, “at least a little.” She has experience teaching first until eighth grade but also works

in a high school teaching the All-County band and choir.

Hannah asserted that she has both number and directional issues, which affect her

daily life. She stated, “I don’t know my left from the right. I struggle with that. I forget to

wear my ring, but sometimes I’ll wear that. It helps. I’ll tell kids that.” Hannah indicated
 92

that she gets lost frequently, but instead of thinking about streets and numbers when

driving, she thinks in shapes. Hannah acknowledged that while she wastes a lot of time

when getting lost and has been “known to panic.” She disclosed that she has anxiety and

depression. Even though getting lost triggers her anxiety, Hannah stated, “I’ve gotten to

the point that I don’t because I got strategies to deal with it, and I just tell myself it’s

really not that big of a deal.”

Counting is difficult for Hannah, “If I’m interrupted, I have to start all over, just

to make sure I’m on the right number,” she stated. In high school, Hannah worked as a

cashier, and while she knows how to make correct change, it’s “a weird way” of doing

so. She explained:

It’s more everything depends on the multiple of 10 in my brain, or I know

that what instead of if I have to get $0.30, I know what it looks like rather
than actually counting it up. I know it could be three dimes, and I visualize
it, or I know it can be quarter and nickel, but I’m really bad at actually
counting it up and adding it in my head.

Hannah has a tough time performing mental arithmetic. She noted, “When I go to

think about numbers, I cannot physically do math in my head for the most part.” She

described how she would solve a math problem.

Okay, if it’s 283 + 366, I’ve done the first column of numbers on this side,
and I go to carry, and I don’t remember what the answer was down here,
and I try to work this column, but I don’t know what’s here anymore
because they just kind of move. It’s gone. My memory’s gone. They’re
right there in my head and they won’t stay. I have to really focus to get the
number to stay.

While doing math problems on paper may not be as challenging for Hannah as

doing it in her head, she recalled that when aligning numbers in math problems, “spacing

was an issue,” and the numbers ended up “jumbled up like almost on top of each other.

Furthermore, Hannah stated, “when I copied numbers, I’d turn numbers backward, or
 93

read them backward. This happens with phone numbers too.” Hannah shared a recent

experience in which she was writing out a purchase order at work, she read the wrong

number to the man on the other line which, she noted, “happens a lot.”

Hannah experiences some additional challenges. For example, she identifies with

having dysgraphia, which manifests itself in how she holds a pencil, and how, when

writing, her ideas or sentence word order may be jumbled. Another task Hannah finds an

issue with is numbering an itemized list. In school, she stated, “it would be something

like one, two, three, four, three. I’d repeat numbers because I forgot what number I was

on.” To avoid making mistakes, Hannah had to make sure she is focused, blocks

everything out, and doublechecks what she is doing. Interestingly, Hannah disclosed that

she creates a story to justify the relationship between numbers so that they make more

sense to her.

In regard to her education, Hannah recalled both negative and positive

experiences in her math classes. She described the first memory that came to mind:

The first time I really felt stupid is when we went to multiplication tables,
and you had to memorize it. And for me, I couldn’t just memorize it, I had
to reason it out. I had to know why is this, and so I really struggled
memorizing those.

In particular, Hannah described the taking timed multiplication table tests as

anxiety-provoking, and recalled, “I would just completely go brain blank, and that was an

anxiety thing too. I’d just shut down and not be able to write anything.” Anyone who did

not finish on time had to stay in during recess. Although Hannah didn’t know what they

were at the time, she was suffering from panic attacks. She described how they felt, “I

pretty much had panic attacks doing those. So that was fun (sarcastically), like throat
 94

closing up. I don’t have them as much anymore.” Also Hannah noted, during these

attacks, everything is “super loud,” and she feels hot, “kind of feeling flushed.”

When asked about her math anxiety as an adult, Hannah replied, “I think if I stay

away from it, it’s mostly avoidance.” Hannah shared a positive memory involving her

fifth-grade teacher. This teacher Hannah asserted, was “probably one of the best teachers

I’ve met in my life.” Hannah explained that math education is seriously legislated so far,

and if you’re not on this certain thing on this certain date, the state department comes in,

and you can get in bad trouble. According to Hannah, her teacher basically said:

I don’t care who comes in my room. If you don’t get long division, you
don’t get long division. Even if you’re in 6th or 7th grade, we have to fix
this. And that was pretty awesome, and I did a little bit better then.

Hannah noted that her teacher was particularly helpful because, “She’d just

backup, and reteach anything we didn’t understand.” It was unfortunate, however, that at

the same time, Hannah was the subject of bullying. She recalled:

I wish I listened a little bit more because 6th grade was kind of a rough
thing. I went through a stent being terribly bullied. It wasn’t physical, it
was just verbal stuff. The only thing that got even a little bit remotely
physical was people taking things away, and you can’t have this back and
passing it around. It wasn’t like hitting or anything like that.

Hannah described the only time an altercation occurred between her and a

classmate. “I had written a story, and I was really proud of it and was sharing it with

some friends, and then this kid took it away and was passing it around.” She asserted that

if she had been more focused, the bullying was not going on, and if she did not hate going

to school so much, “I could have listened to her a little bit more. I think I would have

been in better shape even with whatever’s going on in my brain.”

In high school, Hannah struggled with her more abstract math courses such as

algebra 1 and algebra 2. For example, Hannah recalled learning about positive and
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negative numbers in algebra as an “absolute mess.” Using football as an example,

however, helped clarify some of the confusion. Hannah shared, “I’ve never been a sports

fan, but it is the only thing that connected. Okay, you go 10 yards, and you get penalized

for five. You’re still moving even if you’re moving backward.”

Hannah, a visual learner, recalled that geometry came more easily to her because

of its visual nature. She was found geometry more interesting and earned “straight B’s.”

Algebra 2, however, was another story. Hannah recalled that by algebra 2, “I gave up

because when they’re saying synthetic division and imaginary numbers. Real division

was bad enough.” “I’ll be honest with you,” she continued:

I had the attitude of I’m not going to use this. If I don’t get it, and I’m not
good at it with algebra 2, I’m done. Peace out. I’m going to pass. I won’t
be disrespectful, but I’m going to pass, and that’s it. And by algebra 2, we
were at a D.

If she felt that she had enough math for the day, Hannah, an artist and writer, would

resort to writing a poem or drawing during class.

Despite her math difficulty, Hannah chose to take precalculus and actually found

it more understandable than algebra. Hannah’s father knew that precalculus would be

difficult for her and encouraged her to drop the class. Hannah recollected:

Actually, my dad was like okay, you’re not good at this. It wasn’t really a
negative thing; you need to just play more to your strengths; you better get
out of this; you’re going to fail it. And that was meant well, but I took it as
a challenge.

Hannah, however, decided to stick with precalculus and even had an A at one point, but

by the end of the year had earned a B or C. Hannah explained that:

For some reason, precalculus made more sense. I did work a little harder,
and I didn’t give up on okay, this is imaginary. I’m not going to use it
because there is that visual component to it, and it does try to put things
together and make it applicable to real-world stuff.
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Hannah described herself as a “latchkey kid” because her parents both worked a

lot. When her parents came home from work, she noted that her parents were always

positive and wanted her to do well. She stated, “They’d they work on big projects with

me, but it’s not like we sat at the table every night and did homework together.”

Hannah’s father, a project manager for the water department. An avid Star Trek fan, he

provided Hannah with a reason to learn long division. She recollected:

If it wasn’t for that man, I would have never learned long division. At the
time, it was all VHS, and he was a big in the Star Trek. And he wanted to
figure out that every evening Star Trek was going to be on, and then we’re
going to start from the beginning, the original series, and he was the one to
tape them all. And he’s like okay, we got this many hours, and this many
things, and this many tapes. How many tapes do I need? We figured it out,
and that’s the only way I could do long division.

When thinking back to her musical experiences as a child, Hannah recalled

several significant memories. The first thing that emerged as significant was when

Hannah’s parents would turn off the television, and they would listen to music as a

family. She reminisced, “They had these lovely tall speakers, big Panasonic tower

speakers. They actually used them as end tables, that’s kind of funny. They were so big.

They would turn off everything, and they would just play music.”

Another memory Hannah shared occurred when her mom went back to school to

be a nurse and was taking a music appreciation class. Hannah recalled:

I remember my mom had these cassette tapes when she was taking music
appreciation, and one of the ones that stuck out to me was the Danube
Waltz. I’d play it all the time when I went to sleep, and I remember sitting
down listening to that and imagine pictures in my head to that. That was
nice.

Hannah described her mom as musical and her father, “not whatsoever.” If fact

Hannah noted that half of her family is musical, and half is not. She shared that some of

her family members would joke that they “struggle to play the radio.” Hannah’s mom,
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however, was very knowledgeable about music and played the clarinet and sang in high

school. When arriving home, Hannah remembered:

She’d have us sit in the driveway, and we would finish listening to a song,
and we’d pick all the different instruments. Now that I think about it, she
was probably studying for music appreciation, but she would have me pick
them out too. Do you hear this sound? This sound that sounds really
twangy, that’s a mandolin. And we’d sit, I remember sitting in the
driveway for probably half an hour after we’ve been going home, and just
picking out different instruments because she sat down and did that with
me.

Hannah recalled another memory when she was about 6-years-old when she went

to a see a band impersonating KC and the Sunshine Band, she got up on stage and began

conducting, much to her mom’s chagrin. Hannah stated, “She was super embarrassed, but

she didn’t know what was going to happen later. I’ve always been quite the little

performer.” Hannah grew up singing from a really young age. Her mom, she noted,

“always sung with this intense vibrato, so even when I was little, I would try to do that.”

Hannah performed for her family members when they asked her to sing, and she also

sang in church. She stated, “So all that singing through my entire life.”

In grade school, Hannah took piano lessons but did not have music classes at the

time. Instead, the school offered “a sort of music class with someone who didn’t really

know.” Hannah remembered that she was more knowledgeable about music than the

teacher because she took piano lessons. She said, “And then, honestly, music was tested

that year, and they worked with us more, and that was the only reason.” Even though

Hannah knew more from taking piano lessons and “having a partially musical family,”

she still wanted to stay after school, “even if she already knew it.”

In middle school, Hannah signed up to play in the band and played her mom’s

clarinet. The class, which consisted of about 15 kids at “its biggest point,” met in a little
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outbuilding that used to be somebody’s house that was part of school property.

Eventually, the school decided to use it for storage, and so Hannah noted, “we had to go

and borrow people’s room on their teacher planning periods so we could play.”

Interestingly, Hannah did not really discover that she could sing well until she

was a junior in high school, something she found out randomly when staying home from

school on a snow day watching Phantom of the Opera. Hannah shared:

We had a snow day, and I was like well, I’m bored, and I was home by
myself because I was older, and parents work. And so I was sitting around,
and I thought, okay, Phantom of the Opera, I’ll watch this. And I fell in
love. I began to wonder if I could sing like that and turned out I could.

Once her interest was piqued, Hannah noted that she started “to look into actual

opera and began listening.” One memory in particular that stood out during this time was

when her high school choir director’s university opera works program performed a

recruitment show at her high school. Hannah revealed that she had snuck into the

performance because it was only for students who were in the choir, which she was not.

She explained that this was because she had not known until junior year that she was a

good singer. However, from then on, even though she was not “technically in choir on

paper,” Hannah’s English teacher would sometimes let her skip class to go learn the choir

music. She disclosed:

I fell into the pressure of I have to take this math. I have to take this
foreign language. I have to take this science to be good in college. And
really honestly, it left me with little electives, and I wanted to take band,
and I didn’t want to give up art. And really honestly, I should have just
went ahead and took choir and not worried about it.

Hannah described how her high school choir director became her mentor:

Well, she stayed after school with us. She gave me voice lessons. A lot of
you know, even life lesson kind of stuff. Even though she wasn’t there
very long, we worked a lot after school with her at the local church. So we
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just had a lot of face time, and she said you can do this. That kind of thing,
and even after she moved on to another school, we still did voice lessons.

Hannah chose to attend the same university as her high school choir director. Her

teacher offered advice such as what books she needed to buy or what websites she could

go to and purchase what she needed. Her teacher even informed her about the different

professors in the department. For example, Hannah said, “Okay, you have this voice

teacher. She’s not very complimentary, it’s just who she is. If you get a head nod, you’re

doing good.”

In college, Hannah found that she was “desperately behind” in music reading

because she did not have a very strong music program growing up. Hannah noted that

despite this, she learned what she could and “had a pretty good ear.” In her music reading

class, which was similar to ear training and sight-singing, she stated, “I struggled with

basic things that I didn’t learn in high school.”

According to Hannah, understanding music theory was also challenging because,

“it’s kind of mathematical too, and said, “that kind of bothers me.” In particular, Hannah

recalled having “test taking anxiety.” She explained:

I was taking a long time, and I swear to you. We had to come out of the
room we were in and finish the test in the hall. And the guy was a great
guy, but he was standing behind me. The actual teacher was like pressure,
pressure, pressure, literally, standing on top of me.

Despite her struggles, out of twenty-two vocalists in the class, only three finished,

and Hannah was among them. Hannah indicated that she also struggled in her conducting

class due to her “directional issues.” She stated, “I had that professor that was like you’re

making me teach this different. I shouldn’t have to draw patterns for you. And he looked

at me and said if I can do it, anybody can do it.”

 100

Hannah acknowledged that her mathematical difficulties have played a role in the

way she learns music, especially counting rhythm. She stated, “You know, and I’ll be

honest with you, when I see lots of black notes or syncopated rhythms, I kind of freak

out.” When counting rhythm, Hannah uses a syllable-based system such as Kodály or

even using words to represent different rhythms.

Another memory Hannah shared was when she obtained a solo in Messiah, and

had trouble with solfege and singing some of the rhythms.

It’s in 6/8, and I’m having trouble with the triple feel, and she was
teaching me that. She took the time to really work through that with me.
She gave me a metronome. I mean she wasn’t saying hey, you - can’t –
stay - on – beat. have a nice voice, you’re smart, and the only way I can
put it is how she put it, don’t let this hold you back.

Hannah acknowledged that her difficulty with mathematics limited her career

choices. She admitted that she would have preferred to study astronomy or cosmology if

she were better at math. According to Hannah, her difficulties with math limited her

career choices. She expressed:

It honestly caused me to struggle in my career of choice. Rhythm is hard

for me at times, and I won’t say I can’t, but when I see lots of short notes,
lots of black notes I go oh, and instead of having a real hard time with the
regular counting. It’s simple if it’s eighth notes, 1 & 2 & 3 & 4 &, but it’s
better if I use syllables.

Hannah stated that her challenges with counting in particular:

Made me struggle in my career of choice when I was going through theory

and even reading to a certain extent. But I really do. I felt like well, this is
the only thing I’m halfway decent at, might as well do it.

In the classroom, Hannah’s difficulty distinguishing right from right affects how

she teaches her students. When working with her younger students who may confuse left

and right, Hannah noted that she does not use the words left and right, but instead will
 101

point to the side of the room she is referring to and say something like “the side of the

room with the door.”

When teaching instruments, Hannah stated, if I’m holding an actual instrument in

my hand, it’s better. She elaborated:

Today, we were doing recorder test, and I would have to not just look at
the kid, I’d have to either make the shape of you hold it with your left
hand or actually touch the instrument. It’s not like I could just tell that it’s
their left hand or their right hand. I have to really think about it.

Furthermore, Hannah will stand her students’ side so that she is facing the same

direction as them. She explained:

I’m usually standing to the side of them, kind of, so they can see it’s the
same way. Sometimes I have to literally move their fingers, and that’s the
only way it works for me. Or I was teaching a guitar lesson today, and I
would have to show the motion, and be like, okay I have to think which
finger am I moving first, and I have to take his guitar and show it kind of
to myself because I can’t remember, and actually move his fingers with it.

Hannah’s house is full of paintings and she is running out of wall space. Some of

them included a waterfall, and a colorful painting resembling a galaxy (See Figure 6). Of

the latter, Hannah noted, “That was sitting through a professional development meeting

and seeing all kinds of pie graphs and charts, and it turned into that.”
 102

Figure 6

Galaxy

Hannah has also used her artwork to cope with her anxiety around numbers and

provided an image of a painting inspired by this emotion. (See Figure 7).

Figure 7

Math Anxiety
 103

She described the symbolism behind this work

I created this piece reflecting on how I feel when I have issues with my
anxiety and panic attacks. Many of these I have had during math tests and
doing mathematical things in everyday life. The colors are bright yellow
and orange because everything feels brighter and louder when I have
anxiety and panic attacks. An example I can think of was while taking a
precalculus test in high school. I was so anxious about the test the
florescent lights and the sound of the air conditioner in the room became
so loud I could not think. I couldn’t remember anything. I felt this way on
almost every math test I have taken, even while learning times tables in
fourth grade.
The snake around the person’s neck represents the constriction I
feel during the anxiety. In my symptoms, my throat feels like it ‘closing
completely off, and my muscles tense. Again I have felt this in many of
my math classes and test. Also, in everyday mathematical processes such
as parking in tight spaces, adding numbers quickly especially in front of
others. The numbers hidden in the design are meant to be like a clock, but
the numbers are out of sequence and random. This symbolic of how time
passes differently during the panic attacks and anxiety.
Also, how I do not work with numbers very well and that they
cause a lot of my anxiety. The melting colors that run together represent
just that, everything running together when I feel this way. I struggle
remembering sequences of events sometimes, but after an anxiety strikes
it’s much worse. I felt this way countless times in math classes or daily
life with numbers or anything rhythm based in music. The circle designs
of the outer parts of the snake behind the person is meant to create a
swirling and light head effect that I feel. The design arrows point in two
different directions to make this more evident. It also comments on my
challenges with correction in general, not being able to tell my left from
right.

When asked Hannah what she wanted others to know about what it is like to be a

musician with dyscalculia, she stated:

We just think differently. There’s multiple different types of intelligence

you know, or we’re just different, and it’s not how necessarily how you
get there. If I want to use syllables, I’m still getting there. It’s actually
been a great thing for teaching because the best I heard somebody say this
once, some of the best teachers struggle because we know what it’s like to
struggle, and we get random strategies that we can kind of pass on.
 104

Paul

Paul is a professor from the Southeastern part of the United States and serves as

music department chair. Paul shared that he was raised in a log cabin “on the highland

rail which is about as far West as you can go, and still be an Appalachia.” Paul holds a

Bachelor of Arts in church music, a Master of Music in church music with an emphasis

on music history and hymnology, and a Doctor of Musical Arts in conducting with a

secondary emphasis in trumpet performance and musicology. He is currently in his 10th

year of teaching.

Paul expressed that he has “always wondered if there’s a learning disability of

some kind related to math because whenever I’ve struggled with something, it’s always

been something that can be measured mathematically, or discussed in mathematical

terms.” He began experiencing difficulties with mathematics in elementary school. He

remembered doing very poorly, and math and explained that his mother was “concerned

that he was not going to “pass some of his elementary school grade levels.” Paul recalled

that he “would just get wrong answers right and left.”

In high school, Paul struggled in algebra. He understood that the letters in the

equations represented something unknown but remarked that he “could never figure out

what that unknown thing was.” Paul failed algebra and was put in a remedial math class,

which he described as the “math for athletes and criminals class.” Paul recalled that one

of the students questioned why he was in the class because he was smart. He described

feeling a sense of shame when he was put in the lower level math class because the

“implication was I’m not going to be capable of doing anything related to that involves
 105

mathematics beyond cashing a paycheck and trying to pay the rent.” As a result, he

stated, “I didn’t feel real good about myself.”

Paul described that he had both positive and negative experiences with regard to

his teachers in elementary school. He remembered, “My fifth-grade teacher was stuck in

the 1930s,” he stated, “I was put in an all subjects class with a teacher that had all the

problem children.” On the other hand, Paul’s third-grade teacher took an interest in him

and another classmate and “did things with us after school,” which according to Paul,

kept them interested.

Paul recalled that this teacher took an interest in him because he was a loner, and

content to be the odd one in the group. Paul also mentioned that he “found out much later

in life,” that she thought he and his friend “were going to grow up to be hoodlums.”

Interestingly, both Paul and his friend grew up to be educators and have graduate degrees

in their fields.

Paul experiences trouble with math in his daily life, although he remarked, “Now,

I think I’ve compensated over the years by coming to learn that there’s more ways than

numbers to deal with a mathematical concept. That was an eye-opening experience for

me.”

He mentioned that his desk was an “unholy mess right now,” and that most of the

papers that piled up were number related. He noted, “I can grade an academic paper, or

give feedback on it very well, but budget items, bills that need to be paid, there’s almost a

fear of dealing with it that I’ll mess it up.” As department chair, Paul noted that he can

look at the budget for the music department and said, “I can estimate how much is going

to be spent on what, or how much money we have left for something. But even with the
 106

numbers in front of me, I can’t tell you specifically that we have this number of dollars

left, and this number of dollars on this activity.”

When it comes to mathematics, he “puts it of as long as possible and “does it as

little as possible.” He elaborated that he sometimes does the math even though he is not

going “to get it right.” He elaborated, “It’s easier to just do it wrong and have somebody

correct it and let them do the work for me. I don’t like doing that, but it does work.”

Other than estimating, Paul noted that most of the time, he will use the calculator on his

computer to make sure he does not make a mistake. Sometimes, he mentioned that if he is

grading papers, he can figure out the math. If he is uncertain, however, he said “I will use

Excel and “let it do the math.”

Paul sometimes experiences issues unrelated to his mathematical difficulties. He

noted that making programs for concerts can be difficult because he has figured out what

order the pages go in. While he instinctively how it’s supposed to look, he noted, “the

operation, the mental hurdles, and gymnastics to get all that to line up takes me multiple

tries, and sometimes it’s an accident when it does happen.”

Another difficulty Paul experiences is concentrating is when listening to someone

give a lecture. For example, Paul revealed that sometimes at church, he becomes

distracted during the sermon. He explained that he taps his fingers, and what he is doing

is “translating the church bulletin order of services into Morse code.” Having something

physical to do while he is listening to a lecture helps him pay attention. Paul feels that

doing so occupies part of his brain, and “gives him something to do, so the rest of my

brain can pay attention to what’s going on.” He joked, “It keeps me awake. It keeps me
 107

from winding up on my phone and checking out or sending goofy jokes to the guy sitting

on the other side of the church. We do that occasionally.

Growing up in the 1980s, Paul was exposed to a variety of musical genres

including, traditional country music, Deaf Leopard, Sousa marches and Appalachian folk

music, and New Orleans jazz. He referred to Appalachian folk music as his “heart song.”

He shared:

I have a photograph in my office of when I’m a toddler. I’m, I’m maybe a

year and a half old, and my grandfather, my grandpa is playing the banjo,
and I’m reaching up to play the strings with him, and that banjo is the one
that my Daddy played, and now I play the same banjo. So that’s my heart
song is traditional Appalachian folk music because I know in my heart
that’s who I am.

Growing up, Paul noted that “he was surrounded by books which meant I had a

variety of experiences.” Paul’s described that his parents influenced him to get into

music. His father played the trumpet in high school and had a trumpet at home. Paul

explained his first experiences with the trumpet, “Now my dad was a trumpet player in

high school, and when I was little, I did not know what this shiny thing was. It made a

funny sound when you hit it with a hammer.” In middle school, Paul chose to play the

trumpet in beginning band because “I already knew how to buzz my lips and make a

sound. He also recalled that his mother made him take piano lessons, which made him

“furious at the time,” but that “it worked out okay because here I sit.”

In middle and high school, Paul played trumpet in the band. He described his

band director, who also was his advisor in college, as an influential person in his life in

both high school and college and also shaped the way Paul interacts and teaches his

students. He explained that his college:

was the kind of place where I would be in class struggling through an

exam or doing whatever, but I might also go hiking with the professor on
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Saturday or be at their house eating pizza that night. We were very much
family, and that’s what drew me into education was a chance be that some
kind of person, to the point that I’ll have students call me and say, Hey,
my fishing reels not working, how do I fix it? And also, I’m sitting in the
house with a music theory student helping them catch a fish, you know at
the other end of the county. I had good experiences there.

Paul has taught music theory for almost 20 years. He explains music theory to his

students in a specific way. He stated that “music theory is mathematics you listen to is

what it is. It’s aural mathematics, and even some of the things we do in music theory

class is algebraic thinking.” In general, Paul recalled that music theory” came pretty

easily.” In high school, Paul took a music theory class in which they learned some basic

concepts such as “key signatures, and chords, and concepts.”

Paul explained that, “By that point, I had also played the piano for about five

years. I had been playing guitar for four or five years and could outplay anyone at the

high school, so I had ways to understand things that were physical.” Paul further stated:

Something that helped me when I took a semester of voice lessons in

college, something that helped me learn to sing in tune and harmonize by
ear was the fact that I played guitar. So when I strum a major chord that
guitar’s against my torso, like pretty much between my sternum, my ribs,
and my abdomen. I feel the harmony. I feel the vibrations, and if I sing
something that’s dissonant, the math doesn’t work out.

Paul revealed that he has heightened senses when he listens to music, he also sees

shapes. He described that, “Music has a physical element when I hear it or when I

perform it that is hard to explain to other people.” When he hears music, he visualizes

“distances and shapes.” He further explained:

I can’t hear a symphony or even a country song on the radio without

hearing dominant, tonic, leading tones, and things like that. Even right
now, in the background, there’s a saxophone player practicing scales that I
hear, and my brain’s interpreting whole steps and half steps in a way that I
don’t think it’s natural.

Paul described what he sees visually when he hears music:

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When I hear a melodic line being played, my brain is hearing music and at
the same time, seeing almost like a connect the dots as if you drew the
note up a long distance and then back down a short interval. In the same
way that the symbol for a trill, that squiggly line is written, that’s what my
brain sees when I hear a trill. The up and down, up and down like that. So,
when I hear other things, I see similar images in my head.

Over the years, Paul has developed coping strategies to help him when he

encounters mathematical concepts related to music, such as counting during rests. He

described a Korean counting method he learned from his third-grade teacher called

Chisanbop,1 which allows him to count up to 99 measures with his hands2. It is typically

used to perform addition, subtraction, multiplication ,and division of numbers.3 Paul

stated, if you add two, you get 29. The only time I use Chisanbop is when I’m sitting in

orchestral section, and I’ve got a 37-measure rest and I’ve got two notes.” Paul described

the process he uses when he is counting using this method:

It has to be done physically. If I have a multi-measure rest and I’m going

to count that way. I have to put, let’s say it’s seven measures, I’m going 1,
2, 3, actually write the numbers out so I’m counting, 1 2 3 so I can
physically move to the next number, and so on because otherwise I get lost
in that swamp of repetition.

Paul stated, “The Chisanbop is something that’s kinesthetic for me. I’m doing something

physical that has need, as opposed to looking at numbers.”

Another strategy Paul described “to prevent himself from getting bored out of my

mind and wandering off” is to read from a conductor’s score when playing in an

ensemble. He stated, “I just get the conductors score, and put it on my stand and play off

1
According to Moser (1980), Chisanbop is a Korean word which means finger calculation method. It is
based on the Korean abacus, and its emphasis is on fives. By using Chisanbop techniques, one can add,
subtract, multiply, and divide large numbers.
2
According to Greenwood (1979) Chisanbop finger calculating method assigns numerical values to the
fingers of the hands. Numbers are represented by pressing down combinations of fingers and thumbs.
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of that. I don’t have to count rests. I don’t have to pay attention to rhythm. I just follow

music in front of me.” Paul noted that he will write in musical cues that are “significant

enough to tell me okay, I’ve got four measures before I come in.”

If Paul gets stuck with a complex rhythm, he copies it into music notation

software to see how it should sound. This is also He tells his students that if they have a

complex rhythm, look at the meter and draw a vertical line where every single beat goes.

Paul explained that most of the time, his office door is open to students if they’re

working on homework and are having trouble. Paul stated, “my policy is I’ll help you do

your homework. I encourage them to see me if they don’t understand something.” Paul

acknowledged that the reason he wants to help his students in this way is because he

knows his brain works differently.

In addition to his high school band director, Paul spoke about two other professors

who influenced the type of educator he strives to be. In graduate school for example, Paul

shared that when his truck broke down, “in the dark, late at night, near his house,” his

professor got out of bed to give him and his wife a ride home.

Another example of one influential teacher was the one he had during his doctoral

program. Paul stated that his advisor “handed me a trumpet, a three thousand dollar horn

he didn’t need anymore, and said here you take this.” The teachers played a significant

role in his life because, as Paul remarked, “They took a personal interest in me in helping

me succeed, and that’s what shaped my view of how I should educate these students

here.”
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Kristen

Kristen is a musicologist and music theorist from the Southeastern United States.

Of her experiences with math in school, she stated:

I was terrible at math in school. It got much worse starting when I was
about 10. My mom pushed me to keep taking math courses even after I’d
filled my high school requirements, and I barely passed Algebra II and
Trig.

Kristin did not identify any specific memories of her math teachers that were

significant, but noted that she had a lot of “terrible teachers and tutors.” On the other

hand, Kristin shared information about her rich and varied musical experiences in great

detail. For example, Kristin was the only participant in this study who had the

opportunity to attend a performing arts school and received training in prominent

conservatories abroad.

As far as her music training, Kristin began learning the cello at the age of ten. She

revealed, however, that playing the cello was not her first choice:

As a kid, I wanted to play the harp, but harps were expensive, and there
weren’t really that many instructors. So, they kind of said do you want to
play a string instrument, I’m not really sure why. So, I picked the cello.

Shortly after, Kristin switched school systems where. unfortunately, the string

program was below average. She recalled being “rescued from the strings program” by

the choir and band directors. Kristin continued playing the cello as her primary

instrument but switched to the bassoon “because the local band organizations said that

you can have a string bass in the band, but you can’t have a cello.” While in band, Kristin

learned to play several other instruments, including the clarinet, the trumpet, and the

mellophone.
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Outside of school, Kristin took private cello lessons and performed with the

regional youth orchestra. After playing the cello for a couple of years, Kristin advanced

really quickly. She explained, “So, I had gone from being a total beginner to being

principal the regional orchestra. And then when I was fourteen, I stopped playing in the

youth orchestra, and actually had a gig with the regional symphony.”

During her last two years of high school, Kristin went away to a performing arts

school, which she described as “a really great environment for me.” Kristin enjoyed

being at this school because “for the first time, it wasn’t weird that I wanted to practice.”

After high school, Kristin went on to major in cello performance at a conservatory in the

North East and graduated in 1992.

The next year, Kristin spent a summer at the American Conservatory in Paris,

which she stated, “really helped change my whole approach to music.” That summer,

Kristin received coaching, took ear training, and theory classes, and attended in-depth

seminars on specific pieces of music. Of the training she received, she remarked, “it was

very different from the training I received in the U.S.”

Two years later, Kristin spent a year in London studying at a conservatory where

her teacher completely changed her instrumental playing technique. During this time,

Kristin had the opportunity to do a lot of reading. She described this experience:

So, I did a lot of reading in musicology and theory that year. I went to a lot
of concerts because you get cheaper student tickets to really great
performances, and that also started pushing me in the direction of wanting
to study music from an academic point of view as opposed to just playing.

Kristin pursued her Master of Arts degree in Music at a music school the

southeastern United States, an experience she really enjoyed. At this school, Kristin was

not only around students who were really interested in music, they were also interested in
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learning about other subjects and took classes in other departments. This was something,

she noted, “that was not really available to me in my undergraduate experience.”

While Kristin decided at a young age that she wanted to be a professional cellist,

she also knew that she wanted to be a writer as well. She explained:

I knew that I wanted to write also, and I couldn’t quite figure out how to
work that in. So, I sort of aimed for this life that would be music, back
then I was performance as my primary career, and then doing writing as
some sort of advocation, writing program notes, or writing novels.

Kristin began to find the answer while working on her master’s degree. She

remarked, “I actually sat in tons and tons of theory and music lit classes and started

thinking this is the perfect way for me to combine what I know about performance and

the fact that I can write.” After graduating with her master’s degree, Kristin began a

Ph.D. program in musicology. She shared her reason for attending this particular school:

The reason I ended up going there was because I was going to be able to
work on that journal and eventually edit it. So, I spent a year as a reader
for the journal, and then I was an editor for two years, I think. But the
school was not a good fit, so I ended up dropping out.

Kristin eventually earned her Ph.D. in musicology from a University in London

and has successfully pursued a career that allows her to combine both of her creative

passions.

Overall, Kristin does not feel that having dyscalculia has affected her ability to

learn and process musical concepts. For example, Kristin noted that in many cases, some

musical skills have become easier as she became older such as playing by ear,

memorizing music, and improvising. Of her ability to memorize music, she asserted,

“Actually, memorizing music, it’s gotten easier as I’ve gotten older. That might be

because I’m more relaxed about it, but yeah, memorizing was difficult to me when I was

a performer.”
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Kristin recalled sight-reading to be “the most fun thing,” and acknowledged that

she began learning to practice sight-read the first week she started playing. Kristin also

described an eagerness to want to read music as a child, and explained, “It was like I’m

going to skip ahead in the book and see what I can play or look, here’s a book I found on

the piano bench. Let me see if I can play any of these things.”

On the other hand, Kristin experienced more trouble with ear training than sight-

reading. She remarked:

One of the things I don’t do well is I don’t have very good control of the
pitch that comes out when I try to sing something. So, I might hear
something correctly in my head, but then what comes out of my mouth is
totally wrong.

Kristin reflected that this difficulty might be caused by not having received any

vocal training or learning about how the voice works. To compensate for this issue,

Kristin remembered spending a lot of time singing with her parts to make sure “it was

going to come out right later.”

Kristin also described difficulty in coordinating her left and right hands when

playing the piano. She mentioned that she has taken “so many years of classroom piano,

she “can’t even total it all up.” She described that her hands want to do the same thing at

the same time, and remarked, “Someone will say, oh, play this chord with the left hand,

and I’m like that makes an L, that’s my left hand.”

In particular, Kristin noted that her dyscalculia plays a role when dealing with

complex meters and rhythms. Regarding meter, Kristin elaborated:

So, for things that are complex rhythms, I am always marking my music.
So, here’s the beat, and here’s the beat, and here’s the and, and here’s the
beat. Especially when you play a lot of early music when you play things
in 4/2 or 6/2, that’s way too many beats in a measure, why can we not
shorten this up? So there, I’m always having to mark things, because I’ll
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have no idea where in the bar I’m supposed to come in, or what I’m
supposed to be doing.

Furthermore, Kristin acknowledged that she easily loses track when counting

during resting periods. To remedy this situation, she uses the strings on her instrument to

keep track of where she is in the music. She explained this method:

So, for each string, I have four fingers that I can put on it. So, I can count
up to 16, 16 measures if I just go across by string if I’m using the cello,
but with the viola da gamba, I have six strings so I can count 24 measures.
And that way, if I start to think that I’m not in the right place. I look at
how many strings I’ve gone, and each string is four measures.

If by chance, Kristin cannot figure out where she is in the music using this method, she

will rely on a stand partner, or in the worst-case scenario guess. If she is sight-reading a

piece of music for the first time, she said:

then I have to rely on what I know about the conventions of the piece.
Pieces for the viola da gamba that I sight-read a lot, there’s always
repeated statements of the theme, so I just keep listening for statements of
the theme and try to figure out where my statements in the middle of it.

As far as the problems dyscalculia might cause in her career, Kristin

acknowledged that she will avoid giving a conference paper that has numbers in it. She

further explained.

I will never send in an abstract that’s super number heavy for a

presentation because I just can’t do it, even if I write it out. It’s going to be
hard for me to read the numbers, or write them on the board, or whatever.
If I write articles, I’m more comfortable using numbers in those, because I
have lots of time to check them over, and I don’t have to read them out
loud to anybody. Someone else is reading it.

Also, Kristen finds that memorizing dates are hard. She compensates for this

challenge by focusing more on having a general idea of when a composer lived and died,

or when a piece was premiered, rather than on remembering the exact dates which can

always be looked up. Understanding this fact about herself allows Kristin to be prepared
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by ensuring that she has her notes with her when giving a lecture. She declared, “I’m

never just going to try and hold that information in my brain.”

When asked what she wants people to know about being a musician with

dyscalculia, she asserted:

Give us extra time when we have to work with numbers. So, when we’re
doing figured bass, when we’re doing set theory, when we’re doing stuff
like that, give us time. The same with learning tablature. I think it’s slower
for me because I have dyscalculia because I’m always having to count
how many strings, what string I’m looking at, and which finger. And I
think if people had a better idea of what it takes to memorize dates or
patterns, it would be awesome because there’s a pattern of numbers I have
to memorize relating to a piece and it takes me longer to memorize that, to
remember it, to be able to teach it, and to be able to a lecture on it.

As far as challenges in her daily life that might be caused by having dyscalculia,

Kristin expressed feeling “super nervous and anxious when it comes to dealing with

financial stuff,” such as balancing a check book, and stated that taxes make her feel

“panicky.” She also mentioned that sometimes following a recipe can be difficult, and it

takes longer because she has to be careful when she measures ingredients. Finally, she

revealed that she has to be careful when dialing a phone number that are not saved on her

phone.

Samantha

Samantha is a choral director, professional singer, and researcher from the

Midwest. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in voice performance and is in

the last year of her doctoral program in music education. She is a professional conductor

of two community choruses, a voice teacher at a local community college, and a church

choir director at two different churches, and maintains a regional solo career.

Samantha was never formally diagnosed with dyscalculia. However, upon finding

out that individuals with dyscalculia not only experience difficulties with math but in
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other areas in their lives, she mentioned that her mother struggles with directions. Of

herself, Samantha stated, I don’t have the greatest sense of direction, but I’m fine. It

didn’t occur to me that that could be somehow be also related to my difficulties with

abstract math.”

She explained that basic mathematical concepts were always easy for her, but

when they became more abstract, mainly in the sixth grade, that was when “math became

basically indecipherable.” She noted:

Math and the physics, and anything involving math, was the only
homework over which I would actively sob. And thinking about doing
math now in instills a sense of anxiety and shame because I was a gifted
kid. My parents always told me how smart I was.

Samantha recollected that by the time she was in the eighth grade, it became

readily apparent that her strengths were in language, and for her, “music sort of stood out

separate of everything.” She continued:

Everything tied back to music, so I did speech and debate in high school,
and I was in poetry club, I was a gifted orator, but all of that relates back
to music and interpretation. So I acted I was in my thespian club, but again
all of it went back to enriching my musical life and my musical abilities.

As a result, Samantha continued with advanced classes in subjects such as

English, drama, and “of course music,” When it came to mathematics, however, she was

put into standard classes. By the time she got to college, she was taking remedial math

classes. Given that Samantha is gifted in many areas, she stated:

The idea that I can’t memorize mathematical concepts I seem to think are
basic concepts, I feel like there’s a hole in my brain’s ability to understand
and retain information around math. So I think shame is probably the
predominant emotion. And I remember you know because I was in the
advanced math class through seventh grade, the teacher always making
assumptions about my level of understanding. And so I didn’t even know
how to ask questions about what I didn’t understand, and there was just a
feeling of being constantly at sea.
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Samantha recollected what would happen if she went up to the teacher’s desk to get help

with a math problem:

Pretend you’re solving for x on the left side of the equation, and you teach
me how to do that, maybe I can do it a second time with different
numbers. But if you move x to the right side of the equation, I almost have
a physical sensation of if your brain, I have the sensation of total
resistance.

Describing how this sensation felt, she articulated:

When I mentioned that equation, I will feel a sensation, of a band

tightening across the top of my head, like a headband. And I will feel my
eyes temporarily unfocus because it makes me so anxious to think about
that.

Samantha offered a real-life example of how having to calculate students’

weighted grades, caused her heart rate to accelerate. She explained:

There was a semester I realized I don’t know what formula to use, and I
called my colleague who tutored me, and I’m like, hey, this is what I want
to do but have no idea what equation I need to use if I’m figuring their
final grade. And she walked me through it. But had I not asked her for
help, I would have completely misfigured all of my students’ grades

The discrepancy between her language and mathematical abilities really became

apparent to Samantha when she was preparing for the GRE and sought out tutoring from

her colleagues in the math department. During these sessions:

When I would ask questions, I could tell from her eyes that I was asking
questions not only it didn’t make sense to her, but they were basic enough
that, it would be as if I, as a musician asked what is a quarter note? And
wait does it get one beat in every time signature?

Samantha’s GRE scores indicated that in language, she was above 99%, and in

math, she was at 35%. She declared, “This doesn’t surprise me at all. How the hell did no

one ever catch that I was incapable of understanding this stuff.” Although Samantha

struggled in her math and science courses in middle and high school, she remarked that

she was never given any individual attention. Even though her grades were ”abysmal,”
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she asserted, “I never hit anyone’s radar. It was more attributed to, oh, you must not be

motivated enough, and you must not be trying hard enough. No one ever realized that I

actually just didn’t understand.”

While Samantha’s recalled that her parents were "so supportive of her arts "and

"so involved" in her life when it came to her poor grades in math she reported:

My parents didn’t talk about my learning in terms of growth mindset, so it

was very much like, oh, you are innately smart. Therefore it is expected
that you will get A’s. If you do not have all A’s, it must be because you
are lazy or unmotivated, and it was never brought up that I needed a tutor.
The emotional culture and my family was such that I would have never
asked for a tutor because I simply assumed that I had some kind of innate
flaw.
Now that I’m an educator and I listen to my mom talk about me as
a kid, anywhere from ten years old and older, it became very, very
apparent to me I had sensory processing issues and really high generalized
anxiety. And no one ever thought to diagnose and get help for. And so I
could imagine the way I encountered the world, you know? Between that
and my family’s attitude toward things like learning disabilities, that
completely shaped how I viewed my academics all the way through,
probably my bachelor’s degree.

Samantha began taking piano lessons when she was five and joined the local

children’s choir at the age of ten. Samantha that her piano lessons stood out as a

significant memory because she “had a piano teacher who didn’t like children.” This

teacher she conveyed and how she interacted with her as a child affected her

understanding of rhythm.

She explained, “and I’m pretty sure that it was because of the way this teacher

interacted with me as a student because I noticed that her other piano students have the

same deficiencies that I do.” This memory, she elaborated, “was significant because the

difference I have still affects me on a daily basis. And so I would give anything to be able

to go back and start from scratch with my piano skills.”

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Samantha participated in every choir she could, “so show choir, madrigal choir,

those kinds of things,” she stated. She also “directed some of these ensembles as a section

leader.” When she was sixteen, she became her church choir director, a position she

formally held by her middle and high school choir director.

During this time, Samantha also started to take voice and conducting lessons. Of

her teacher, she asserted, “She was my emotional rock all the way through high school,

and she’s the reason I made it through being in a competitive show choir and auditioning

for college and all of that.” Of show choir, Samantha recalled, “how physically taxing it

was and has memories from being on a bus at three in the morning.”

Samantha shared a memory of having to dance in show choir, describing herself

as a “back row dancer” She recollected:

And I remember my choreographer, I remember him moving me back all

the way to the very, very back row and at one point I had been in the front
row, and then I was in the second row, and then he moved me to the back
row. And at one point during the show choir competition, they video all of
the choruses who are competing, and the camera zoomed in on me, and I
did a dance motion, and I did it completely backward from everyone else.
And my teacher made fun of me in front of the rest of the class. And yeah,
watching me dance is like watching a baby horse learn to walk.

Samantha admitted that she experienced difficulty with “anything that involved

fast-twitch muscles,” such as basketball or baseball. On the other hand, she noted,

“anything that involves essentially slow-twitch muscles I was much better at which I

didn’t know until I was an adult.” She remarked, “I rode horses my whole life, and I have

an excellent seat, and I have excellent spatial awareness on the horse. So that was always

interesting to me I couldn’t have hit a tennis ball to save my life, but I could take a

thousand-pound animal over a jump.

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At the age of 18, Samantha entered college as a music education major and later

switched to voice performance at the end of her fourth year. She described musical

concepts with which she struggled and others in which she excelled. For example,

Samantha articulated, “When I was younger, there were holes in my understanding of

rhythm.” As a result, she stated, “When I got to college, I did not understand the concept

of syncopation.”

Furthermore, Samantha would sometimes make rhythmic mistakes when playing

the piano, singing, or sight-reading. “Everything would be fine,” she expressed, “and then

all of a sudden, it would be as if my brain would flip out, and stop being able to decode

the notation. And again, it would be that stopping sensation.” Samantha overcame this

challenge by “sitting for 3 hours a day, 6 days a week in a practice room practicing at 1/4

tempo” until she completely understood it.

Due to the conservatory environment of the universities she attended, Samantha

affirmed, “if I didn’t fill in those holes, I was done because they separate the wheat from

the chaff.” She declared, “And there was no way in hell I was going to be one of those

folks who dismissed halfway through her degree. I just buckled down and did it.”

Samantha described how she went about improving her understanding of rhythm:

I would subdivide, and I would literally tap on my body the sixteenth

notes until I could feel it, and then I would march it, and I would
choreograph it, and I would conduct it. And I would speak it, and I would
sing it, and I played it on the piano. So every method of input that I could,
I was using in order to learn those things. And now they are much, much
faster.

Ironically, Samantha observed, “What’s funny to me is I can’t understand abstract

mathematical concepts, but I can do polyrhythms. Why should that be?” Samantha

offered an example in which she illustrated her ability to do so.

 122

I was conducting an ensemble, and I was teaching them polyrhythms. And

so not only can I jump from rhythm to rhythm, you know if the altos are
doing one particular feel, and then the second sopranos have a distinct
counter rhythm, and the piano was different than that. Not only can I teach
it to them really quickly, I can sing the beginning of the alto rhythm, jump
into vocally and physically to the second sopranos, and I can do it all
while conducting the entire ensemble on all of their rhythms.

One impressionable memory that stood out to Samantha occurred in her aural

skills and music theory courses in college because as she noted “adjusting to the pace was

something that I actually did faster than most of my classmates.” She elaborated:

Actually, I had more piano training than most of my peers, and I had
conducting experience which none of my peers had, and I had a really,
really excellent ear. And so I was able to go forth with things like diction,
I was able to decipher things more quickly than my classmates.

On the other hand, Samantha shared that when learning to analyze form, she had

“a great deal of trouble when experiencing augmentation or diminution or inversion.” “In

terms of music structure,” she conveyed, “when we learned to analyze form, it was like

they have been translated into a different language. I just couldn’t see it. And so to this

day, I’m rotten honestly at form because to see the patterns, I really have to have it

spelled out.”

In college, Samantha expressed that she had to leave school for a couple of weeks

as a sophomore due to being in “horrible physical shape.” She explained that there was a

light outside her dorm at the parking lot, casting her dorm in “a state of perpetual

twilight.” As a result, she continued, “I suffered a physical collapse, and the doctor was

like your body hasn’t actually been asleep in 3 months, you could have died.” “It’s like

with every college student who is horribly over-committed and is not getting enough

sleep.” she noted. “I also had a physical meltdown. They were concerned that I would

have heart issues because I was so overtired.”

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When discussing this subject, Samantha described the pressure that can come

along with being innately intelligent. She stated, “It’s like you should be good if you’re

smart, or gifted you should be good at everything, and I think that’s a really damaging

way to think.

Of her musical strengths, Samantha asserted, “I’m an excellent sight-reader [of

vocal music]. I have piano skills. I have an inherent understanding of music theory. I

absorbed very quickly.” However, Samantha described what sometimes happens when

she is playing the piano:

As I’m reading, I am also rapidly reading up, down, up, down between the
lines, and what I am usually doing is reading one hand and faking another
hand, and I make really dumb mistakes because my brain doesn’t hold on
to the pattern.
For example, let’s say that we’re in the key of B flat major, and
then and then there’s an E natural thrown in, I will start playing in F
major. Or let’s say that that there’s an F sharp added for whatever reason
like there’s some kind of secondary dominant or chromatic harmony, I
will simply start playing in the other key. So my brain learns the rules, but
it doesn’t switch them on and off correctly.

Samantha described herself as "tremendously organized," and remarked, "I can

keep more plates spinning than most human beings ever cared to." She noted that when it

comes to being on time or when estimating the amount of time it takes to do an activity,

this is something with which she struggles. She elaborated:

I mean, if you talk to my friends, they would all concur that a reason for
murdering me would be because the way that I— they have a joke, I’m on
Sam Standard, instead of Eastern Standard Time. I’m on Sam Standard
because my sense of time...it’s very fluid.

To better estimate how long it takes to do an activity, she creates a backward

timeline, which she calls a "work back" and starts at the end. Interestingly, Samantha also

starts at the end when leaning music, and when writing:

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I learn my music from the last measure to the first, and I work backward,
and I write backward. So when I’m writing a sentence, I will start with the
last word of the sentence, and I will write the sentence in reverse to the
beginning.

In terms of what is going on in her mind during this process, Samantha explained,

“It’s like my hand is operating separately from my brain because my brain totally thinks

forward, and then my hands go backward.” Samantha shared that she learns languages

backward, as well. She elaborated:

I’m a professional singer, so I have studied French German and Italian

extensively. I’ve also sung in Spanish, Hebrew, Bosnian, and Welsh. I
learn my languages backward too. So if I’m learning a sentence, I start
with the last syllable, then next to last syllable, and I start at the end until I
arrive at the beginning. Then I speak it all the way through.

When learning new music, Samantha prefers to rehearse in a big space where she

has lots of room to move and adopts a kinesthetic approach.

As I’m memorizing the diction, I find the emotional turning points in the
diction, or if you know, if there’s also the rhythm is also part of that
emotional turning point, then also in the rhythm. And I will march in a
straight line, and then I will turn at a 90° angle anytime there’s a
significant change in the music was really is almost every phrase. And if a
phrase challenges me whether it’s difficult diction, difficult rhythm, or a
nonintuitive interval then, I develop choreography. So if it’s a really
angular rhythm, I might do some type of slicing motion with my hand. If
it’s a really flowing rhythm or hemiola, then I might float, or, be on my
tiptoes.

Furthermore, Samantha incorporates multisensory learning strategies when teaching:

I use kinesthetic learning, aural learning. I will have my choirs walk. I will
have them dance. I will have them conduct. I will have them audiate, and I
also sing to them, and have them do call and response. I have them drum
rhythms. I work every method I can to help my singers.

Samantha described her relationship with music and her choice to become a

professional musician and music educator as “so natural,” and “the place where I simply

excelled as a human being.” As a result, she stated,

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I was overly confident in my abilities, and I knew for directing my church

choir, or when I was directing my high school choir, I had an innate
understanding of scaffolding and pedagogy that was really uncommon. I
mean now I look back, and I realize just how uncommon my
understanding of scaffolding was, and I could scaffold better than most of
the professional musicians I worked with. So I was really good at helping
other people work. So it was a feeling of complete ownership and total
confidence of my place in that world.

Lisa

Lisa is a 55-year-old singer-songwriter and guitarist who lives in the Southern

part of the United States. In the past, she has also lived in Boston, Massachusetts, and

New York City. In school, Lisa referred to herself as the “class clown.” She declared that

she acted this way “because I couldn’t grasp the concept” As a result, Lisa explained that

this was an “avoidance technique or a deflection technique,” as she didn’t want the

teacher to call on her because she did not know the answer. As a result of her poor

behavior in class her teacher referred her to the principal’s office for disciplinary

purposes She clarified:

I would do things like paint my nails in class or pass notes, or this kind of
thing. I was kind of a troublemaker, and I would use humor. I would be
real big in my talking, and try to be real funny.

Lisa revealed that she recently discovered that she has dyslexia and dyscalculia

and did not finish high school. Instead took the General Educational Development (GED)

exam. She explained that in high school, she “would get frustrated with things and quit.”

“A lot of those things,” she stated, “were around music. And a lot of those things were

around math and getting an education. She elaborated further:

I just thought, oh, well, I have something better to do. I struggled with it,
and I ended up skipping a bunch of classes in high school and then getting
unenrolled. I was really smart, but when it came down to doing certain
things, it was a real struggle, and it was just too much.
And we didn’t know what dyslexia was, much less dyscalculia. It’s
really interesting for me to be able to look back on my life. It makes a lot
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of things make sense for me, like quitting school, and getting kicked out,
and trying this college, and then trying that college, and quitting, and just
coming up time after time against little things that trip me up anyway. I
wanted to go into music, but I didn’t know how to make it happen.

There were some subjects that Lisa enjoyed history. She professed, “I loved

language, which came easily to her. She explained:

I was listening to a Spanish thing today. I’m not bilingual or trilingual, or

any of those, but I loved studying languages, and I loved it when I was a
kid too. I loved studying Spanish; I loved studying French. I was really
good at it. Later, I even studied Mandarin a little bit in my adult years.
And sometimes, if I want something in my ear, I’ll listen to something in
Spanish or French. I really love those subjects.

Lisa mentioned that one of the coping strategies she used as a kid was to rely on

her exceptional visual memory, which allowed her to easily remember strings of numbers

or letters in order. As a result, Lisa revealed, she could spell extremely well. Lisa

described remembering mathematical equations as "different” however, “because you

have to know the process that this takes, and the process that that takes."

Another coping strategy Lisa shared is that she loves "to write notes by hand." For

her, she explained, "that taps into something different than when I’m using my phone or

computer." She described writing by hand as "feeling great on her brain," and "very

soothing," but noted, "it’s very difficult for me to go find, and discern what I’ve written."

She explained, "my handwriting is fine," but "it’s hard for me to (claps twice) process it."

As a writer for a technology company, Lisa uses her phone as much as her

computer to take notes because it is easier for her to search for them and remember

keywords. She divulged that her Gmail account has around 60,000 unread emails. While

she will attempt to find them or put them in folders, she explained that it needs to be

"only one level deep," or it becomes confusing. For example, she declared:
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If I’m going to save something on my computer, I need to save it on my

desktop, or right in one folder under my desktop. Even with it one folder
deep, it will take me a while to go, okay, what am I looking at? Is this the
last folder that I labeled? What is the date? What is the time? Okay, this is
the one. Is this the most recent version? I mean versioning and things that
I think are difficult for anybody, but I have to keep it super, super, super
simple.

There are two areas in which Lisa struggles: Comprehending how much time has

passed and managing her finances, although she asserted that money is more of an issue

than time. Lisa stated, “Time is my biggest struggle around numbers. It’s hard to

comprehend time—like how much time has passed.” She offered an example and

described some of her coping strategies:

If I have something that’s really important, like a flight, you know,

something that’s completely time-sensitive, and even in my day, every day
I do a timesheet. I write down everything I have to do. And it never fails;
it always changes. Or I get mixed up, or it gets confusing. But typically, if
I have to accomplish something by a certain time, let’s say a flight, then I
will write it down in my day. My flights at four, so before that, I have to
go through the line at 2:30. And I work better in half hours and quarter
hours with numbers, with percentages because I can do 25% or 50%. I
work with those better, so I’ll kind of land on these half-hour things
instead of 18 min. But it’s easier for me to keep it straight. So if my
flight’s at 4:00, I count backward. I have to through the thing at 4:30. I
have to be at the airport by 2. I have to get dressed by 1:00. It can really be
a struggle to work backward, but then I’ll have to reorganize it all in order,
and it’s one of those things that starts over – well, it does start over every
day, but it feels like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole.

Also, Lisa struggles with time management at work. She explained:

I think it’s going to take this much time, but it actually ends up taking
longer. Or if I’m supposed to start it on Sunday, it doesn’t always jive with
the day. It never jives with the day; it’s supposed to end. So I have to l sort
of rework it.

Managing her finances has been a source of considerable frustration. However,

she eventually adopted a system with the help of her husband. She stated:
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When I met my husband, I was pretty clear that this is an issue for me, and
he’s like I’ll help you. So 98% of the tasks around money, he does over
the last year, which has been a huge relief.

In determining what she needs at the store beforehand and then running it by her

husband, Lisa disclosed, "We agree that that’s the amount, and I pull it from another

account where I keep my money separate. And it’s kind of these ridiculous hoops that I

jump through." Still, she admitted, “It’s still a struggle every day.” She described the

state of her finances before adopting this compensatory strategy

So I do not do a card because I don’t like anything to go over $0.00 in my

account. It used to be the way I paid things because I couldn’t keep the
numbers straight. So I would pay them, and I would pay the fee. It’s been
a nightmare with finances.

As for today, she explained how she makes sure her bills are paid on time.

So I have an account which we call my bills account, and I have an

account which we call my debit account. The bills are where my husband
helps me keep straight when I get paid. This is how much money I need to
move into that account, so these bills get paid on time. In my day to day
account, I can’t have money in there. I can’t have $100.00.

Lisa described how she prepares for a trip to the grocery store:

So if I go to the grocery store, I figure out this is what I’m going to buy. I
estimate what’s it’s going to be. I go up ten to fifteen dollars, because I
know that there is going to be something I’m going to get. And I always
round up to make it as simple as possible.

Lisa continued:

I do remember numbers. can tell you what a pound of apples cost at

Kroger; I can tell you what the same pound of apples cost at Whole Foods.
So I can go, this place is cheaper, that’s all I know, but I can remember,
and know how much money I need to take with me.

Lisa affirmed that she cannot waver from those three accounts because she starts

“start getting into all kinds of what if’s.” She expressed, “I personally think that is one of
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the traps of dyslexia and dyscalculia is negotiating is it supposed to be this, or is it

supposed to be that? So as much as I can minimize that, that’s what works for me.”

While Lisa acknowledged that she has faced numerous challenges due to her

learning disabilities, she also wondered if a connection exists between them and her

inherent creative talent.

But it’s a weird thing. Would I trade it now that I know about the
creativity? And that creativity is really special, I think. And sometimes I
wonder, do I have it? Can the brain only deal with this part? What, I can’t
seem to deal with this and this? But I have a lot of this, and I like this.

Of her learning disabilities, Lisa stated, “You know, it really caused a lot of

trouble in my life.” Lisa, however, does not have any regrets but wishes that she had

known about her dyslexia and dyscalculia earlier on in life. She declared, “I certainly

wish that I had known, you know, that I could have gone to college when I was twenty,

and that I could have kept my finances, and understood that I need help around stuff like

that.”

Lisa has adopted an additional coping strategy since being diagnosed with

dyscalculia is asking for help, and she is open about her learning disability with her

colleagues:

I even tell people at work. I have dyscalculia, you know, look it up

(laughs). Well, I don’t say that, but no one knows what that is really,
typically, but they know what dyslexia is. So I’ll say I have dyslexia and
need help with this. Although I may have shame around my own things
that I can accomplish or can’t accomplish, I am absolutely committed to it,
making other people aware that it’s a thing. And it doesn’t mean that I’m
worthless or valueless; it means I just process things differently.

Lisa went on to say, “But I don’t always come to the same conclusion. I think that

can be frustrating for other people.:” With this statement, Lisa emphasized that it can be

hard for people without learning challenges to understand why something that may be
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easy for them can be challenging for another person. Lisa stated, “Why can’t I do this one

thing? Well, it’s hard.” Lisa described the response of a family member to whom she

disclosed her learning disability upon getting diagnosed:

I remember telling a family member, oh yeah, I have dyslexia. And she

said to me, I just always thought you needed to apply yourself. I mean, she
really was surprisingly dismissive. It was like, oh, I just always thought
you were dumb, kind of like one of those comments. I was like what?

Lisa pondered the educational experiences of others who display reading, writing,

and spelling difficulties at a young age and are diagnosed in school as opposed to her,

who has always been able to spell, read, and write well. Lisa is aware of symptoms

related to dyslexia that she experiences, which might not seem so obvious, such as

difficulty with organization. To keep organized, she stated:

I Kon Mari, and I keep everything really minimalistic. It used to be

complete chaos. I dragged things around. Now, I don’t want anything in
my field of vision. I don’t want things to confuse me and distract me, so I
have to keep a lot of things clutter-free.

Lisa shared a memory in which she was sitting at a Star Bucks trying to get some

work done when it dawned on her that she might have a math learning disability:

I had this aha moment, and it was just like the hundredth time I was
struggling with something at work. And it’s not the writing. It’s not the
editing. It’s not all of that. All of that, I would say I probably have superb
skills at. But ask me to look at that email and identify what was the last
thing in the most recent email. Or ask me to put information, even just
text, into a four-column, five-row spreadsheet. You know, that can take
me a week, if at all. It’s like this constant readdressing of a blank canvas. I
remember slamming the keyboard and saying this is dyslexia for numbers,
and I went, I wonder if that’s a thing! And I really did, I looked it up, I
was like, Oh my God. I wasn’t sure about the dyslexia, but if they had
come out and said no, you don’t have that, I would have said, no, you’re
wrong. Test me again because it was just clear to me.
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Before obtaining a formal diagnosis, Lisa was unfamiliar with dyscalculia. What

she did know, however, was that when it came to taking math courses, she consistently

encountered difficulties. She recollected:

I remember the last attempt I made at community college was about ten
years ago, and math was a problem. English, not a problem. History, no
problem, psychology, no problem. But math, again, I didn’t know, but I
knew I had problems in high school with math, and I knew that I didn’t
have any guidance around math. And so, I thought, let me get a tutor. I
still ended up dropping that class because I could not get it. I can say for
me, I need to know what rule to apply. Just give me flashcards because I
don’t feel like I’ll ever understand by looking at a math equation what I’m
supposed to do.

According to Lisa, math was not a big part of her life until she started struggling

with it. Lisa mentioned that she recently came across an old newspaper clipping of her

school’s math club, of which she was a part. She stated, “Now. I was in the math club

until sixth or seventh grade, which kind of surprised me.” She articulated, “It was some

group of brainy people. And I think of all those people as really intelligent, smart people,

and I was in it. There were five of us in the newspaper.”

In the eighth-grade Lisa began struggling with math. “It went beyond two times

two,” she noted. “It was beyond that, but as the concepts got more difficult, I seemed to

not be able to latch on to the concepts.” She described the first time she began to feel

confused:

I remember the first time where I was like, what is going on? That was
geometry, and I think that was 8th grade, and that’s when I started
skipping a lot of school, and I just couldn’t get it, and I remember I would
skip school, and I would be kind of sad because I wasn’t in class, and my
friends, you know I wanted to be in class, but it was just too hard and so I
wouldn’t be in class.
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Lisa stated that she might have started algebra in the ninth grade, but thinks she repeated

the ninth grade, but the frustration she felt at not being able to keep up in math lass

caused her to drop out of school.

When considering if others in her family had learning challenges, Lisa noted that

her mother dropped out of school in the eighth grade. She stated, I also wondered if she

struggled with school because she only finished 8th grade according to her, that was the

last grade. She finished it, or she was in it when she left. Her mother also struggled with

managing her finances throughout her life. As a result, she relied on her husband’s help

until he passed away. Lisa noted that at this time, her mother became very confused.

Similar to her daughter, Lisa’s mother was “very creative.” Lisa described her mom’s

creative pursuits:

She was a self-taught painter, and she would also sew and make these
purses that she would make from this deerskin and cut them all by hand.
And she would do these little beaded medallions, and there’d be thousands
of beads that she’d just paint. I mean, I couldn’t do that kind of hand-eye
thing. And she’d sew these things that she’d just whip up, and then she’d
make these earrings, and she was really talented. I mean, it was really
high-quality stuff.

She described the role of education in her household.

I just think my family didn’t have the education in place. My mom didn’t
graduate high school, my dad did graduate high school, but he didn’t go to
college as far as I know. He was in the military and was gone a lot because
he was a truck driver. Education was really not an option for a lot of us. I
had five siblings, and one of my brothers did finish a technical school.
He’s a pilot, but most of us did not go to college.

Lisa currently works as a writer for a technology company. Some of the things

she does are writing blogs, editing around voice, grammar, and the flow for white papers.

Other things she mentioned included, “Marketing big blogs, website copy, about us, bios,

profiles, things like that.” Lisa acknowledged that she honestly did not know she had
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dyslexia because of her natural talents around language. She stated, “I write beautifully. I

read aloud beautifully. I would read books and books.” She described how her dyslexia

manifests:

How dyslexia looks for me is distilling the information from what I’m
reading. I can tell you I really like this book, but what’s it about? I don’t
know. So the intake of information is where the dyslexia really trips me
up.

Lisa mentioned that when reading, she scans the content. According to her, the reason

behind this is “because it can be like looking at blank papers sometimes. It just doesn’t

quite make sense.” On the other hand, she explained:

But if we talk about it, or we’re doing it, or when I’m working in that, it’s
fantastic, or when I’m writing, writing is a totally different animal. I write.
When I’m in a writing mode, it’s very easy for me to get there, whether its
songwriting, or a blog, or an article. It’s very natural for me. The output is
different than the input.

Lisa’s career as a writer did not require her to further her education beyond her

GED. She added that she has "just barely" has "been in this career for ten years at her

age. It really took me a long time develop skills because I came through everything from

the side door kind of." Lisa shared that she taught herself how to type and does so with

three fingers.

Yeah, I’m very self-taught. I used to have a lot of sense of pride around it.
I taught myself how to type. I took a typing class, but I think I went twice,
and I couldn’t figure it out. But then I needed a job, and I taught myself
how to do it.

When reflecting upon her career, she stated:

I make it harder on myself, I just can’t quite come about it in ways that a
lot of other people do, and I was also a musician. When you’re a musician,
everything is a day job. So I always had a day job supporting myself. And
I would just be a legal secretary, and I’d be typing in my weird three
finger way, doing these different jobs, and I would get frustrated, and I
would quit. I mean, it’s kind of a miracle that I actually have a job. But it
also has come together at the same time, this sort of awareness of my
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troubles, and being patient with myself, and committing more time to do
things in the way that I need to do it, instead of I need to do it the way
everybody else does.

Lisa came to music through her mother and father. Both of her parents were “into

hardcore Honky-Tonk.” Lisa mentioned that she was “a Honky-tonk singer, and a

country singer on and off for a while.” Lisa grew up hearing “classic country” by artists

such as Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones. Although at the time, Lisa

stated, “I didn’t want to have anything with country music, so I really took off and left

Texas real early, but at heart, I probably love Rock and Roll music the most.”

As a teenager, Lisa gravitated towards “anything that was on the Rock & Roll

station. Some of these rock bands included Van Halen, Journey, and The Clash. After

that, Lisa “got into what they used to call New Wave music,” like Blondie. Lisa never

really gravitated toward classical music. She recalled going to an opera which her chorus

when she was about 12-years-old. She stated, “Now opera I like, but I didn’t gravitate to

opera.” Concerning classical music, symphonies, and orchestra Lisa declared:

I think that’s harder because there’s not a singer, and there are no lyrics,
and that’s a real big part of music for me, is this sort of two together. A lot
of times, when I get a song in my head, I’ve got the melody and the lyrics
tied together if that makes sense. So I think I never really gravitated
toward orchestras or symphonies because I like to hear singers. There’s
just a super vulnerable element when you have a singer.

Lisa explained that after quitting school at seventeen, she lived in Los Angeles

and worked at a film studio. To learn guitar, she noted that she would bring a guitar to

work and try to teach herself to type and play it in between phone calls. Of her musical

education, Lisa noted that she has “never been able to hit on the right training.” As a

result, she shared, “I would get frustrated, almost impatient like that’s not what I need to

know. I need to know this other thing.” Lisa attended a music college in the northeast for
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one semester. She described her experience as “half and half in the sense that it felt very

natural, but the looking at notes on the paper part was hard—like learning the circle of

fifths.”

Lisa declared, “I don’t really think of myself as a musician like I think of my

friends as musicians” because “they play instruments.” While Lisa noted that she

struggles “with the guitar” and struggles “with sort of the hand-eye thing,” she

acknowledged, “but I can play guitar, and I can make chords, and write songs. Yet, Lisa’s

insecurity around her guitar playing still lingers.

Whenever I’m meeting someone, I’m like yeah, I’m a musician too, well
not really a musician because I don’t play easily. I sort of tap out with the
guitar. I can practice, practice, practice, but it’s just always been a love-
hate relationship for me personally playing.

Instead, Lisa viewed the guitar as more like a tool and claimed, “I mostly took up the

guitar to learn how to write songs and get them out of my head so other people could hear

them.” In particular, Lisa acknowledged that she struggles to “make the chords on time.”

Lisa admitted that she took one guitar class at a school of music in the Northeast,

but she mostly taught herself how to play. She described the class.

I remember the teacher showing the placement of the fingers and

explaining it, and that was you know we didn’t have YouTube, and we
didn’t have other ways to get that information except for someone
showing it, so that was really helpful to me. And I remember that when the
teacher – like okay, so the one goes here, and the two goes here, and the
three goes here, and I remember trying to cement that in my brain, that
visual, trying to lock that in so I could remember. And I remember loving
the idea like that would be a G chord. Bar chords are actually hard for me
to sort of make, but I love the concept that you can transpose the chord,
and you don’t need to know the name for it. You just need the number.

Lisa described numbered chords such as 1, 4, 5, as a whole new world.” She

continued: “Like oh, I could play the same song, but I can make it in my voice if I move

it up.” She explained that when gigging, she would write chord charts for the band to
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simplify the need to go into the theoretical concepts associated with the Nashville

Number System. A diagram illustrating this concept was provided by the participant (see

Figure 8). De Clearq (2019) describes the Nashville Number System as “a notational

practice used by commercial musicians to represent the functional harmony of a complete

song on a single sheet of paper.” This system can be thought of as an alternate format to

the standard symbols used to analyze Western music of the classical tradition.

Figure 8

Nashville Number System Chart

Note: Figure provided by participant and obtained from https://www.danwilt.com/the-

nashville-number-system-chart-for-bands/

Lisa described how the charts were printed:

If a verse were, so this is in the key of G, so this is going to be a I chord,

and the 4 chord is going to be C I think, so 2 measures of C, then two
measures of C would be the 4 chord, four measures of G. 12 3 4 |1 2 3 4,
and then I would write X 2. If there was a bridge, I would write bridge and
put the bridge numbers. And then most people could play it.
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Lisa further articulated how these chord charts would help her when she

performed with musicians with who she was unfamiliar:

When I was gigging in country, you’d just have pickup bands a lot of the
time. So it would be me and then whoever I would be playing with.
Sometimes, I would be lucky enough to have the same people over and
over, but a lot of time with these pickup gigs, my guys wouldn’t be
available, and I would have these charts, and it would be much easier to
give them, 1-1-4 5- 1, or 1-4-5. Or we’re going to start on the long 5 – it’s
going to be eight bars of 5. I think it’s easy for me to say than stop and go,
okay, this is in the key of G. That means we’re going to start on A or D,
you know, it’s just a lot easier to transpose it as far as the numbers went.

Lisa’s view of her role as a musician has changed over time. She stated, “I used to

think of myself primarily as a singer, now I think of myself primarily as a songwriter.”

Lisa described that singing was a coping skill for her and has helped her “work with

melody.” With singing, she stated:

If I create the melody, there’s no problem remembering it. I know exactly

where I’m supposed to go, but if I’m learning a song or got a long night
and I want to fill it up with some covers or something like that. I would
learn a song, and I might have to do it a bunch of times in order to
memorize it. But as a singer, you have a lot more freedom. You can’t mess
with the notes when you’re playing bass, you can’t mess up the time if
you’re playing drums, but you can as a singer.

Song-writing, Lisa acknowledged, has always been a consistent theme in her life,

“from the time she was a young girl until now.” While Lisa works as a writer during the

day, she’s always writing songs and “working them out in her head.” The songs Lisa

writes are those she wants to sing herself, but she is not currently actively singing due to

a vocal cord injury. This injury, she disclosed, “took quite a bit of time for me to recover

from that, and I really don’t want to do that sort of fast-pace music pursuit at this point in

my life.”

In the past, Lisa would bring an idea to her songwriting partner, which she noted,

“a lot of the times will be 95%, or maybe even more written in my head, but I can’t quite
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get it out on the guitar.” Lisa’ shared that ger intention when writing these songs is to

“demo them and hopefully give them a home sometime.” Of the songs, she stated, “ I can

sometimes start and finish them in my head, but they’re sitting on my iPhone somewhere,

and a lot of them are really good. That’s the other thing: I have a lot of good sort of

inherent musical sense, whether it’s natural not. I’ve certainly been inclined to it since I

was very young.

Lisa declared, “I have probably hundreds of songs on well, it used to be cassette

tapes. You know back in ‘88 it was a cassette tape, and now digital.” Lisa described the

process by which she records her musical ideas:

I’ll just write something in my head, and I would hum it down into a tape
recorder, so I didn’t forget it. Because for me, whenever I write
something, I need to jump on it right then. If I don’t jump on it, it doesn’t
get committed to my internal process, and it’s gone.

Lisa noted that many times she has woken up in the middle of the night and explained:

I’ve had this dream, and it’s got some of the lyrics, and all of the
instruments, or all of the notes, and the chorus, and the arrangement. But if
I don’t get some of it down immediately—If I don’t commit it, I’ll lose it.

Some of the content on these recordings include lyrics, while others just have

humming. Mostly, though, they contain melodies. Lisa added, "Technically, well before I

realized what a struggle guitar was for me, maybe I would attempt to find the chords, but

I really don’t do that anymore." Instead, Lisa explained:

I put it on my native app on my iPhone, and I’ll hum it, and I may even
edit it, and I’ll upload it to my google drive just for background purposes,
and any of those, it could be from a few years ago, or it could be a cassette
tape that’s ten years old. I remember them, as soon as I listen to them, I’m
like, oh, I know where this is going, and it really kind of surprises me.
There’s a lot going on in here, but it does surprise in that it’s really built-in
when it does happen, and it doesn’t go away.
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“It’s interesting,” Lisa remarked, “I can write, I can produce, and arrange entire

songs in my head, but it doesn’t really count if it’s not out in the world.” Lisa disclosed

that she has helped produce both of the records she has produced but doesn’t have the

ability to her hands “on the knobs and the instruments myself.” Of her songs, she posited:

I don’t know that it would be fair to say I arranged it myself because I

don’t play the instrument. So I could say to someone no, we’re going to
repeat the bridge here, or we’re going to do another chorus here, or we’re
going to go right into the second verse. Yes, technically, that’s arranging
it, but the band has to be on board, so I don’t that I personally feel
comfortable saying I fully arranged this.

Currently, Lisa tries to work more efficiently. She noted that she works with

somebody to “flush out the chords, make sure the bridge is the way I’m hearing it in my

head, or work with them on their idea, but a lot of times I need help basically, and so I’ll

go ask for help.”

Lisa brought up the concept of imposter syndrome. She shared a recent

conversation she had with her husband the regarding:

The number of possibilities of this many lyrics, combined with this many
notes, combined with this many keys, and this many styles of rhythm, and
this type of, you know, it’s a waltz, or it’s a samba, or 4/4, 3/4 whatever
the combination. I’m sure it’s like pi in math, where it’s just endless. And
it’s really amazing to write a song. Whenever I have a song, I cop
immediately— that imposter syndrome. I must have stolen this. I couldn’t
do this. But I know, I really know. I immediately know this is something
I’ve heard before. Or this is fine, but it always feels like I just landed on
the lucky combination today.

Lisa has produced two CD’s and expressed the biggest challenge for her has been

getting the musical ideas out of her head. She described how she and the other band

members cooperated to bring her musical ideas to life.

A lot of times, I would work with bands, and I would go can you just
humor me because I would always go, and be kind of embarrassed, and be
like I have his idea. It goes to this up here, and don’t know exactly what it
is. And I just (snaps), I know that there are probably times when I drove
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band members crazy, but when it would be like oh, yeah, that’s it! When
they would get it, it was like Niagara Falls coming out of my head, and it
would be like that’s exactly how I thought it would sound, or it sounds
better than I thought it was, and I’m so glad we worked to get that.

Lisa noted that in the ideal situation, the band would be organic, and together, she

and the group would work the ideas out. Lisa remarked:

Oh, I like that. I don’t like this. Let’s do this intro here. Now when we
record it, I want to put a washboard solo or a bass solo. These were things
I did on the last record, hearing something in my head and taking it into
the studio. The records that I produced did not necessarily come from my
head; they sort of happened in real-time in the studio.

For example, she described

So if we were sitting face to face, I would be like it’s dah, dah, dah, dah,
dah, (sings on one pitch), and they would find it on the thing, or I would
go, so it’s an E, so maybe it’s in an E chord you know. So it’s easier for
me to do it with somebody. And they would go oh, is it this? It sounds like
that, but it’s darker. And they’re like okay, is it E minor, is it e minor 7?
That’s it, that’s the one, that’s the one. That doesn’t mean that the E minor
wouldn’t have worked, but that’s not the one I was hearing in my head.
The one I was hearing in my head might have been the E minor flat 7. It’s
sort of like getting that out—the production in my head into the band
environment, and to the stage, and to the CD. That’s what the process
looks like.

Lisa indicated that if she were to produce another record, she would work with the

drummer to make sure she had "the right ambiance for the group, the right tune, and the

right vibe." She also would consider the instrumentation. She pondered:

Is the bass player going to be upright, or is it going to be electric, or is it

going to be a p bass, jazz bass? What kind of acoustic guitar am I going to
have? Is it going to be a 12-string, is it going to be a Gibson sound. There
are so many things that go into it, again, it’s like painting, I just want to
sink my teeth into it and just paint that for somebody.

Of the writing process she adopted in that past, she expressed,

I think I’ve done myself a disservice in the way I write. The process can
be very much like I’m going to write it right before, and then we’re going
to record it, and there’s really not enough time to get really tight with it.
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Lisa stated, "I don’t think I’ve ever been in a situation where it was a band, where

it was like this sort of equitable distribution of art." Yet, Lisa added:

I mean, it was always kind of my vision. I was always pretty clear from a
very young age that for me, it was about getting my art out, you know
what I mean, and having people support me and making it fun for them
and fulfilling for them also. It was not really about oh, this is my art.

Lisa’s persistence and natural feel for music have kept her going despite some

aspects of music not coming as easily as she would prefer Lisa described having "an

intuition or instinct." She explained how this affirmed her ability as a musician. She

would say to herself.

Just keep at it Lisa, just keep at it. This is what you’re hearing in your
head. Don’t let someone tell you it’s this. So I guess that coping thing was
kind of a stubbornness. I’m not saying it’s great. I’m saying just help me
work this out and get this arrangement.

She explained, “I think that by latching on to those things, that was the way I coped with

not being able to be academically musical." Lisa acknowledged her desire to be

technically musical and reaffirm her belief in herself:

I know I’m a musician. I know I have musical talent. I just don’t come
about it the way most of my friends do. But it’s very real to me, and it’s
very inherent in me, and it’s with me all the time.

Lisa conveyed that she sometimes feels “like a painter, who has a household of

unfinished paintings, who knows "exactly what that painting will look like. I just needed

to get it down right there.” Lisa emphasized how important it was for her “to always be

more than a singer. I always needed to write, and I don’t mean it wasn’t really a pride

issue. I knew somehow that I had it in me.” She described how she made this happen:

I would just insist on doing my songs, or I would insist on arranging the

songs my way. That’s the way I see myself as a musician, if that makes
sense, in addition to writing. But that’s where I feel I bring something of
real value to the musical environment. I’m not just a singer, and I don’t
think most people are. I think most people are creative types, but I never
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wanted to just be a singer. I wanted to be fully creative, and that was how I
did it. That was how I coped.

Kelly

Kelly is a 51-year-old professional singer, songwriter, and guitarist from the

Southeastern part of the United States who has been performing since she was twenty-

one-years old. Kelly’s life has been full of ups and downs, and she has struggled in

different ways. As a student, Kelly struggled in science, math, and history. As a teenager

and young adult, Kelly faced both physical and mental health challenges. Today, Kelly

has overcome many of the obstacles she faced, but still experiences difficulties resulting

from dyscalculia.

Kelly grew up around music. Her mother was a realtor and professional singer.

Moreover, both her birth father and stepfather were professional guitarists and guitar

instructors. While Kelly had a piano at home, she stated, the piano "just didn’t work for

me," and, instead, was drawn to the classical guitar. She described herself as a self-taught

guitarist and put a lot of time into practicing and studying. She stated, "It wasn’t easy, but

I picked it up at around ten and started to be able to form the shapes of chords."

Since she was a child, Kelly believes that she struggled in comparison to other

children her age. She stated:

Everything has always felt so hard. You know, ever since I was a little kid.
Ever since I can remember, like in kindergarten, I remember thinking, why
does it seem like other people aren’t struggling? Why does everything feel
so hard?

Kelly described a stressful incident that occurred when she was in the second

grade that she noted, “really stood out for me my whole life:”

When I was at a table with some other students the teacher was going over
this math word problem with a few steps, and she was going piece by
piece. The teacher would explain and then say: Okay, everybody got that,
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everybody got that? Everyone was like, I got it, and I was like I don’t. And
I couldn’t move to the next part, and she was like well you see, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah explaining, and I didn’t get it, and I was holding
everything up, and she leaned across the table and raised her voice, jutting
her finger on the paper and almost yells: LOOK! And I just could not get
it, and the next day I didn’t want to go to school. I missed the bus on
purpose. My mom ended up taking me to school, got me to the classroom
door; I was clinging to my mom. I would not go in. I didn’t go to school
that day. I couldn’t understand why everyone else understood.

Kelly expressed that at the time, she felt:

Embarrassed, embarrassed, shame, like I want to go. I want to run away.

Get me out of here, get me out of here because there was nothing anybody
could do to make me understand, and that’s why I always for my pretty
much my whole life, I have to go away, and figure something out. Can’t
keep coming at me with the same method.

Kelly was born with spina bifida, spondylolisthesis, and scoliosis and had

corrective surgery to fuse her spine during her freshman year of high school. Kelly stated,

“I was in the hospital for a long time, and they put me in a body cast.” Kelly was in the

body cast for about three and a half months and was home-schooled by a school

professional. She described this time as “kind of a perfect scenario because I was alone

most of the time, and I had all of this time to really put into learning the guitar.” At first,

Kelly had to stay in bed and then was in a wheelchair. But after that, Kelly explained:

I was able to walk on crutches with the cast, because one leg was sort of
out, so with that, so that’s what I really learned to play the guitar because
the right leg, sort of went to an angle, and I was really drawn to the
classical guitar, so I could put the classical pedal up and play like that.

Kelly taught herself to read music and was drawn to certain classical music such

as Bach because it made “sense to her eyes,” and “the notes on the paper were very

concise” (See Figure 9). Around that time, one of her neighbors took classical guitar

lessons and taught her what he was learning. Kelly stated, “I just blew past him. It was

just so easy.”
 144

Figure 9

Example of Sheet Music Transcribed for Guitar

Note: Provided by the participant. Researcher obtained permission from arranger via
email. https://www.jubing.net/data/minuet_bach.gif

Kelly recalled that she was recommended for the gifted and talented program at

school where she and the other students were pulled out of class to create musical acts.

Kelly and her friend Jenna wrote a song and performed it. Kelly also mentioned that she

participated in some plays and musicals in middle school, and in the eighth grade, she

and Jenna sang “We Got the Beat” by The Go-Go’s, while another boy played the drums.
 145

Kelly participated in the chorus from fifth until eighth grade, but felt that the other

students seemed to be “gaining understanding around sight reading and understanding the

intervals, like “how far up your voice needs to go,” whereas she couldn’t grasp where she

“needed to be vocally.” In high school, Kelly chose not to participate in any musical

activities but recalled that her friend Jenna taught her the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood

Mac. Kelly also learned some music by James Taylor and started to learn how to

fingerstyle.

Regarding mathematics, Kelly noted that she did well in math in the beginning

“when it was just pure addition, subtraction, where it made sense to my eye, and smaller

tables of multiplication and the beginning, of algebra, make sense to me.” Word

problems, however, proved difficult, and anything after algebra was a challenge and

became almost impossible. Kelly also remembered struggling with earth science in

middle school and received extra tutoring.

High school proved to be a difficult time for Kelly. Not only did she struggle

academically, but also in terms of her physical and mental health. After her spinal

surgery, Kelly shared that she went through a “little bit of a change” in her looks. and lost

weight. Around the same time, she developed an eating disorder and was diagnosed with

bipolar disorder. She stayed at a psychiatric hospital for three and a half months.

Kelly remembered excelling in English and Spanish, but she spent half the school

day in special education classes for math and science during her junior and senior years.

She mentioned that she thought she was in the special education classes because of her

stay in the hospital. But now she understands that it was because of her dyscalculia.
 146

In particular, she recalled receiving tutoring from her Algebra 2 teacher at lunch.

Of this experience, she said:

So my math teacher would take extra time to tutor me at lunch. I

remember she wasn’t trying to be unkind, but I just remember her, the
look on her face was kind of like, what the hell is wrong with you, you
know? I really think she gave me a D because I was trying so hard.

Kelly also recalled struggling in history and explained:

I couldn’t get it. I understood human nature stuff in a way, you know, but I
can talk about that, but I couldn’t grasp timeline. I couldn’t grasp where.
Couldn’t grasp who was who. I still can’t remember who was doing what.
I failed History and had to go to summer school in order to graduate. It
also took me much longer to get my driver’s license because I believe
there were depth perception problems, not related to eyesight.

Due to her poor grades in History and math, Kelly had to go to summer school to

graduate. Her SAT scores were so low, she noted, that she was able to take the SAT’s a

second time. Kelly shared that she was voted prom queen for both her junior and senior

years of high school, which was she stated was “really odd in a way” for two reasons.

The first reason was that she was extremely introverted.” She remarked:

I have learned that I’m very, very introverted, so introverted, but nobody
knew it. I didn’t really know it, because I thought people are like you’re
extroverted, you’re a performer. You’re, you know, on. But there’s an
element of us being apart from if you’re performing and being in a role.

The second reason Kelly shared was that she was in special education classes. She

remarked, “It was a weird dynamic to be in the special education classes because you

don’t always see that together.” Kelly reflected on why she was popular, despite being so

introverted:

I was very popular. I was friendly, and I was such an introverted person,
and because I hated the whole clique thing. I didn’t like the idea of being
humiliated. I also thought I didn’t want to be a cheerleader because ugh.
But I understand now that I can’t do dance moves. Horrible at sports,
awful at learning any kind of moves, and anything like that. I can’t follow
and know my right from my left quickly enough. But also, as soon as I got
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done being around people, I couldn’t wait to be alone. It was just like life
wore me out.

Kelly also described that having had experienced adversity from an early age and her

struggle with her mental health may have played a role in her popularity.

So I had my good friend in school, but also, I think growing up and having
the way I grew up early on in school, early on in life, we were on welfare,
we were on food stamps, and then I had my stay at the psychiatric
hospital. You see how everybody’s the same. It doesn’t matter which color
you are, your economic background, and so it’s like there’s not a clique.

Kelly attended a small liberal arts college and did very well for two years. During

this time, she began to experience panic attacks and started drinking alcohol to manage

her anxiety. She shared that she took classical guitar lessons in college, but had a

negative experience with her teacher, who was often “inappropriate.” Kelly tried to avoid

interacting with her professor, but she eventually had to perform in a recital. Kelly

mentioned that she was a good guitarist, but at the recital, she stated:

I had the most horrific panic attack at the recital. I couldn’t even play. I
had an out-of-body experience. My hands shook so violently, I couldn’t
breathe, and I could not play. I had to get up and walk out (sigh).

Drinking provided Kelly with a way to manage her anxiety when performing. She

stated that alcohol “took the anxiety away, and my head got out of the way, and then

when I started to play professionally, I just always drank.” Eventually, Kelly realized that

she needed to get help for her addiction and joined a 12-step program. She quit drinking

at the age of twenty-nine.

Kelly did not realize she had dyscalculia until much later in life. To learn more

about dyscalculia, Kelly met with the educational consultant of www.dyscalculia.org. At

the meeting, Kelly described her challenges with numbers and mentioned that she

experiences difficulty with facial recognition. The educational consultant told Kelly that,
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based on their conversation, it seemed that Kelly’s symptoms were “pretty extreme.”

After participating in this study, Kelly received an official diagnosis of dyscalculia. Kelly

explained her difficulty with facial recognition:

I can spend time really engaged in a conversation with someone

somewhere for an hour, two hours, and two days later, three days later, see
them, and not know their face, not even know who they are. But if I see
their faces, unless there’s something really distinguishing about them, I
won’t know who they are.

Kelly’s difficulties with facial recognition are not a result of poor vision, but she did say

that she will “overshoot the mark around spatial stuff a lot,” such as judging how far

apart things are.

Other challenges Kelly described were “anything with exchanging money,”

getting lost when driving, getting confused with changes in time zones when traveling,

and figuring out how much time something is going to take. A coping strategy Kelly

implements when needing to go somewhere is making a backward timeline because, as

she noted, “it helps me think of things that I don’t think of.” To do this, Kelly starts with

the time she needs to be somewhere and works backward to account for things like how

long it will take to drive there, and the time required to find a parking spot. She stated, “I

put a lot of work into it.”

Kelly noted that she often got lost to “an embarrassing extent when she was

younger but knew to hide it.” To cope, Kelly revealed, “I always latched on to one

friend,” because “I basically was like a blind person who needed a guide.” Up until

recently, Kelly’s family was unaware that she had dyscalculia. They perceived her to be

creative, and perhaps absent-minded, which was why she got lost so much when driving.

When they found out, Kelly stated, “they’re going that makes so much sense.” Now that
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they know, Kelly remarked, “it’s just great because they understand it’s not that I don’t

pay attention, it’s just I can’t, all of a sudden I’m just confused.”

Dealing with numbers and money management are perhaps Kelly’s biggest

challenges, as one might expect of an individual with dyscalculia. Before pursuing music

full-time, however, Kelly held jobs that dealt with numbers and money management.

Kelly worked in property management as a real estate agent and worked on condo

conversions, which involved taking many measurements and ordering materials.

Kelly was perceived as a workaholic because she arrived at the office early in the

morning and left late in the evening. After finding out about her dyscalculia, Kelly

realized that she was at the office so much because she was always “checking and

rechecking” the numbers and kept getting different answers. At the same time, however,

Kelly excelled at her job and was often considered the “top person.”

On reflecting on why she was successful at those positions, Kelly stated, “In those

environments, I had such a team, and people and got used to the fact there’s certain things

I couldn’t do.” Kelly noted that people who had worked with her in the past would ask

her to work with them on other properties, because as she asserted, “they knew that I was

really strong, but they already knew how we worked together. They would handle certain

things, and they knew that I could do other things.”

Kelly’s co-workers perceived her as a creative thinker. She stated

I’d come up with something complicated that people would be like, we

can’t do that, we can’t do that, and in my mind, in some sort of intuitive
way, I was like, no, this can be done. We’ll save money; they’ll save
money, it’s going to work for everybody. It can be done. And his
happened over and over again.

Kelly did so well at her job that her company asked her to go with them when

they moved from one property to another, but chose not to do so even though she
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remarked, “I was making really excellent money, and that’s why I don’t really understand

money too, I never have a plan for my life together.”

Regarding her current profession, Kelly stated, “I’ve made a good living for a

soloist for this long. If I had known how to handle money and how to plan and how to

really understand now, there are ways I’ve not made money in music because it’s so

overwhelming to me.”

Kelly feels she has not made as much money as she could have because she finds

using computers overwhelming at times. For example, Kelly explained that when she

performs original songs at a venue registered with ASCAP, she could submit the songs to

ASCAP online and receive royalties but finds the process overwhelming. While many

people Kelly has spoken to say the process is simple, Kelly explained:

I go to do it, and then I put something in wrong. I flip something around,

and then you have to set a password, and then I’m trying to write things
down, and I think I’ve done everything right, and why does everything not
work when I do it? I get so exhausted. I’ve ended up crying—I get to the
point that I just don’t care. I really do care, but sometimes it’s the only
way I can make myself feel better.

Perhaps the most important coping strategy Kelly has used to deal with challenges

has been to isolate herself from other musicians—not only because of her introverted

nature but also because she said, “I can’t talk the language.” She elaborated, “whenever I

would get with other people, I would realize something’s different, and so I was so I

would withdraw, so I think that it made me as a musician the soloist.”

While there were times when she has performed with others, Kelly stated, “one

reason I have avoided playing with a lot better musicians is because I can’t talk the

language.” She explained that the musicians in her area use the Nashville Number

System—a short-hand way of referring to and notate chord progressions using Arabic
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numerals. Kelly revealed that the Nashville Number System is a difficult concept to grasp

and implement quickly under pressure.

When put in situations when she has to do so, it causes her to feel too anxious.

While other musicians seem to communicate using the Nashville Number System like a

second language, Kelly needs to think about it more slowly, which is not always practical

in a performance setting. She stated:

That’s how it becomes when you’ve been in this area playing music for
that long. For me, it’s always a process of translation. And It’s different,
but in this world that I’ve been in all these years, if you can’t do that stuff,
you can’t hang because you’re taking up too much time and time is
money.

While Kelly has been able to support herself successfully as a full-time soloist, she

reflected on her success:

What I’ve done is I’ve avoided opportunities. I kept myself very small,
and I kept myself under the radar, and I’ve stayed exactly where I’ve
always been because I haven’t known what was going on, and if you get
another opportunity, and then you get in that position and then you can’t
do it.

Kelly also explained that her slow processing time has made it difficult to make

money doing singing sessions. Kelly acknowledged that if she is asked to harmonize

when singing, she has a hard time doing so. During a singing session, Kelly explained

that a singer has to go in and adapt on the spot because she said, “it costs money while

you are there.” As a result, she elaborated:

You can’t spend a whole lot of time in the studio. You have to make sure
the singer gets it. So you need somebody who can go, what is it? What is
it? And then they do it. Or let’s do this harmony or that harmony, and I
can’t do that. I have tried. It’s embarrassing, and I don’t get called back.

Despite the musical challenges Kelly has experienced throughout her life, she

successfully worked full-time as a professional singer, songwriter, and guitarist for the
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past thirty years. In recent years, Kelly has come down with health issues, which has

required her to slow down, and as a result, has not able to work full-time at the moment.

She has entered a transition period of sorts where she is trying to figure out what she

wants to do because while playing in bars and restaurants has paid the bills, it no longer

feels “authentic” to her “as an artist.”

Kelly divulged that she is “terrified” that she must find ways to make a living as

a musician that is not as performance-centered. As a soloist, she has managed every

aspect of her career alone. She explained:

Now, especially since my health is a little bit different, the toll, like the
working, the going, when you’re a soloist, people talk about being on tour,
but they’re not doing all the driving. I’m the one doing all the driving, I set
everything up, I do all the booking, I’m playing for four hours with a
guitar on. I’m engaged, I’m tearing everything down, I’m engaging
people, I’m going to the hotel. Everything’s me, and I am not going to do
that to myself now.

Kelly is thinking about innovative ways to apply her musical talents and

songwriting skills. She has tried to co-write songs with other songwriters but found it

difficult because the time she takes to process information is slower. She stated, “I can’t

really type,” and that formatting can be challenging.

She also conveyed that she began writing lyrics as far back as she could

remember and heightened sensory issues where she can hear colors or smell colors, and

thoughts sometimes have a melody. She explained how the process of songwriting

worked for her:

Usually, well, the way it started when I was younger before I even thought
about songwriting or anything is maybe somebody would say something
to me. And if somebody said, “It’s really cold outside,” I didn’t try to
think this, but in my head, I would hear you know, (sings words to
melody), it’s really cold outside, you know I would hear a melody
attached to what they said. And then a lot of times when I would have
thought, the thought would just have a melody with it, and that was just
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something that happened in my head. And so, I would just start to sing
things as a little kid, you know, four or five years old. I was just singing
what I was thinking, and I always loved a piece of paper and a pencil, and
I love putting words on a page and writing, so that’s how it came together.

Kelly is a creative, a fact which not only her family members have acknowledged,

but this fact was also apparent to her co-workers when she would intuitively come up

with solutions to complex problems that others did not. She has also done creative

artwork such as furniture, decoupage, and designs unique jewelry out of broken pieces.

Furthermore, Kelly has always had an innate understanding and interest in

psychology and human nature. She worked with women in recovery from addiction and

conveyed that her greatest strength is that she can “see where people are coming from.”

She stated, “I can look at different people who have these very strong opinions that are

very different, and I don’t feel very judgmental about it, because I feel like everybody is

coming from a different place.

What Kelly realizes now is with dyscalculia:

What happens is that I get into something, and I get very creative. But
once you get to a certain point and creativity, like with music, you have to
bring math into everything in some way, and that’s where I start to get
frustrated or lose, I don’t really lose interest, but I find that things start to
get so complicated and take me so long. And I have these very creative
ideas that I struggle with implementing.

Kelly discovered that she had an autoimmune disease five years ago, and she

changed both her mindset and lifestyle. She conveyed that she is more aware of her body,

anxiety level, and her overall state of mind due to:

Where I am with my age now and having an autoimmune disease over the
last five years or so, and starting to do yoga for the first time, and going
into therapy for trauma, blah blah blah. I don’t want to keep this stuff in.
So this has been a gift for me to acknowledge that this has been going on
all these years. And how to have this tremendous amount of compassion
for myself and go, oh honey, you are so hard on you such a great job not
knowing. I was just doing the best I could.
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Jared

Jared is a 35-year-old self-employed musician and music teacher from the United

Kingdom. He described his city as a “blue-collar town,” and “very working class.” Jared

went on to state, “And I consider myself as working class as well.” Jared grew up with

his brother and his parents. His father was an electrical engineer, and his mother “worked

in admin.” Jared noted that he did not come from a musical family. No one in his

immediate family played an instrument and was the first person in his family to do so.

Jared explained that he loves music but does not feel he possesses any “kind of

natural instincts towards playing an instrument technically.” “I heard a lot of music

growing up in the house,” he noted. As far as the role of music in his home environment,

he remarked, “My parents are big fans of music, so there were all sorts of books and

music played, but never any actual instruments being played.” He asserted, “I think I’ve

always come at music from a more an angle of one of passion rather than technical if that

makes sense.”

Jared shared that his parents were aware of his dyslexia and supported him “in

every way.” He recounted, “They let me do what I wanted to do, and they helped me with

homework, and learning lots of things in any way they could.” Jared’s parents

encouraged him to further his study of music professionally. He said, “Me and my

brother have been allowed to do what we wanted to do, no pressure academically to make

sure we performed or had certain grades by certain ages, which you know I thank them

for a lot.”

Jared disclosed that he thinks his father is dyslexic as well. He stated:

We work together, and doing some work on the house, and we work
together all the time. And I can see the way he learns and the way he does
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stuff, and I do that as well. But you know he was born in 1950 there was
no such thing as dyslexia, and I’m sure he’s been frustrated in his life, but
I would take a guess that he is dyslexic.

When Jared was around 12 or 13-years-old, and in his first year of high school, he

began taking drum set lessons in school. He expressed that he always felt “a natural

connection to the physicality of drums.” Once he “started to take drums a little more

seriously, he began to take individual or group lessons inside and outside of school.

The majority of Jared’s musical experiences as a kid centered around informal

music learning jamming with his friends:

I didn’t really play in any bands in school. It was always bands with
friends outside of school. It was more just in the pop/rock kind of genres
at friends’ houses and in and amongst peers basically and outside of
school hours. But yeah people I went to school with, and they were kind of
having individual lessons, and we were kind of making our own garage
bands, this kind of thing.

Jared’s musical interests stem from what he was exposed to growing up in his

house, “based on my peer group and the music of my parents when I was younger.” Jared

was exposed to very little Western classical music as a kid. Instead, his parents listened to

folk, pop, and rock music by artists such as Bob Dylan, Neil Young, the Grateful Dead,

the Kinks, and the Beetles. As a teenager, Jared gravitated to British guitar music from

the ‘80s or ‘90s but was open to listening to a variety of musical genres. He explained:

Some of my friends were really into pop music, and they were DJs. So it
was really good in the sense I would have friends that were just into
electronic music, and sometimes just into rock music. Sometimes just into
hip hop, you know, and I kind of go to certain people, obviously for their
friendships, but also that I knew they would introduce me to new music.

It was around the age of 13 or 14 that Jared that found his niche, and stated, “I

was like, I’m rock (makes the “Rock on” symbol with his fingers). That was my

friendship group.” Jared described his current musical tastes:

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And now being the age I’m at, and now any genre, I don’t care what it is.
If I like it, I like it, if I don’t, I don’t. Could be whatever. So really open to
so much music in that way, including classical music in that when I say
that. I’ve been to classical music concerts and enjoyed it. It’s been an
interesting cultural experience as well.

Learning to read music was never a large part of Jared’s musical training. In his

last year of high school, Jared had to pass a music exam for which he had to give an

ensemble performance in a group and solo performance. Jared chose to ply the drum set

for his solo performance, and for the ensemble piece, he played the snare drum while his

teacher played a different drum.

For the ensemble piece, Jared recalled that his teacher provided him with written

sheet music and a cassette tape on which his teacher played Jared’s part. Jared recalled

how he went about learning the part. “For the ensemble piece, ” he remarked, “I literally

just learned the audio recording in a really disciplined and regimented style. I just learned

it night after night, practicing it, listening to it, getting it wrong, getting it right. Trial and

error.”

Jared posited that while he may have studied music notation in school, he stated,

Maybe they technically didn’t tick boxes to say that you know, we had
studied some written form of music, but I would say that I left school not
really understanding how to read. And as I said before, when it came
down to doing my exam, I just disregarded the written form of the music,
and just learned it by listening to it.

This was also the way Jared and band learned songs, a process he called “creatively

before knowledge.”

I was working with people, that you know, I just barely any ability on the
drums and we were writing songs, and just kind of an old school way of
like I’ve got this riff you know the typical rock and roll way of things, just
organically grow from that. Sometimes, yeah, you just jam around the riff,
however long, and it builds, and it’s organic and stuff like that. It will go
somewhere, or it will go nowhere.
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And then maybe, if you’ve people in the band, hopefully, five

people are bringing something to the band in a sense that they’re adding in
a new section to the song, or something like that. I found myself obviously
being on the drums not being to add to the group harmonically much, and
saying oh, why don’t we go to an A chord there because you know, that
didn’t really make sense to me at that time. And especially not from the
position of being on drums. It didn’t really make sense for me to do that.
And you know, I don’t have perfect pitch or anything, so I
wouldn’t be able to sing it in my head and go actually it would work if we
harmonically move to that group of chords. It was basically just oh, you
just work off gut instinct, and that sounds good, yeah, let’s go there. And it
was totally organic like that. I’d say that’s still a big part of how I like to
work.

Jared explained the concept of pitch as “a bit of a strange thing.” He was

dissatisfied with the way it was taught at the university because:

It was like, let’s hear these two intervals in isolation, and then you try and
guess whether it’s a major third or whatever. And you know, yeah, I might
be able to do that, but when it actually came to listening to music, could I
translate that to the music was hearing, no I couldn’t.

Jared described the high school he attended as “kind of a rough old school.” He

shared that the classes were organized according to sets, with set one being the highest

and set three being the lowest. He explained, “So I was in the lowest set, you know down

there. It was just bad. There was barely any learning taking place.” Jared described the

classroom environment as “a toxic mixture of I don’t care, not a very good teacher, a lot

of disruptive students in the class. It was never really meant for me to do well in that

class.”

Moreover, while Jared did not think his teachers as particularly mean, he also

described them as “not helpful.” He expressed his opinion on the topic:

I wish they just had taken me aside, you know. This is what it is. This is
what you really need to understand, and I don’t really remember anyone
ever doing that. Yeah, I remember having some pretty bad teachers when I
was in high school. And so yeah, just not really a very good classroom
experience.
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Jared conveyed that his learning difficulties were mostly overlooked in high

school and noted that “no one ever actually gave it a title or anything like that.”

Furthermore, while Jared was given the option of attending some extra classes, he

recalled only attending occasionally. However, when it came to learning language, Jared

stated:

I think I was okay at English and I quite liked the use of language, and I
love songs and I love the way you know the way words can blend
together. I’m quite fond of language actually. I’ve studied some other
languages because I never learned any languages when I was at school.
We did French, but I did not care about it at all.

While as a kid, Jared, “always thought learning was really boring,” later on in life, he

acknowledged, “I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve seen the usefulness of languages, and I really

loved learning other languages like Spanish, a little French, Portuguese.”

Regarding his decision to study music as a serious pursuit, Jared asserted that his

tutors encouraged him to further his music studies.

I was being persuaded by some tutors that I had on previous courses who
said you should go on and study music. You’ve done well at high school
because I got an A in high school for music, and I would say I didn’t do
very well at school, or my grades at school. They weren’t very good, but
music was one of those things that stood out.

After finishing high school, he went on to college at the age of 16 to earn a

national diploma in pop music performance. During this time, he took a foundation

course which contained “a lot of different elements.” He explained that the course

consisted of "some academic elements, but not too much,” and that they were “more

based on the practical element of performing and being in bands.”

Jared asserted that he especially enjoyed that the course was "more hands-on, and

way more doing than it was analytical and did very well in the course. As a result, his

tutors encouraged him to continue his education and should go on to earn a high national
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diploma, which he said involved, “basically doing the same course.” Pursuing this higher

national diploma, his teachers noted, “would be a good lead towards university if you

want to go finish your degree after that.”

Jared chose to attend a college specializing in popular music to pursue a Bachelor

of Arts in Popular Music Studies. Jared acknowledged learning to understand rhythm was

probably the most challenging concept for him. Furthermore, Jared did not begin to fully

understand how to count rhythm until he found a teacher that really helped him

understand rhythm.

According to Jared, this teacher helped him “understand music from the written

form.” These lessons consisted of “lots of sight-reading,” and he remarked, “ and that

was when the penny dropped for me.” At that point, he revealed:

I was able to understand how music translates to rhythm, and I could hear
it in my head, and things like that. I could read it on the page and then
actually clap it out loud what I was seeing on the page, I think still, and
you know just having it up to whatever the time signature was and stuff
like that, and studied a bit of musical theory.

Jared noted:

I would say it wasn’t until I started to teach, this kind of thing that I
realized how I could deliver it to kids. And it started to make way more
sense to me because I remember some things at university that I remember
being shown and still thinking, but how is that still mathematically
possible? But no one sat me down and explained.

For example, he imparted:

I remember seeing a group of quintuplets in a bar of 4/4 and saying, how

is that possible, because nobody had explained to me how you get groups
of five into crochet. And I was just sort of going, I thought you could only
get only four in one crochet. I didn’t realize it was an actual rhythmic
scale.

Jared admitted that subdivision didn’t fully make sense to him until a few years

ago when he started practicing on a drum pad and would “just play the rhythmical scale
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modes from quarter noes all the way up to thirty-second notes just at one tempo.” Jared

continued, “I actually understand what the guy was talking to me about. It finally makes

sense now 10 years later.”

While Jared indicated that he probably would have been able to “aurally hear the

distance between a semiquaver, or a sixteenth note and an eighth note, he had trouble

understanding it on the page. Upon graduating from college, Jared revealed that he “was

much more aware, much, more confident” in his reading abilities.

And so that was definitely a big step in my reading ability in music. And
having that ability to do that, even though I think it’s been, somewhat of
an issue with me personally in processing and my ability to read music,
and how quickly I can do that. I know that might always be an issue for
me, maybe. Yeah, it does make sense where I went from a stage from
being totally unaware of things to being like yeah, maybe consciously
confident of my reading music, and knowing from when I look at any
numbered score, I can make sense of it, and it’s not all just crazy dots on a
page.

Jared remembered going through “an academic process of learning rhythm and

approaching rhythm, he noted:

When it came to actually playing the rhythm myself, as soon as somebody

said something to me, like say what I’m saying, and then play what I’m
saying, that made so much more sense to me. So basically, understanding
music from an aural tradition like Brazilian African, Cuban musicians do.
Oh, I can do that. I could do that way easier than if I was reading it.

When asked if he felt that his difficulties in math affected his musical learning, he stated:

I’m not sure specifically how my lack of maths have affected my musical
learning. I think I’m a kinesthetic learner. I definitely learned through
doing. I need that practical experience, and that makes a difference in my
memory. I’ve got quite a good long-term memory, bad short-term
memory. So with kinesthetic learning, I think for me, I can remember the
moment when I realized that, as the penny drops as it were, that sort of
lightbulb moment, and I remember where I was, and what I was doing at
the time whatever made sense to me.
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In recent years, Jared shared that he has” played quite a lot of percussion such as

Samba and some Cuban music as well” and “a bit of African drumming.” He seeks

opportunities in his city to learn more about different drumming styles. These workshops,

he indicated, occur “just in and around the city.” He described a local samba school, and

a “really good teacher of Cuban music.” He also noted that he feels, “quite lucky” to

know “some great African musicians as well.” He elaborated:

So I’ve been able to get lots of information from those people, and join
their groups, and play with them, and get experiences doing lots of
concerts and gigs with them. And learning that music, because it’s all an
aural tradition, and it’s all a really interesting way of learning music. And
I think I’ve really taken to it quite because I’ve never studied any of that at
University or when I was younger and that way of delivering music
completely aurally or learning it that way has been great. I’ve really liked
it.

Also, Jared engages in professional development opportunities to learn about

different teaching methods to better teach his percussion students. For example, he

attended a workshop led by a women trained in the Kodály approach. “It was really

interesting,” he stated. “Games, music, really get people doing, and thinking about music

in a kinesthetic way, which is about doing.”

Jared conveyed that the Kodály approach of sound before symbol has influenced

the way he teaches. He asserted, “I make sure that they can play before they actually look

at a note written down.” Jared’s reasoning for teaching this way is “because the drum kit

is so physical that you don’t have to understand music at all, you just have to learn

arbitrary movement of limbs, that’s it.” He remarked:

Do you need to keep one hand tapping on the high hat, and then you need
to introduce your right foot, or your left foot, right hand, left hand,
depending on which hand is their strong hand.
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“From there,” he continued, “I use their voice as a fifth limb to make sure it’s

coming from their brain to their hands and feet, not the other way around.” Jared stated,

“I generally find that I can sight-read things, and offered an example of how he would

teach tricky rhythms to his students:

16th notes split up into three ways. So an eighth note followed by two
16th notes I would call a blackberry, because it’s like, duh, duh, duh
(chants). So I just put words to them basically. And then so one of the
other ways you would see that would be two 16th notes followed by an
eighth note, and I would call that a granny smith. You can say any three-
syllable word basically. Another one would be flamingo. So when I look
at a score, I’m basically looking at these words that I know. It could be
like quarter note, eighth note, sixteenth notes.

Jared professed that he “loves showing kids the maths part of rhythm,” and

usually uses rhythm pyramids to help them. He stated, “I usually say look you guys study

fractions, and they go yeah, and I go right, well it’s basically just fractions. And “that’s

the beauty of music,” he stated. “Maths are coming out of the drums. It’s awesome!”

When teaching, Jared declared that he always tries to make sure his students know

the things he wishes he’d known when he was their age or at their ability level. He

described himself as, “quite thorough in the way I teach.” Jared noted that what he tries to

relay to his students is “mainly the relationship between pulse and rhythm, and for one to

be pulse to be mainly felt and rhythm to be played.”

Jared’s personal music learning experiences have influenced his views on child

development. He noted that understanding the relationship between beat and pulse “takes

a long time.” Regarding his own understanding of this relationship he reflected:

And that still took me a very long time. And I think with kids I can see
kids that were probably a lot like me when I was that young. It’s about
where the brain’s at, how your brain’s developing, and things like that. It
can take a long time to develop the coordination and to develop the feel
and the pulse. But actually playing the rhythm, that kind of thing took me
a while for my own self.
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During the member checking process, Jared emphasized how teaching has

affected his study. He revealed that he almost feels bad taking money from the students

because he has learned more than they have. He stated, “Getting teaching experience of

what works reinforced, so when I come to need it in a practical scenario, it forces me to

practice what I preach.” What he has learned working with his students comes in handy,

such as the benefit of saying a rhythm, then playing them helps him determine the most

effective way to get a rhythm in his head as quickly as he can.

Jared also reflected on the role his music teachers had on his musical development

in terms of which were effective, and which were not, and how these experiences have

made him a more patient and understanding educator.

I think that plenty of teachers that I had growing up that they were great
players, but not good teachers. So you know when somebody walks into
my room as a student now, I can see that maybe they’ll develop really
quickly, and have a very quick learning curve, but I see some students
where it’s like okay, this is going to be a bit of a longer road. I’ll be
patient with you because I needed somebody to be patient with me.

As a teacher, Jared considers the fact that he is “quite observant” a strength. He stated:

I can read people quite well, I would say, well as a teacher, you know
some people, some kids need some encouragement in the right way. And
then some people, you know, they need a stern word of like you need to
pull up your bootstraps and get to work here. And then you know, some
people need an arm put around them and just saying you know, you did
really well. And especially being dyslexic, and being a teacher, I can sort
of read that now a bit more, and I can spot that when I’m teaching
someone, that I can see they’re struggling, and you know they’re climbing
Mount Everest here in trying to do this. And you know they need a real pat
on the back and say well done.

Along with teaching, Jared also performs in bands, “sometimes original, and then

sometimes more like professional function bands that play at weddings, or any kind of

function.” Jared explained that he “never studied any kind of orchestral type percussion at
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university or in high school,” and never had too much interest in classical percussion. He

revealed:

I’ve never even listened that much. I didn’t hear too much growing up,
and I did a pop music degree. So it was all about rock, and funk, and a
little bit of jazz as well. I do quite like some jazz, and I’ve done some
theatre shows as well.

Jared remarked that doing theatre shows has been:

quite interesting because it’s all reading music. And the score, it was quite
strange because the score was very much for classical percussion. You
know it’s timpani and tuned percussion, whereas I was just playing the
drum set for that, because, with the theatre show, it depends on the budget.

Jared pondered about the role reading music has played in his life:

I try to think about music now in the way I teach it, but also in the way
that I learn it. Yeah, it’s totally sound before symbol. And it kind of relates
to the way I was doing it originally. I was doing it in bands with friends,
and enjoying myself, and not looking at a note. There wasn’t a note in
sight for years and years, but I had a lot of fun, and I learned a lot about
music doing it that way.
Maybe I was taking a long route in the sense when it comes to
being a professional. Maybe I wish I learned to read a lot earlier. Maybe I
would have some better gigs or a bit more competent in doing certain
kinds of gigs like shows. Theatre shows, where I would definitely be able
to do that. I know I could do it, but I think I do take longer to learn the full
show from reading it. But that’s again down to me and how I learn. Maybe
the dyslexia/dyscalculia coming through, maybe, maybe not.

Jared noted that he’s “always really liked going watching music, going to live

gigs.” From the time he was 12 or 13-years-old, he would go to rock shows with his older

brother, “which was really inspiring at the time. it still is.” He shared that going to

concerts is “one of his favorite past times.” Jared stated that concert-going inspires him

because:

Sometimes I’ve got very analytical and be watching what the drummer is
doing or something, but I can just stop that because sometimes when I’m
at a concert, I’m just standing there with my arms folded. And I’m just
looking as if I’m not having a good time, but I’m actually having a really
good time. But yeah, it’s just become one of the things I like to do.
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Jared described why and how going to concerts inspires him:

Just energy. And you know even if it’s people showing off on stage. I just
find myself being quite enchanted by it. Or just people sharing a sort of an
emotional moment with an audience, a group of like-minded people. I just
think that’s very beneficial for everyone—the soul.

Jared also views concerts as a way of getting new ideas to use both personally and

when teaching. He stated, “I can take something for a job for my professional life, but I

can also take it for my creative and artistic life as well if I wanted to, and say right, I’m

going to use that rhythm because that sounded great when I heard that band do it. And I

can use if for the workshops that I did with the kids. Jared shared an example of one

concert in particular:

I managed to get free tickets to go see an African band from Kenya, and
they were playing in my city, and yeah, I just went with my band. And it
was just one things that one of the guys was doing, the way he’s clapping.
And as soon as he did that, I went ah, going to use that. And I used it in a
work shop I did when I was delivering that with the kids.

In his African percussion workshops, Jared teaches his students about “the three

main parts of African percussion which are playing the drums, singing, and dancing as

well.” He described the lesson:

And so what I was trying to introduce to them was the moving and the
clapping and stomping, and singing at the same time, you know because
that’s all so really important. Really difficult in terms of coordination. And
you know, I see the students who struggle with that, and maybe I would
have been one of those if I was studying at their age. I see the concepts of
eurythmics and how that’s such a big part of African culture and really
useful for anybody learning music.

As far as his learning disability goes, Jared was not formally diagnosed with

dyslexia until he entered university even though, according to him, “everybody suspected

in high school,” but “nothing was really done about it.” Jared elaborated, “I received
 166

some extra tuition for things like exams, but no formal assessment until I reached higher

education at university.”

Jared received a computer complete with software as part of the Disabled

Students’ Allowance, a government program that provided funding for students with

disabilities. He stated that this computer “really helped me throughout my university

time, and I was basically able to write essays a lot easier with that, but that was only the

proof that I was dyslexic through the psychologist assessment.”

In addition to dyslexia, Jared also identifies with having dyscalculia. The

problems associated with this condition, he stated, “feels like more of a problem in my

everyday life.” While Jared was never formally diagnosed with dyscalculia, he explained

some of his difficulties surrounding numbers:

I have a bit of a phobia of it sometimes. You know, the obvious doing

math’s in public, which was one of your questions on your questionnaire.
And get frustrated with things, And Every time I try to some sort of
subdivision quickly in my head, I find this block, brick wall appearing.

Interestingly, he revealed:

With the reading, writing kind of thing, I’ve not got too much of a
problem, I would say. I think my dyslexia affects me in other ways, but
yeah, with dyscalculia, it feels like with processing numbers sometimes,
it’s like a straight brick wall.

Jared noted, “all I feel I can do with maths is basic arithmetic,” but sometimes

even basic arithmetic can be complicated, mainly when calculating it mentally. Of his

relationship with math when he was younger, Jared stated, "It was something I couldn’t

do, and when something was hard when I was younger, and I didn’t like it, I just thought

I’m not going to do it. I didn’t really care. Presently, though, Jared stated, that if he

wanted to learn math now, he could do it.

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As far as how Jared’s difficulties made him feel in the past, he stated, “It can be

pretty disheartening. I would say, pretty frustrating, make me feel stupid, things like

that.” Of Jared’s current views about learning mathematics, he acknowledged that “if he

really wanted to learn it, I could.” Elaborating further, he said:

And I know it’s just a case of I could do it. I could learn it. I could
understand it. I could get it in my head, and keep it there because of the
age I’m at, I know how best I learn in many ways, so I’m getting more of
a clearer picture based on hindsight, and just being an adult, and
experience, and things, and how I learn. So it kind of gives me a bit of
hope as well and not to down on myself sometimes when I can’t do stuff.

When Jared encounters math in his daily life, he remarked:

It depends on what situation I’m in. If I’m on my own and I’ve got to
work something out, I’m okay. If I’m having to do something in a crowd
or in front of people, I get nervous. And again, that fearful feeling as I did
when I was at school.

Jared admitted that he sometimes feels regretful in a way, as if he should ha

studied more. He described this emotion as a:

typical adult feeling of yeah, should have really got my education down
when I was younger, but again I’m trying to go through this process of the
best way I learn.

Jared conveyed that he feels las if he “never learned maths properly,” and might

take the Graduate Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSC) exam, and “climb that

hypothetical mountain.” Jared, however, is not in a rush and remarked:

For me, I don’t do well at exams. I don’t like pressure. I don’t like the
time limit. Again, time management. It’s all about boiling it down to these
bullet points. I’ve got this much time to do this, and this much time to do
that. It’s just very academic, and it’s, do I want to put that pressure on
myself right now? No. Maybe in the future again, possibly.

Jared feels that he learns best through trial and error and is a kinesthetic learner.

He explained:
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I could watch a video of something, and I can make sense of it. But yeah,
when It comes to doing it, it’s all in the motor skill, and the muscle
memory and you know I need to do things in order to actually ... if I was
to teach something, I’ve got to learn it myself. I’ve got to do it myself.

Jared offered a recent example:

I was teaching a young class of I guess it would have been about 7 or 8-

year-old’s glockenspiel, and I just needed a short melody for them to play.
I just decided on “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” as it was a good first
song to learn. But you know, I didn’t know how to play it myself first of
all, so I’ve got to learn it. I’ve got to do it, learn this correct movement in
order to teach it to them. But you know, I’m singing it to myself in my
head, and that’s really helping me. But yeah, if I just went into the
classroom without preparing and just going, I’ll get it no problem, no way
I wouldn’t try that. I like to prepare these days as far ahead as possible for
any kind of demonstration I’m doing, or anything I’m learning. I know
that I probably won’t get anything the first time around. And I know I’m a
slow learner, but for me, it’s like just keep going and going, and you know
I know I’ll get there in the end.

Furthermore, Jared shared that the psychologist’s report from university indicated

he lacked in the areas of auditory and visual processing. He expressed that he is trying to

“address those, and read more about those, and memory and stuff like that because I

know I have a bit of a bad short-term memory.” On the other hand, Jared articulated, “I

know I’ve quite a good long-term memory, you know. With a lot of things, once it’s in

there, it’s in there, it’s going nowhere, it’ll be there for life.”

Regarding experiencing difficulties in his daily life, Jared noted that he does not

experience left-right confusion, trouble driving, or problems with coordination, which he

attributes to being a drummer. He posited, “I mean being a drummer, I think maybe I’ve

developed some neuroplasticity that it’s just really helped my left and right.” Jared

admitted that he does get lost sometimes and is not the best at reading maps. As a result,

Jared uses GPS everywhere he goes.

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Jared explained that one of his biggest problems is misjudging time and distance,

which he described as a “big thing for me.” Concerning this issue, Jared is in the process

of discovering the best way to remedy this problem. He stated:

I’m trying to note down, and you know, stop myself being late. For
example, just because I’ve not calculated the time it should take and
actually that’s what Google might be saying, you know, I need to take
even more – go 10 minutes earlier or something like that. Still these kinds
of things, it’s like I’m 35, and it’s still bloody affecting me.

Jared also shared that time management is something with which he struggles,

stating that it is “a big issue for me.” He employs several strategies to help him complete

his daily tasks. For instance, Jared makes a checklist on his laptop of all the things he has

to do the day before, which helps him be more productive. He stated, “I just find in the

last year or less I would say, it’s really helped my time management and made sure that

I’ve, you know, I’m really trying to get through all these things in one day basically.”

Post-it notes also help Jared stay on track, and he mentioned that he may go through ten

post-it notes a week when writing his daily agenda, such as going shopping, cooking, and

doing laundry, and practicing.

To keep organized, Jared uses a mac computer, iPhone, and iPod, which all sync

up with the calendar on his computer. He acknowledged:

When I got all these products, and they start communicating with each
other, that was so much easier. It made my life based on how I am so
much easier when it came to organize my diary because my diary can
change all the time.

Along with coping strategies to deal with daily life issues that may arise to Jared’s

learning challenges, he also employs music coping strategies to deal with any musical

challenges he may face. To avoid getting lost when playing, Jared described some of the

things he does:
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Yeah, I still find that really difficult because sometimes, I’ve got right lost
in the music. I don’t know where I am, and all I’ve done is just look at
other people, and hopefully, I’ll get it right when I try to nail it. I’ve done
it before where I’ve done the knuckles thing, and that’s worked quite well.
Sometimes it just takes a lot of exposure to the music to really go okay,
doesn’t matter how many times you’re just not going to get this wrong
after you’ve heard it that many times.

When it comes to playing in theatre shows, Jared explained that some of the

dialogue may be written on the score, “so as soon as X, Y, Z person says that line,” he

remarked, “that’s when I should get in. It’s not very musical, but if it works, it works.”

However, when it comes to playing without a score, Jared stated, “I can memorize a lot

of stuff really fast. So I don’t always need the sheet music. Once I’ve learned it, it’s like

it’s there it’s there for years.” Jared also uses the phrase structure to feel where he is in

the music. He explained:

So if I’m playing with a band of four people, and it’s rock pop type I’m
and I’m generally within the chord progression you can feel that four bars
is finished and that’s the nice thing about pop music is quite easy on that
on the counting in terms of you know, you know when it’s hit a four-bar
cycle. And obviously, pop music is so formulaic that it’s probably got this
as sixteen bar verse followed by a sixteen-bar chorus or something like
that.

With pop music, Jared noted that it doesn’t matter that much if you’re guessing

because, “if you don’t understand it from that formula basis, you’re probably still going

to get it wrong if you can’t feel how the chord progression works.” Jared accounts the

formulaic aspect of pop music is why he gravitates toward this genre and stated, “It can

make it easy for me to not have a set thing that I must play.”

Jared went on to state:

By having a good level of ability to interpret the song, the beat, as long as it
sounds like the original somewhat, I sort of realized that you can do that even
with a written score as well. I’ve seen friends do that in theatre shows. They’re
nailing the dots, but they’re totally bring it to life in their own way. It was really
inspiring. Okay, you can interpret the dots in your own way.
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Jared described an instance where he had a musical score, but instead of using it,

he played from memory the entire time:

So the music service that I work for, we organized a full brass band, and
we played a lot of classic American swing band music, and it was all
written. And I was quite comfortable when I sat down, and then suddenly
everyone is looking to me to count it off. And then I’ve realized, oh, I’ve
got to read this whole score from start to finish and nail it, and I don’t get
enough exposure to that sometimes. And it’s like, oh god, yeah, I’ve got to
concentrate the whole way through. And I really nailed it. Some parts
were – you know, we did the song “Street Life,” so I’ve done that a
million times with loads of different bands, and I have the whole score in
front of me, but I didn’t read a note of it because I knew the score. I just
played it from memory. It was just so much easier.

As far as the coping strategies he employs to manage his personal and

professional life, Jared acknowledged that discipline is important:

I approach music from more of a point of view of passion rather than I do

technical ability. The passion is there, and I can understand music from
passion and energy, but the technique might not be there, so I’ve got work
a lot harder for the technique to be at the same level as the passion.
What I’ve really understood over the past few years is tracking my
progression on the technical side of things has been really useful. Writing
things down, keeping a diary, and you know saying like, right, you’re
rubbish at this, and you need to suck it up. You need to get better at this,
but how do you get better? And just tracking that kind of progress and not
expecting too much too soon, being patient, and let things come naturally
and remembering that even though, yeah, I think a lot of people say that
cliché you’re as good as your last gig, and in many ways that’s right. It
depends on how you were the last time you played in front of people.
That’s a fair point, I suppose. You know, just always trying to better the
next time around. I guess that goes for everyone. Not just taking mental
notes but literal notes.

Jared descried how he is using writing as a “journey of self-discovery” in terms of

how he learns and where his “strengths and weaknesses lie,” and trying to find out which

vocation would best suit him. He shared: “So I’m sort of in a bit of a scattered brained

way I’m writing things down and noting things down and just everything from strengths
 172

and weaknesses within having dyslexia and my learning, but also personality traits as

well.” For an example of Jared’s journal entry, see Appendix I.

Some of the other aspects Jared is exploring through his journaling include: his

personality, where he gets frustrated, or things he did well, “be it personality trait, or be it

dyslexia learning traits,” and “trying to get a wider picture of himself.” He explained his

thought process:

I think with being dyslexic, and you know when you have problems in one
area, you know, so you generally compensate it by you know, being
skilled in another area, or you know everybody’s got skills, haven’t they?
They can learn something; they could do something well. Everyone has
that journey of kind of self-discovery and finding out what that is, and it
can be one of the hardest things to do as a dyslexic because you compare
yourself to other people so much, and that’s where it could be really
emotional. You can feel fragile. But, yeah, you kind of just got to sort of
go, not in a selfish way, but sort of go right, that’s what they do, this is
what I do. I’m going to focus on me and try to make myself as strong as I
can be.

In addition to an example of Jared’s journal entry outlining his strengths and

weaknesses (Appendix J), he provided a list of resources pertaining to dyslexia and

dyscalculia that have been useful to him in the process of learning more about himself

(see Appendix I).

Jared acknowledged the importance of creativity in his life, and stated, “I’m

probably happiest when I’m being creative.” And it is about creativity that is feels the

“strongest, and “most passionate about.” He also noted that he is most creative during the

nighttime hours, and that’s when his “ideas flow.” For example, he was watching a

documentary recently and felt inspired to “write words for songs based on the

documentary.” He commented, “When ideas are flowing, and things are coming up

musically, or any kind of artistic way of expressing you know, and enjoying it, and

having that kind of human connection when doing it.”

 CHAPTER 5
COMPOSITE DESCRIPTIONS

When examining the participants’ collective experiences in the data analysis

phase, several trends emerged that corroborated with the findings of research studies

exploring aspects such as disability, comorbidity, heredity, learning style, self-esteem,

mental health, and parental involvement. Furthermore, these trends also aligned with

research regarding the post-secondary outcomes of adults with learning disabilities.

In the second part of this chapter, I highlight the importance of parental and

teacher support in Lisa and James’ lives, which I believe contributed to their educational

and occupational attainment and presents important implications for parents, teachers,

and researchers to consider. Finally, In the third part of this chapter, I will describe

various commonalities and differences in the participants’ musical experiences regarding

musical identity and music training and outline their musical challenges, strengths, and

compensatory strategies employed to overcome musical challenges.

Part I: Emergent Trends

Disability

Several components of the participants’ experiences aligned the four criteria for

specific learning disabilities outlined in the DSM-5 described in Chapter 2. For example,

one pertinent topic of discussion was whether or not the participants received an official

diagnosis of dyscalculia. Kristin, Paul, Skylar, Hannah, and Samantha, for example, were

never formally diagnosed with dyscalculia but suspected they might have it based on

their difficulties with math experienced throughout their education, especially when they

encountered more difficult mathematics courses such as algebra. This is consistent with

one of the features described in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) in

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that for some children, their learning disability will become noticeable during the child’s

primary school years, but for others, their learning disability may become noticeable in

secondary school when they begin to take more abstract math courses.

While Emily and Paul revealed that their difficulties with mathematics began in

elementary school, Skylar, James, Samantha, Kelly, Lisa, and Jared’s mathematics

difficulties manifested in middle and high school. James, Emily, and Jared were

diagnosed with learning disabilities in college—James and Jared with dyslexia and Emily

with attention deficit disorder. Lisa was the only participant officially diagnosed with

both dyscalculia and dyslexia as an adult.

At the time of this study, Kelly had not been tested for dyscalculia but sought

additional resources to obtain more information. During the member checking process,

however, Kelly shared that she had recently received an official diagnosis. Emily was the

only participant who underwent testing in early elementary school but did not receive an

adequate diagnosis related to her learning needs.

Along with James, Paul, Samantha, and Lisa, she spoke about how dyscalculia

was not well known by educators when they were in school, and for this reason, their

learning challenges went unnoticed. One indication of dyscalculia is that a significant

discrepancy exists between their math and verbal skills. According to the DSM-5 another

characteristic of a specific learning disability is that the individual will perform well

below grade level in the affected area. In high school, Kelly’s math scores were so low

that she was allowed to retake the SAT. Emily described her SAT reading and writing

scores as “fantastic” compared to her math scores. Kristin and Samantha’s GRE scores

indicated a considerable discrepancy in their math score versus their English scores.
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Comorbidity and Heredity

Two topics that were frequently mentioned by participants were those of

comorbidity and heredity. Numerous participants also revealed that in addition to

mathematical learning difficulties, they experienced additional learning challenges. James

indicated that he has both dyslexia and dysgraphia. Jared was diagnosed with dyslexia but

feels that his problems with dyscalculia are more troublesome at times.

Some participants indicated that their children or parents exhibited learning

challenges. James’ son has both ADHD and dyslexia, and his daughter has dyslexia.

Samantha explained that her mother “could not find her way out of a paper bag.” Lisa

discussed that, like her, her mother, she always struggled with money management. Kelly

believes her younger sister has dyscalculia. Finally, Jared thinks that his father has

dyslexia because he can see the similarities in how they learn and carry out different

tasks.

In certain instances, participants indicated that they possessed additional

learning issues such as dyslexia and ADD/ADHD. Research suggests that

dyscalculia is most often comorbid with these two disabilities. For example,

Soares & Patel (2015) state that between 17% and 70% of children with

dyscalculia also have dyslexia, and the comorbidity rate of children with

dyscalculia and ADHD is 11%. Participants who indicated additional

comorbidities and instances of family members with similar learning disabilities

included Kelly, James, Jared, Lisa, and Emily.

Monuteaux et al. (2005) conducted a familial risk analysis using probands, which

are members of the family selected for this study with and without ADHD, including
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females and males, their first-degree relatives. They found higher rates of ADHD in

relatives of both ADHD proband groups, irrespective of dyscalculia status, and higher

rates of dyscalculia in probands with dyscalculia, regardless of ADHD. Furthermore, no

evidence was found for co-segregation or assortative mating (the mating of persons with

one disorder to persons with another condition more often than expected by chance).

Their findings suggest that ADHD and dyscalculia are independently transmitted in

families and are etiologically different.

Synesthesia

Additionally, a common trend I found surprising was that synesthesia was a

phenomenon experienced by several participants, including Emily, Paul, Kristin, and

Kelly. While not a disorder, several participants described perceiving more than one

sense simultaneously. For instance, Paul explained how, when he hears sounds, he sees

shapes. For Emily, words and names have different color associations. She can also see

melodies when she listens to classical music. She explained that different timbres and

motives are associated with colors and enhanced the listening experience. From a very

young age, Kelly explained that her thoughts, and the sentences people spoke, were

attached to melodies. Interestingly, seeing and smelling colors are other sensations Kelly

experiences.

Other participants explained sensory sensitivities around numbers. For example,

while Kristin described numbers as having a gender, Lisa described numbers as having a

personality or aura. She further noted that there are “unseen variables around a single

number than is being presented.” Hannah stated that to understand numbers, she makes

up a story to justify why the numbers go together.

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Collins (2005) investigated whether synesthesia was associated with any

cognitive impairments and hypothesized that individuals with synesthesia would have

higher rates of left-right confusion and mathematical difficulties. Ninety percent of the

participants with synesthesia experienced the grapheme-color form of synesthesia, and

10% experienced a taste sensation in response to the visual or auditory presentation of

particular words or letters.

Even though Collins (2005) discovered no significant difference between the

mathematical and left-right difficulties among individuals with synesthesia compared to

those without synesthesia, it was found that the participants with synesthesia were self-

reported higher levels of arithmetic and problems distinguishing left from right.

Interestingly, the participants with synesthesia self-reported greater mathematical and

spatial difficulties but did not report reading and spelling challenges. This finding was

consistent with the participants in this study who reported experiencing this phenomenon.

Learning Style

Dunn (2008) posits that learning differences among individuals may be due to the

differences of how well they are “able to perceive and process information gleaned from

the environment through visual, auditory, and kinesthetic perceptual modalities” (p. 47).

Dunn asserts that if an individual demonstrates strengths in more than one modality

maybe be referred to as a “mixed modality learner” (p. 47). The participants in this study

described their preferred learning styles they found most effective. For example, James,

Emily, and Hannah described themselves as visual learners. Skylar and Jared identified

their learning styles as auditory and kinesthetic, respectively. Some participants identified
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as mixed modality learners. For example, Samantha designated herself as equally a

kinesthetic and aural learner.

Kelly described a multiple-step approach which involves stopping, reviewing for

accuracy, and breaking things down in her own way when learning music. It is also

essential for her to see things in a way that makes sense to her eyes and ask questions. In

particular, Kelly described that melodies, chords, lyrics, and dialogue tend to stick once

she hears them. During the member checking process, Jared indicated that he also uses

other modalities and takes a kinesthetic approach to learning. While many participants

indicated their preferred learning style, they used various modalities to aid in their music

learning including listening to a recording and marking their music with visual cues.

In two cases, applying kinesthetic strategies helped Emily and Paul concentrate

when listening to sermons in church. Emily provided an example and noted that when

engaging in cross-stitching allows her to listen and focus better in church because,

according to her, “that’s occupying the ADD part of my brain.”

Similarly, Paul also has difficulty focusing when listening to a lecture or church

services. His strategy is to tap his fingers to translate “the church bulletin order of

services into Morse code.” He also described this task in the same way that Emily

referred to cross-stitching in that it “gives him something to do, so the rest of my brain

can pay attention to what’s going on.”

Self-Esteem

A reoccurring topic among participants was related to their self-esteem when they

were students and musicians. Self-esteem can be defined as “the negative or positive

attitude that individuals have of themselves” (Stets & Burke, 2014). Feelings of low self-
 179

esteem also affected some participants regarding their perceptions of themselves as

individuals. Skylar, James, Emily, Hannah, Paul, Kelly, Lisa, and Jared shared negative

and positive memories related to their math experiences. Positive experiences were more

likely to occur in classroom environments with supportive teachers. In contrast,

classroom environments with unsupportive teachers and disruptive classmates were

viewed negatively and affected how they perceived themselves.

Humphry (2003) notes that the findings of his previous research suggest that

children with dyslexia, particularly in mainstream schools, felt isolated and more than

half were teased or bullied. In some cases, the participants’ in this study described

experiences in math class in which they were influenced by their classmates’ negative

attitudes. For instance, James was placed in a remedial math class after failing Algebra 1.

He noted that he felt “dumb” and referred to some of his classmates as “losers,” who

behaved poorly. Paul echoed this sentiment and said that he had to take a remedial math

class “with all the problem children.” He described this class as the “math for athletes and

criminal's class.” As a result, Paul stated, “I didn’t feel real good about myself.” Jared

shared a similar experience. His low grades in math, disruptive students, and

unsupportive teachers caused him to develop an apathetic attitude toward mathematics

and school in general. Furthermore, James and Hannah described being picked on by

their peers.

Humphrey (2003) states that in his prior research it became clear in research

interviews with children with dyslexia that “the influence of teachers as significant others

was an important factor in the low-self-esteem exhibited by so many of them (p. 131).

Some participants conveyed that their self-esteem was affected by interactions with math
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teachers, both negatively and positively. Skylar recalled feeling humiliated when his

math teacher called his parents in for a meeting to discuss his low math grades. Emily

identified two cases, one in second grade and one in high school algebra, in which the

way the teacher interacted with her affected how she felt about herself. Samantha was in

advanced mathematics classes through 7th grade before experiencing mathematical

challenges. As a result, she felt ashamed, f\felt that her teacher was making assumptions

about her level of understanding, and as a result, felt “constantly at sea.”

Kelly recalled that in the second or third grade of the students in the class seemed

to understand the math concepts the teacher was explaining. When she notified her

teacher across the table that she did not understand, the teacher leaned across the table

and said, “Look!” the teacher’s outburst startled her to such a degree that she still feels

the intensity, shame, and panic to this day.

In contrast, some participants described their teachers as supportive. James’

freshman algebra teacher spent extra time helping him during lunch. His teacher also

attended the same church as James’ family and would check in with his parents over the

weekend regarding his progress. Knowing how skilled James’ was at geometry, James’

teacher urged the principal to promote James to geometry even though he missed the

cutoff grade of 85% by only a sixth of a point.

Paul described his third-grade teacher as someone who took a particular interest in

him as a child in need of emotional and social support. Furthermore, Hannah regarded her

sixth-grade math teacher as one of the best teachers she has ever had due to the teacher’s

patience and willingness to reteach concepts the students found confusing.

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Some participants also mentioned that the challenges they have faced in their

musical and personal lives resulted in negative emotions such as frustration, insecurity,

and some even said they felt stupid. Jared described feeling insecure and remarked that

when he becomes frustrated, he begins to doubt himself. Lisa expressed insecurities

surrounding her guitar playing and noted that she does not think of herself as a musician

as she thinks of her friends as musicians, since they play instruments while she struggles

to do so. One commonality in Nelson’s (2014) study was that the participants

experienced feelings of low self-esteem.

Mental Health

Finally, research suggests that individuals with learning disabilities are prone to

mental health issues. The DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) states that

some functional consequences of learning disabilities include “high levels of

psychological distress and poorer overall mental health” (p. 73). Several participants in

this study, described instances in their lives when they suffered from various forms of

anxiety or depression. Emily and Hannah identified as having depression and anxiety.

Kelly received a bipolar disorder diagnosis in high school and spent serval months in the

hospital during her freshman year. In a similar vein, Samantha experienced a physical

and emotional breakdown in college due to exhaustion and the pressure she felt in the

past from others to succeed at a high level.

Math Anxiety

Math anxiety is a common symptom that individuals with dyscalculia may

experience. Most participants described feeling anxiety when encountering numbers in

their daily lives. Jared explained his phobia, which manifests when having to do mental
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arithmetic in public. Samantha explained that her heart rate accelerates when having to

deal with numbers. She explained this sensation as a band around her head when doing

mathematical calculations. Jared described a similar feeling in the form of a brick wall

when performing mental arithmetic.

Associated with math anxiety is test anxiety during mathematics

examinations. James and Hannah, in particular, described how frustrating
it was when taking timed multiplication quizzes. Furthermore, Hannah’s
panic attacks lasted throughout high school. When encountering numbers
in her daily life, Hannah revealed that she experiences intense panic
attacks. Emily also admitted to feeling anxious when dealing with
numbers and would like to take the GRE but is afraid of failing. She also
avoids doing personal finance because of her math difficulties.

Aro et al. (2019) studied the impact of diverse subtypes of learning disabilities on

adult-age mental health, education, and employment by comparing 430 participants with

learning disabilities to 2,149 participants without learning disabilities. Differences were

found between individuals with learning disabilities and control groups in all outcomes.

This finding suggests that a higher proportion of individuals with learning disabilities had

mental health issues than the control group. Furthermore, many individuals with learning

disabilities did not further their education beyond what was compulsory and had

experienced long periods of unemployment. Subgroup comparisons indicated that math

disability was associated with antidepressant use and unemployment, whereas the reading

disability group experienced fewer employment problems.

Personal Strengths

The participants expressed themselves through four main creative activities:

Journaling, creative writing, songwriting, and performing. Emily, Hannah, and Kelly

revealed that they engage in other artistic pursuits such as photography, painting, and

making jewelry, respectively. Jared acknowledged that he is happiest when being

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creative, and Lisa asserted that her desire as a musician is to be "fully creative," is one

way she brings value to the musical environments in which she works.

Creativity

The ability to think creatively was considered to be an asset by several

participants. Skylar described himself as an “out of the box” thinker. Emily and Hannah

described themselves as creative individuals who can find solutions to problems on the

spot, especially when developing teaching activities. Kelly shared her experiences in the

workplace in which she was able to come up with solutions to complex problems that her

co-workers could not. Shessel & Reiff (2011) reported that one of the areas their

participants identified as a positive aspect of their learning disability was to think

creatively. Nelson (2014) also identified creativity to be a quality demonstrated by the

musicians in his study.

Shessel & Reiff (2011) also found that the participants in their study felt that not

only did their disability increased their sensitivity to others, made them better

professionals, and developed within them a desire to help others. Several music educators

in this study including James, Emily, Hannah, Paul, and Jared conveyed their empathy,

especially when working with students with learning challenges as an asset. Skylar also

acknowledged that a big part of who he is as a person is his helpful nature.

Perseverance

One of the factors that contributed to the participants’ success despite their

learning challenges was perseverance. James declared, “I tend to be stubborn, and if you

tell me I can’t do something, just get out the way it’s going to get done. He described this

attitude as "stick-to-it-ness.” James revealed that only 15 people have ever finished the
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doctoral program offered by the university he attended, of which he was one. Jared

acknowledged that while he is a slow learner and accepts that it is likely that he will have

to review new material many times before he fully understands it, but noted that with

persistence, he will “get there in the end.” Hannah and Samantha discussed how their

rigorous university departments seemed to weed out students who did not have the

necessary qualities to succeed academically and musically in the program.

Despite her uncertainties surrounding her musicianship, Lisa stated, “I knew I

always had it in me.” She remained persistent in ensuring that the songs she wrote were

arranged, recorded, and performed the way she intended them to be. Kelly has endured

both physical and mental health issues as well as learning challenges in her life. These

obstacles have affected her daily life and musical career, yet she never gave up on her

musical aspirations as a singer-songwriter.

This determination to persevere was consistent finding among participants in the

studies of numerous researchers (Ebo, 2016; Greenbaum et al., 1995; Heiman & Kariv,

2004; Heiman & Precel, 2003; Madaus, 2006; Madaus et al., 2001; Reis et al., 2000).

Foreign Language and Writing Skills

According to the DSM-5, learning disabilities are domain specific. Therefore, it is

not surprising that the participants exhibited talents in other areas. For example, nine

participants expressed an inclination toward foreign languages. For instance, as a

professional singer, Samantha has sung in German and Italian extensively, as well as

Spanish, Hebrew, Bosnian, and Welsh. Paul and Kelly studied Spanish in both high

school and college. On a trip to the Southern Philippines, for instance, Paul, who was
 185

unfamiliar with the native language, was able to give a Sunday morning talk in Tagalog

at a local church. Lisa excelled at French and has also tried learning Mandarin.

An affinity for writing was described as a strength by Paul, Kristin and Lisa. Paul

enjoys academic writing, Kristin is a published author, and Lisa is a writer for a

technology company. Both Lisa and Kelly, who identify as songwriters, began writing

songs at a very young age. Emily, Hannah, and Paul, and Samantha have also engaged in

creative writing activities in the past such as writing songs and poetry.

Parental Involvement

Hornby & Lafaele (2011) assert that research on both home-based and school-

based parental involvement has been effective in facilitating academic achievement” (p.

37). However, Hornby & Lafaele posit that several barriers exist related to the belief

parents have regarding their children’s education. The participants in this study were

asked about their parents’ role in their lives, especially concerning math homework, and

from an emotional standpoint and described varying levels of parental involvement in

their education. In some cases, socioeconomic status and knowledge about mathematics

contributed to whether the participants received assistance with their math homework.

For example, Skylar’s father, an aerospace engineer, helped him with his homework.

Emily, Hannah and Jared referred to their parents as blue-collar workers. In James’,

Hannah’s, and Jared’s case, even though their parents may not have had a perfect grasp

of mathematics, they tried to help their children with their math homework. Emily

conveyed that she did not get much support at home, "despite asking for help, and Lisa’s

mother did not attend high school.

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Samantha described her parents as incredibly supportive of her involvement in the

arts. However, when it came to other academics, they did not express the same level of

interest. Samantha declared, “In my conscious memory, my parents never did homework

with me.” Samantha’s parents set very high expectations for their daughter, and due to

her intelligence, expected her to get all A’s. Her parents attributed anything less to

laziness or a lack of motivation. Samantha also revealed that the potential of being

diagnosed with a learning disability would lead to "a great sense of shame for her

family.”

Some participants acknowledged that their parents tried to offer help with math

when possible and supported their children’s interests and goals. One participant

mentioned his mother was an English teacher and helped him edit his masters level

papers.

My mother, who was gifted in English, also proofread my graduate-level papers

and mentored me in various subjects throughout my educational experiences. Other

participants noted that their parents did not have the mathematical background to help

with homework or were working. The participants also mentioned that their parents’

musical tastes impacted their musical identity, which informed the types of music they

would study and perform.

Daily Life Challenges

Most of the participants in this study experienced challenges in their daily lives,

which sometimes transferred to the workplace. According to Kreider et al. (2019),

learning disabilities result in “impaired learning and difficulties in information processing

and executive functioning” (p. 1). These authors suggest that these challenges may, in
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turn, “impact organization and time management abilities which are needed for

productivity within educational and daily life contexts” (p. 1). Consistent with the

findings of Madaus et al. (2001), some of these challenges the participants in this study

faced included money management, time management, organization, and mathematical

computation.

Various websites pertaining to learning disabilities suggest that people with

dyscalculia may have trouble with daily life tasks not mentioned in the research literature,

many of which were reported by the participants in this study. For example, Frye (2020)

lists several indications of how dyscalculia may manifest itself in adults many in their

everyday lives and in the workplace, many of which were reported by the participants in

this study. Two of these include driving, misplacing objects, and perception of time in

terms of misjudging how much time a task will take or determining how long it will take

to drive to a particular location.

Unsurprisingly, most participants experienced trouble with mathematical

calculations in their daily lives and used a calculator whenever possible. Jared described

his ability to figure out simple math problems as okay if he is on his own, but if he has to

perform arithmetic in pubic, he becomes “nervous and fearful.” Jared noted that it felt as

if there was a brick wall, and he could not make connections between what the figures

would be.

Jared stated that he also feels anxious when playing something with which he is

unfamiliar in front of people. Similarly, Samantha described feeling a rubber band around

her head when she has to perform mathematical calculations. Several participants cited
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math avoidance as their primary coping strategy which has been suggested as a

consequence of math anxiety (Choe et al., 2019).

Skylar, Emily, Hannah, and Jared admitted to using the GPS when driving. Emily

reported difficulty memorizing directions. Hannah noted that parallel parking, in

particular, is problematic. Furthermore, she noted that she relies on using landmarks to

avoid getting lost. Kelly revealed that she gets lost, even driving in the town in which she

grew up. On the other hand, James, Paul, Samantha, and Lisa all explained that, in

general, they have a good sense of direction.

Difficulties with coordination, movement activities, or telling left from right can

be difficult for individuals with dyscalculia such as playing sports, learning a dance, or

type of exercise. In particular, Emily clarified, “I also struggle with gross motor skills and

sports. However, I enjoy yoga and excel at it.”

Samantha spoke about fast movement activities as challenging but mentioned that

she is better at slower activities. In particular, she spoke about the difficulty of show

choir and described herself as a “back-row dancer.” Both she and Kelly admitted to being

horrible at sports. Kristin described taking an aerobics class that was challenging,

depending on how isolated the top and bottom of the body, such as kicking in one

direction with one’s foot and doing something different with the opposite arm.

Emily, Kelly, and Lisa disclosed that money management is a major struggle and

makes them feel insecure and anxious. Kelly, for example, uses her debit card more than

cash to avoid having to make change. On the other hand, Lisa prefers only to have

enough money in her account to cover what she needs to buy at a particular moment.

James, Emily, Hannah, Paul, Kristin, Kelly, and Lisa rely on their spouses who are
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skilled at math to manage the household finances. (Kelly losing money due to ASCAP

here).

Time management was found to be a significant obstacle for some of the

participants. Some coping strategies James, Emily, and Jared utilize are writing down

tasks they need to accomplish. Skylar and Jared employ technology to help them manage

their time more effectively. Jared relies on his iPhone and MacBook to keep him

organized, and Skylar keeps track of what he has to do in the notes and calendar

applications on his iPhone.

Regarding technology, some participants utilized computer software when

needing to do large scale mathematical calculations. For example, James relied on

statistical software as a doctoral student. Paul uses Excel if required to perform

mathematical calculations at work.

Samantha, Kelly, Lisa, and Jared revealed that estimating how long an activity

will take is challenging. Kelly explained, “what I think is 5 minutes is 30 minutes.” Both

Samantha, and Kelly referred to it as a “backwards” timeline. Kelly noted that doing so

helps her think of things that she didn’t account for and prevents her from being late. Lisa

stated, “If my flights at 4:00 PM, I count backward. I have to through the thing at 4:30. I

have to be at the airport by 2:00 PM. I have to get dressed by 1:00 PM.”

Post-Secondary Outcomes

The Development of Coping Strategies

Research suggests that successful individuals with learning disabilities develop

coping strategies to overcome various challenges in their daily lives and career

(Greenbaum et al., 1995; Heiman & Kariv, 2004; Heiman & Precel, 2003; Reis et al.,
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2000; Madaus et al. 2001; Stage & Milne, 1996). Madaus et al. (2001) found that

common difficulties encountered by individuals with disabilities in the workplace,

included time management, organizational skills, and mathematical computation. Shessel

& Reiff (2011), found that participants in their study reported difficulties such as

completing daily tasks, which was also found to be problematic for Lisa and Kelly who

found typing and managing email were challenging tasks. Kelly finds using computers

frustrating and remembering passwords difficult.

In this study, the participants developed coping strategies to deal with various

challenges caused by their learning differences in their daily lives and careers. For

instance in some cases, the participants’ daily life challenges in the areas of time

management or organization carried over into their careers. In these cases, the

participants used post-it notes, checklists, technology, or made timelines to ensure they

accomplished what they need to accomplish in a timely manner.

Similarly, Madaus et al. (2001) and Madaus (2006) found that the most

commonly reported strategies used to overcome workplace challenges were self-

advocating, arriving at work early, managing time, and setting goals and priorities. Kelly

noted that one of her coping strategies was staying late in the office long after her

colleagues had departed. She described her career in property management in which she

was responsible for order materials and measurements. She described that she was always

“checking, checking, getting different answers.”

Self-Disclosure of Learning Disabilities

Lisa identified asking for help as a coping strategy. She thinks that being honest

with her colleagues about her dyslexia aids her in the workplace. Lisa stated that one
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coping skill is knowing what her limitations are and when to ask for help. Similarly,

James’ acknowledged that his colleagues at his school were very supportive of his

dyslexia. Kelly has also asked for help when needed, but both she and Emily noted that

they have asked for help, but it feels like a burden after a while. Research conducted by

Volgel et al. (2007), revealed that among nine educators in their study, 88% felt

comfortable disclosing their learning disability at work compared with only half of other

professionals included in the study.

One coping skill that Kristin shared was to “avoid giving a conference paper that

has numbers in it.” She clarified that the numbers would be hard to read or write, but

when writing articles she is more comfortable using numbers because she has time to

check them over and furthermore, does not have to read it aloud. Additionally,

memorizing dates are hard for her, but rather than remembering exact dates she focuses

more on knowing when a composer lived and died, or when a piece was premiered.

Another compensation strategy is that she always uses notes when giving a lecture.

The participants were asked if they were better than math if they would have

chosen a different career besides music. James originally entered his undergraduate

institution as a computer engineering major but switched his major to music when

running formulas on the computer proved too frustrating. Jared shared that if he were

better at math, he might have considered a career in science, but feels more drawn to

abstract subjects such as psychology. Similarly, Hannah noted that she might have

pursued a career in astronomy if she were better at math.

On the other hand, for Skylar, Kristin, and Samantha, music was a natural choice.

At the same, some participants expressed that despite other subjects they enjoyed or skills
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they were competent in, they went into music because it was the only subject in which

they excelled.

Emily expressed that she feels limited by her dyscalculia when it comes to her

future goals. Taking the GRE is something she worries about because she is afraid that

she will fail it. She also revealed anxiety at the idea of taking graduate music theory

courses based on how much she struggled in that subject as an undergraduate. Hannah

agreed with Emily that their mathematics difficulties limited them as music educators due

to their struggles with certain aspects of music.

The Importance of Obtaining a College Education

Greenbaum et al. (1995), Madaus et al. (2001), and Madaus (2006) assert that

obtaining a college education represents a significant accomplishment for students with

learning disabilities, particularly in terms of their ultimate success. Most participants in

this study received a college education, with several earning a master’s or doctoral

degrees. At the time of this study, Skylar was in his senior year majoring in percussion

performance, and Samantha was in the last semester of a doctoral program in music

education.

Five of the participants in this study, including James, Emily, Hannah, Jared, and

Paul, who graduated from college, pursued careers in music education either at the

primary, secondary, or tertiary level. Kristin taught musicology courses at the college

level, and Samantha was finishing up a doctoral degree in music education and is a vocal

coach and conductor. The fact that eight out of 10 participants earned graduate degrees

was consistent with the findings of Vogel et al. (2007). They found that among nine
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professional educators, almost three times as many educators with learning disabilities

held a graduate degree compared to other professionals without learning disabilities.

Two participants, however, did not pursue higher education to the same extent.

For example, Lisa did not complete high-school and obtained her GED, and Kelly

completed two years of college before embarking on a singing career full-time.

According to the DSM-5, some of the negative outcomes of a specific learning disability

may include “lower academic attainment higher rates of high school dropout,” and

“lower rates of postsecondary education” (p. 73). While Lisa acknowledged that she

chose to leave high school, she repeatedly spoke about how going to college was a life-

long dream, and she had just enrolled in some college courses. Lisa emphasized that she

wished she had known about her learning disabilities earlier but will use this information

to advocate for the help she needs to have a successful college experience. These two

participants struggled more in their musical careers as singer-songwriters. Their music

education was primarily informal in that they learned from others or taught themselves

key musical skills.

Summary of Emergent Trends

The emergent trends described in this section concerned disability, comorbidity

and heredity, perseverance, mental health, and parental involvement. Other trends

described in research studies conducted on the post-secondary outcomes of individuals

with learning disabilities including the development of coping strategies, and the

importance of obtaining a college education.

Some neuroscientists assert that it is not uncommon for individuals with

dyscalculia to have dyslexia or ADHD (Butterworth et al., 2011; Shalev, 2004).

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Furthermore, researchers have noted that dyscalculia or dyslexia may be inherited.

(Shalev, 2004; Shalev et al., 2001). Some participants disclosed that their parents,

siblings, or children also struggled with learning disabilities, whether diagnosed or not.

All participants developed coping strategies to manage their lives in various

aspects. The participants’ desire to overcome challenges through hard work and

perseverance played a role in their ability to reach their educational and musical goals.

The development of coping strategies, whether consciously or unconsciously, was the

primary way the participants could navigate their world.

The majority of the participants in this study obtained a college education and

pursued careers that allowed them to reach their personal goals. Out of ten participants,

four received or were obtaining a doctoral degree, and four obtained bachelor’s degrees.

Out of ten participants, four received or were obtaining a doctoral degree at the time of

the study, and four obtained bachelor’s degrees.

The participants’ desire to overcome challenges through hard work and

perseverance was crucial in their ability to reach their educational and musical goals.

Several also acknowledged that they had to expend more effort to make educational and

professional gains than their peers. As a result, many were able to surpass their peers in

academic and professional contexts who might not have had learning difficulties. Some

participants expressed that they might have pursued careers in science if they were better

at mathematics. In contrast, other participants indicated that music was their passion for

them, and they could not imagine doing something else. Surprisingly, some participants
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mentioned that music was the only thing they were good at, despite exhibiting other

strengths.

Part II: Exemplary Portraits of Support

Lisa

The idea that children and young adults who develop positive relationships with

adults early on in their lives who understand how to support their academic, social, and

emotional development will more likely grow into more well-adjusted and successful

adults than those children who do not is not new. However, for many children, especially

those from diverse backgrounds and those with diverse learning needs, this support is not

always a given. In this study, teachers and parents who provided academic and emotional

support were noted as particularly influential and played an integral role in developing

the participant's self-esteem and perception of their ability to succeed.

All of the participants in this study described the varying involvement of parental

and teacher support and how it impacted them positively and negatively. It became

apparent to me as I examined their lived experiences that two individuals, Lisa and

James, differed significantly in the amount of support they received from parents and

teachers throughout their lives. This varying amount of support impacted their

educational and professional goals but did not extinguish their desire to persevere through

various challenges.

Lisa was the only participant in this study who received an official diagnosis of

dyscalculia. In my view, she represents an extreme case of how an individual who does

not receive the appropriate academic accommodations may become disillusioned with

school and drop out. According to the National Center for Learning Disabilities, 2017), in
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2013-2014, students with learning disabilities18.1% of these students dropped out of

school at nearly three times the rate of all students.

Lisa mentioned that she was often absent from school. She noted that she was

unaware that she had dyslexia and dyscalculia until recently. Upon reflecting on her

educational experiences, she explained that it would have been much easier to have

known about her learning disabilities earlier in life. She noted:

Really, I struggled with it, and I ended up skipping a bunch of classes in

high school and then getting unenrolled, and I was really smart, but when
it came down to do certain things, it was just a real struggle.

Furthermore, Lisa mentioned how she wanted to be in class with her friends, but

due to the learning challenges that affected her in music and math, she became “frustrated

with things, and quit.” She dealt with her frustration in class by taking the role of the

“class clown” and “troublemaker,” which she described as an avoidance technique

because she could not grasp the concepts.

Lisa did not receive much help academically as her mother did not have, the

educational background to help her. Lisa emphasized, however, that she is “mostly self-

taught.” For example, she taught herself to type and play guitar and sought educational

opportunities such as attending a community college, a music college in Northeast, and

taking a guitar class in the same region. From these experiences, even if they were only

for a short time, she took and applied this knowledge to her musical and career goals.

Unlike other participants in this study who indicated that they had teachers or

parents who took an interest in their educational development, Lisa did not identify any

people who stood out to her as particularly influential. Lisa’s dyslexia manifested itself in

such a way that she was able to read and write very well, and as a result, her challenges

went unrecognized.
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Interestingly, Lisa noted that once she realized that she had dyslexia and

dyscalculia, she felt that self-disclosing her learning disabilities to colleagues or family

made things easier. For example, once Lisa was aware of her mathematical difficulties,

she was able to ask her husband for help in managing her finances. She described asking

for help and knowing where her limitations are coping strategies in and of themselves.

However, she did acknowledge that a stigma surrounding learning disabilities

exists in how others contribute their difficulties as laziness or a lack of intelligence. This

type of thinking likely affects many individuals with learning disabilities as 33% of

classroom teachers and other educators believe that learning issues are a result of laziness

(Horowitz et al., 2017). She recalled:

I remember telling a family member, oh yeah, I have dyslexia. And she

said to me, I just always thought you needed to apply yourself, I mean she
was surprisingly dismissive. It was just like, oh, I just always thought you
were dumb.

Because of this perception, Lisa lacked confidence regarding her learning challenges,

mainly because she did not have teachers, mentors, or family members who recognized

and nurtured her academic or musical strengths.

The insight that can be gained from Lisa’s experiences as an individual with

learning disabilities is how important it is for these children to have people in their lives

from an early age who can provide their children with supportive environments to learn

and grow.

James

James was selected as an exemplar because his case depicts what an individual

with learning disabilities can achieve when receiving support from parents and teachers.

Showing signs of various learning issues at a young age, including a speech impediment,
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he recalled how his mother took him back and forth to speech therapy sessions. Although

James did not achieve an official diagnosis of dyslexia until college, from an early age,

his parents took an interest in his education and “spent quality time” working with him on

his schoolwork.

Furthermore, while James had both positive and negative teachers at various

points in his educational career, he provided several instances of both math and music

teachers who positively impacted his life. James recalled his fifth-grade math teacher,

who attended the same church as his parents, who made a point to check-in with his

parents on Sundays to inquire about James’ academic progress.

James’ acknowledged his high school band director, who took the time to help

James’ with his marching technique. James’ band director realized that James struggled

to distinguish left and right and suggested that James’ use a band-aid as a physical

reminder—a strategy he uses with his students. In his doctoral program, James also

described a professor who did not think he could be a music teacher due to his struggle

with rhythm and noted that his graduation was a bittersweet moment when he could

prove his professor wrong.

James earned a bachelor’s degree in music education, a master’s degree in school

administration, and a doctoral degree in education. It was not until college that James was

diagnosed with dyslexia. James described, “I was actually in a sped class learning about

this stuff when I said I do that, and the teacher said see you after class…So they ran me

through a quick one. And that's how I found out that I had all this. Up to that point I just

thought I was slow.” James’ learning challenges, combined with having examples of both
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supportive and unsupportive teachers, have instilled within him the ability to empathize

with his students who struggle to grasp certain musical concepts.

James also takes the opportunity to ask for help when he needs it. For example,

his mother, a retired schoolteacher, frequently proofread his papers in graduate school.

Moreover, James disclosed that he has dyslexia to his school administration and fellow

educators in a similar vein. He mentioned that his colleagues are supportive:

So much so that when the reading specialists get stuck with a kid, and I
think that they’re dyslexic, but the parents won’t agree to go do testing for
it, they’ll send them to me to let me work through some tricks and stuff
with them. I’m usually able to get them working through that sort of stuff.
Math is the same way. It’s just that I’ve built all these coping mechanisms
that I probably got a lot I haven’t talked about. It just is related to
whatever problem I’m seeing at that time.

James has had to expend a tremendous amount of effort to achieve all that he has

accomplished. James described a particular example of how, as a freshman in high

school, he was labeled as the band’s weakest player. In a short period, by the time he was

a sophomore, he became the “strongest player without private lessons.” He explained that

he took the 15-minute break between his previous class and band class to practice, rather

than socialize as many of his classmates did, which allowed him to make advances in his

playing ability.

His hard work paid off when he was given the most improved player award two

years in a row. He remarked, “and in 125 years of an award for the most improved, and

out of that hundred years, I’m the only person who ever won it twice.” His advice for

musicians who struggle with mathematical difficulties, “Don’t give up. It’s just one of

those things. You just got to keep working if you want it.”
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Summary of Exemplary Portraits of Support

These two accounts highlight a crucial element in the lives of individuals with

learning disabilities substantiated by my personal story, the participants' accounts, and the

research findings described in the research literature on post-secondary outcomes of

individuals with learning disabilities. Ultimately, Lisa was chosen as an exemplar

because her lived experiences illustrated how, when a child's learning needs go unmet,

this may affect their emotional well-being and make it more challenging to attain their

educational and career goals. James was chosen as an exemplar because his account

represented the educational and professional gains an individual with a learning disability

can make when provided with support from teachers, parents, and colleagues.

While the levels of parental involvement and support in Lisa and James' lives

differed, this did not prevent them from achieving their personal and musical goals. In

many ways, they grappled with similar challenges regarding their shared diagnosis as

adults, in that they experienced comorbidities and struggled with self-esteem and

confidence issues.

Furthermore, they both chose to disclose their disabilities in the workplace with

beneficial results. While all of the participants in this study shared rich, detailed lived

experiences, Lisa's experiences were reflective in some ways to the musicians with

popular music training, while James' experience was reflective of many participants' who

received formal music training. All in all, there were various personal and musical

challenges, strengths, and coping strategies described in Lisa and James' narratives that

were demonstrated by all of the participants.

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Part III

Musical Experiences

In the literature describing the post-secondary outcomes of individuals with

learning disabilities, successful individuals adopted coping strategies to overcome

challenges in their education and career. Similarly, the musicians in this study also

developed coping strategies to overcome musical challenges, and in many cases, utilized

their musical strengths to do so. In the second part of this chapter, I will describe various

commonalities and differences in the participants’ musical experiences and outline the

participants’ musical challenges, strengths, and compensatory strategies to better

understand certain musical concepts. I also discovered that the music teachers in this

study passed on some of the coping strategies that they found helpful to their students,

which will be described.

Musical Identity

In her exploration of musical identity in the lives of adolescents, Parker (2020)

notes that some of the individuals she interviewed depicted “music in their homes,

including music their parents played both live and in recordings—adolescents attributed

their love of a specific genre or love of music to what was playing at home” (p. 21). For

Paul, Kelly, Lisa, and Jared, their parents’ musical tastes influenced their musical

identity. Both Paul and Jared’s parents listened to a wide range of music. Some of the

music Paul grew up listening to was traditional country music, New Orleans jazz, Sousa

marches, and Deaf Leopard. For Paul, the music he referred to as his “heart song” was

Appalachian folk music.

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Jared described his parents as “big fans of music.” His parents listened to mostly

folk music, pop, and British rock music, such as the Beetles, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young.

While Jared played a wide variety of popular music genres with his peers growing up, he

knew that rock music was his favorite by the time he was a teenager.

Both Lisa and Kelly grew up around music as well. Kelly’s mother, a realtor, also

sang and played guitar for a living, and her father was a guitar teacher. Lisa explained

that both of her parents were into Honky-Tonk music and classic country music by

singers such as Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and George Jones. However, Lisa

acknowledged her favorite music is rock and grew up listening to “all the big rock bands”

such as Van Halen and Journey.

Music Training

Both Kelly and Lisa referred to themselves as self-taught and have mostly

informal music training. Kelly, for example, taught herself to read music and learned

from friends who play the guitar. It wasn’t until college that Kelly took formal classical

guitar classes. Lisa taught herself to play the guitar while working at a film studio when

she was about 18-years old.

While Jared took percussion lessons in school, there was also an informal

component to his training because he played in garage bands with friends from the

neighborhood. Jared and his friends played pop and rock music, which they learned by

ear. Jared adopts a sound before symbol approach when teaching. He explained, “It’s

totally sound before symbol. I was doing in bands with friends and enjoying myself and

not looking at a note.”

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Skylar, James, Emily, Hannah, Paul, Samantha, Kristin, and Jared all obtained

formal music training. While James, Emily, Hannah, Paul, Samantha, and Jared attended

public schools, Kristin went to a performing arts high school and studied at

conservatories abroad. Out of all participants, James, Paul, and Kristin hold doctoral

degrees in music performance, musicology, and music education. Samantha is also

pursuing a doctoral degree in music education.

Music Teachers

When recalling memories of their musical training, the participants’ music

teachers played a role in whether these memories were positive or negative. Skylar

described the music teachers he’s had as inspirational because they were not only talented

educators; they were also professional musicians. As a result, he felt that it was rewarding

to work with professionals.

Emily mentioned her high school and college band, orchestra, and choral teachers

as influential in her life. Hannah described her high school choir director as an

encouraging mentor in her life, and when Hannah chose to attend the same university as

her teacher did, she was able to advise Hannah through the process.

Jared identified his university percussion instructor as an important figure in his

life, whom he admired for his thorough and disciplined teaching style. This teacher was

instrumental in helping Jared’s understanding of rhythm and subdivision. It was at that

time that he learned the “maths” aspect of music. Hannah described her high school choir

director as an encouraging mentor in her life, and when Hannah chose to attend the same

university as her teacher did, she was able to advise Hannah through the process. Also,
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some of the most influential teachers Paul’s mentioned took a personal interest in him,

which shaped his teaching philosophy.

James recalled both a positive and negative experience with his music teachers.

When he struggled with telling left from right in marching band, James’ band director

worked with him before and after marching band rehearsal and suggested that James put

a band-aid on his left hand to differentiate his left side form his right. However, in his

doctoral program, James’ described one professor who criticized James for his inability

to keep a steady beat, and he told him that he was unfit to be a music teacher.

Musical Challenges and Coping Strategies

The participants’ frequent musical challenges included reading music notation,

analyzing music theory, mastering motor skills, and distinguishing left from right,

counting rests. The participants developed coping strategies were to work through these

and other musical challenges. In this study, some of the music teachers found that the

music coping strategies they came up with to work through difficult concepts were

effective when teaching their students with similar challenges.

Music Notation and Rhythm

James struggled with sight-reading until he began taking Kodály and Feierabend

workshops. He relies on the Takadimi system, which is an approach favored in his school

district. Emily, Hannah, and Jared also justified the benefit of using Kodály syllables or

words when struggling to count rhythm. For example, as someone who always struggled

with understanding rhythmic concepts, Jared found that using rhythm syllables or words

to count rhythm is easier and more effective than using the traditional number counting

system, especially for students struggling to understand subdivision. Atterbury (1983)

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found that individuals with reading disabilities scored higher when syllables were used to

present rhythms than without.

Skylar, James, Emily, Paul, and Jared felt that listening to a recording of a piece

they need to learn is a valuable strategy because it reduces the need of having to read

music and aids in memorization. When dealing with challenges with sight-reading and

rhythm, James, Samantha and Kelly practice at a slow tempo. Kelly , Lisa, and Jared

would rather play by ear rather than read sheet music. Paul noted that if he cannot figure

out what a particular rhythm sounds like, he will input it into music notation software.

This strategy is recommended by Blair and McCord (2016) for students who struggle

with sight-reading.

Reading piano music was described as a challenge by James, Emily, and Hannah,

and Samantha. James copes with this challenge by playing hands separately at a slow

tempo. Samantha also practices at a slow tempo until she can play the piece well.

Samantha described how, when she reads piano music, she reads one hand and fakes the

other hand. Emily, who struggles most with playing hymns, may “play the alto soprano

line and chunk the bass and tenor, or just play the bass line.” She also noted that she is a

better sight-reader of vocal music than piano music.

Music Theory and Ear Training

Some elements of music theory and ear training were cited as difficult for some

participants. Emily described that music theory was a struggle at the more advanced

levels. Skylar found the concepts of chord inversions and harmonic analysis challenging

to understand, while Jared and James mentioned that they struggled with transposition.
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Furthermore, Emily, Kelly, and Jared said that they also have trouble hearing or

identifying intervals. Jared differentiated between identifying isolated intervals in music

theory class, something he could do, but noted “when it actually came to listening to

music, could I translate that to the music was hearing? No, I couldn’t.” In a similar vein,

Kristin stated:

One of the things I don’t do well is I don’t have very good control of the
pitch that comes out when I try to sing something. So, I might hear
something correctly in my head, but then what comes out of my mouth is
totally wrong.

Motor skills and Distinguishing Left from Right

James described having a hard time with motor skills when it comes to playing

instruments, other than those in the brass family. Samantha noted that she experiences

problems with motor skills when playing the piano. Both Kelly and Lisa explained that

they have trouble transitioning fluidly from chord to chord when playing the guitar.

Kristin also reported difficulty in coordinating her left and right hands when playing the

piano and noted that her hands want to do the same thing at the same time.

Counting

The majority of participants, especially those with formal music training, stated

that counting and keeping track of their place in the music during long resting periods

was a struggle. As a result, these participants developed finger counting and other

strategies to deal with this issue

Jared developed coping strategies and used his musical strengths to overcome

musical challenges. When counting rests, he listens to a recording, looks at other people

to know when to come in, and employs a similar counting strategy as Skylar, who keeps

track of where he is during resting periods using his finger pads, where each finger pad
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represents one measure. In a similar vein, Paul counts on his fingers, using a Korean

method called Chisanbop. Kristin uses the strings of her cello to keep track of where she

is during rest periods and can count up to four measures for each string, a total of sixteen

measures.

Notating Music

Hammel and Hourigan (2017) recommend four teaching practices when working

with students with disabilities: modality, pacing, size, and color. Skylar uses highlighters

to mark important aspects of his music he needs to be aware of, such as changes in meter

and dynamics. Paul and Kristin draw vertical lines over each beat in a measure to how to

count subdivided rhythms. Skylar, James and Emily listen for or write in instrumental

cues for when to come in. Kristin stated, “So, for things that are complex rhythms, I am

always marking my music.” When necessary, Skylar, Emily, James, and Paul write in

musical cues.

Form

Several participants, including Skylar, James, and Jared, rely on feeling the phrase

structure inherent in a piece of music. Jared noted that the common chord progressions

used in pop and rock music help him avoid getting lost. Kristin, who plays a great deal of

early music, relies on what she knows about the stylistic conventions of the piece. She

noted that “there’s always repeated statements of the theme, so I just keep listening for

statements of the theme and try to figure out where my statements in the middle of it.”

Memorization

Some participants expressed that memorizing music was difficult, while others

found it easier. For Skylar, Kelly, and Jared, memorizing music is not much of a struggle.
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In contrast, James and Paul find memorizing music to be an arduous task, but they try to

remember what they can. Paul shared that when performing, even if he feels that he has

memorized his music, he keeps a copy on his music stand, just in case. Samantha shared

that her particular approach to remembering music is to do so in reverse—starting from

the end of the piece and working backward. (Nelson, 2014). Listening to a recording was

also reported to be a helpful strategy to aid in memorization.

Interpretation

Hannah and Lisa noted that a singer has a lot more freedom to interpret some

aspects of a song than an instrumentalist such as rhythm. "As a singer," Lisa stated, "you

have a lot more freedom." For example, she suggested, "It’s almost like a guitar where

it’s a lead instrument where you can have some nuance to the time." Lisa concluded,

"Just being a singer itself is one of the ways that helps me work with melody." Jared also

described having the freedom to interpret the drum parts to pop and rock songs as long as

what he is playing sounds like the song.

Chord Charts

Kelly and Lisa have used chord charts to make it easier when performing with

other musicians to avoid the difficulty of having to talk about chord progressions, which

are sometimes confusing for them. Kelly described the concept of the Nashville number

system could be difficult to calculate on the spot. Lisa explained that before she knew

how to write chord charts, she wrote out the lyrics to the song in a notebook, noted the

key the song was in, and the words on which chord changes occurred.
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Music Teaching Strategies

Left vs. Right

James is patient with his students who have trouble understanding left from their

right, and instead of referring to left and right in his classroom, he has maps in on one

side of his room, and a piano on the other to which he refers to avoid embarrassing the

students who struggle to grasp this concept. After four or five lessons, if students still

have trouble, he gives them a band-aid on the one hand as a physical reminder. Another

strategy used by James and Hannah is rather than refer to left and right in their

classrooms; they will direct students to look toward objects. For instance, James refers to

maps on his wall, and Hannah will refer to the piano on one side of her room, and the

door on the other.

James and Hannah implement coping strategies to help them when teaching

instruments or movement activities. For example, Hannah stands to the side of a student

when teaching musical instruments. She sometimes will move a student’s fingers rather

than demonstrate a particular fingering herself. It also helps her to hold the instrument.

When starting his students on the recorder, James plays Simon says where the students

have to pick up the recorder with the left hand on top.

Movement Activities

When teaching movement activities, James and Hannah turn so that they are

standing in the same direction as the students to make it easier for them to follow along.

Additionally, James has students who take dance classes model in front of the room while

helping the students struggling in the back.

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Rhythm

For someone who always struggled with understanding rhythmic concepts, Jared

found that using rhythm syllables or words to count rhythm is easier and more effective

than using the traditional number counting system, especially for students struggling to

understand subdivision. He uses this strategy when he learns a piece of music and teaches

this compensatory skill to his students. In a study comparing whether or not children with

reading disabilities learn different music than their neurotypical peers. Jared stated that

this helps him relay, “the relationship between pulse and rhythm, and for one to be pulse

to be mainly felt and rhythm to be played.”

Multisensory Teaching Strategies

When teaching her choirs, Samantha emphasized that she employs multisensory

learning techniques. She stated:

I use kinesthetic learning, aural learning. I will have my choirs walk. I will
have them dance. I will have them conduct. I will have them audiate, and I
also sing to them, and have them do call and response. I have them drum
rhythms. I work every method I can to help my singers.

Summary of Musical Experiences, Challenges, and Coping Strategies

When describing their musical experiences, two common trends emerged,

including musical identity and music training. For example, in some cases, the

participants’ musical experiences were influenced by their parents’ musical tastes.

Furthermore, in other cases, the nature of the participants’ music training, whether formal

or informal, shaped the types of music they would study and perform. The participants

also recalled memories of their music teachers that influential in both positive and

negative ways.
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The musical challenges and coping strategies described in this section illustrate

how the participants in this study experienced specific musical challenges understanding

mathematically related musical concepts. The coping strategies described in this section

also demonstrated how these individuals developed ways to deal with their challenges,

either consciously or unconsciously. The findings also illustrate that music teachers with

learning disabilities may pass on coping strategies they have used to their students. These

findings are of vital importance for music educators and researchers because they

illustrate that it is possible to help children with mathematical difficulties learn musical

concepts with which they might struggle.

Two of the main goals of this study were to raise awareness of dyscalculia and

how it may impact music learning and create a knowledge base of music strategies,

which this dissertation addresses. It is hoped that other music educators and researchers

will continue to investigate this topic to further add to this knowledge base to help more

students with math difficulties taking part in music-making activities. Teaching music

coping strategies to these students may ease frustration and anxiety and provide them

with more rewarding musical experiences.

 CHAPTER 6
DISCUSSION, RECOMMENDATIONS, AND CONCLUSION

The purpose of this dissertation was to explore adult musicians’ lived experiences

with dyscalculia to discover how their learning disability impacted their educational

experiences, daily lives, and musical careers. Limited information about dyscalculia

exists in the field of music, and as a result, dyscalculia is still not well understood.

Therefore it was essential to illustrate that dyscalculia is multifaceted and encompasses

more than merely having trouble with mathematics. In the cases of the ten participants in

this study and myself, our learning difficulties had far-reaching implications on our

personal and professional lives. This chapter describes the results of this study in light of

prior research, presents the salient themes that emerged throughout the participants’

narratives, and discusses the implications that the results may have for music educators

and researchers in music education.

Emergent Themes

As recommended by Sultan (2019), the emergent themes will be categorized

according to research question. The research questions framing this study were: (1) How

did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their daily lives, education, and career? (2) How

did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their music learning experiences and their

professional lives? And (3) Do musicians with dyscalculia develop or use specific

compensatory strategies to overcome learning challenges, or utilize their musical

strengths in unique ways? The main themes related to the first research question include:

(1) Impact of Teachers, (2) Self-Esteem, (3) Physical and Mental Health, (4) Math

Anxiety, (5) Math Avoidance, (6) Perseverance, and (7) Empathy.

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Research Question # 1

The first research question was, How did the participants’ dyscalculia affect their

daily lives, education, and career?

Theme # 1 Impact of Teachers

The participants shared vivid accounts of their positive and negative experiences

with numbers and math in elementary, middle, high school, and college. Some of the

participants’ memories occurred as early as first or second grade, indicating that their

early experiences with numbers and math experiences had a long-lasting impact on their

lives and influenced their perceptions of math and their mathematical abilities in

adulthood. This theme is illustrated by positive and negative memories shared by

different participants.

Math Teachers.

Emily: She would get so angry at me. I have memories of standing in

front of me doing multiplication flashcards, and her just moving them,
And I’m looking like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m sorry, I don’t know.
She just kept going and going, I would just get so angry and so frustrated
that really stands out.

Skylar: It was kind of humiliating. It was basically like, you need to do

something about this. And then she was telling my parents, this is what’s
going on, and it’s like, this shouldn’t be happening.

Hannah: We did have this teacher that probably one of the best teachers
I’ve met in my life. I wish I could have had her for more math. She
basically would say, I don’t care who comes in my room. If you don’t get
long division, you don’t get long division. Even if you’re in the 6th or 7th
grade, we have to fix this. And that was pretty awesome, and I did a little
bit better then.

James: I had my freshman algebra teacher. I also went to church with

him. He spent a lot of extra time. We had lunch right in the middle of
math. He came in and just pulled me in as I get back from classes. Like
here, let’s go over this, let’s go over this, and he’d just spend the extra
time. And he’d check in with my parents and stuff on the weekends when
they saw him at church just to say, did he get it? Did he not get it?
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Emily’s previous comment regarding the negative experience with her second-

grade math teacher was the use of the phrases, “I can’t,” and “I’m sorry,” and “I don’t

know” was also indicative to Kelly’s early experiences in early elementary school. In

their emphatic retelling of their experiences, it was easy to identify the emotions of panic

and frustration and how much they wanted to understand the concepts they found

confusing. This sentiment was shared by, Hannah, and James when describing

multiplication drills, a particularly unpleasant experience.

Music Teachers. Inclusive music environments are essential to ensuring that all

students feel comfortable and valued in the classroom. In several studies, helpful and

supportive music teachers were found to influence the feelings of positivity and

belonging among students with special needs (Burdett, 2012; Fang, 2009; Haywood,

2006; Lapka, 2005; Moss, 2009). Fang (2009) highlighted an instance in the difference

unsupportive versus supportive teachers played in nurturing the musical talents of a high

school student with autism. The participants in this study described both positive and

negative experiences with music teachers throughout their lives.

Jared: I had a really good teacher. He was so thorough as a teacher and so

thorough with me as an individual. He would not let anything slip through
the net as it were, and I really took a lot from him in terms of his discipline
and how thorough he was with all students he taught, and that was so
refreshing to me and really, really helpful as well.

Samantha: I had an excellent middle and high school choir director from
sixth through tenth grade. He was the same person, and then when he
departed, that was actually why he was also our church choir director, and
so I took his position. And that’s when I started voice lessons. That’s
when I started acting lessons, and that teacher was my rock. She was my
emotional rock all the way through high school, and she’s the reason I
made it through being in a competitive show choir and auditioning for
college, and all of that.

James: When I was in college, I was fussed at because I couldn’t keep a

steady beat at times because I went with what I felt. In fact, it was so bad
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that one of my professors said I needed to change my major, and I’d never
be a music teacher.

Kristin: When I went away to high school, my last two years of high
school, that was a boarding school, and that was a really great
environment for me. It was good. My primary cello teacher was a jerk, but
the other faculty were terrific.

The second emergent theme is self-esteem. What became apparent was that an

unconstructive classroom environment and negative interactions between the participants

and their teachers and peers affected their perception of themselves and their overall

attitude toward math into adulthood. These memories illustrate the long-term impact that

a teacher’s attitude and approach to teaching can have on a person, especially those with

learning challenges.

Theme # 2 Self-Esteem

As a result of their mathematical learning difficulties, several participants had to

take remedial math classes where they felt they did not belong. They described their

classmates as disruptive and apathetic toward their education. In general, the participants

were viewed as intelligent by their teachers and peers based on their performance in other

academic subjects. Several participants recalled how their classmates negatively impacted

the classroom environment.

James: So they stuck me into a class, and I mean it made me feel dumb,
and I remember hating that class because there were only about ten of us
in there, and I hate to say it this way, but I’m going to say it, I was in with
a bunch of losers that didn’t want to be at school, period. And that that
was just how they passed the time. They thought it was fun to kind of pick
on me.

Paul: When I was in high school, I failed algebra, gloriously failed it. So
they put me in what I call math for athletes and criminal's class. The
implication in that class is you’re not going to amount to much; we’re
going to teach you how to balance a checkbook, bless your little heart,
which in the south is an insult. I was in that class, and one of the students
said, why are you in here? You’re smart, and I said I can’t pass algebra.
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Emily: A lot of I think, self-loathing because I knew I was smart, but I

didn’t understand why I couldn’t get it. I think embarrassment as well
because I was in those honors classes, and everyone else was getting it and
doing fine, and I just couldn’t.

A common word that was used to describe their feelings at the time was shame.

Some comments related to this emotion included:

Paul: I do remember what I felt was the shame of being put in that lower-
level math class in high school because the implication was, I’m not going
to be capable of doing anything that involves mathematics beyond cashing
a paycheck and trying to pay the rent.

Samantha: My parents always told me how smart I was. And the idea that
I can’t memorize mathematical concepts I seem to think are basic
concepts, I feel like there’s a hole in my brain’s ability to understand and
retain information around math. So I think shame is probably the
predominant emotion.

Kelly: Embarrassed, embarrassed, shame. Like I want to go. I want to run

away. Get me out of here. Get me out of here because there was nothing
anybody could do to make me understand.

The participants’ reactions make sense when one considers the key features of

specific learning disabilities described in Chapter 1. For example, given that specific

learning disabilities are domain-specific (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) the

participants were academically proficient in other areas, with some taking honors or

advanced placement courses in high school.

Furthermore, common strengths among the participants were English, creative

writing, and foreign language. This discrepancy was apparent in the stark difference

between their verbal and mathematics scores for those participants’ pursuing higher

education who had to take the SAT or GRE. For some participants, their proficient

language ability led to them choosing careers as writers. It is also telling that many

participants completed advanced degrees, which required advanced reading and writing

capabilities.
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Self-esteem was also a topic that participants spoke about when discussing their

daily lives and career challenges. Self-esteem was also a topic that participants spoke

about when discussing their daily lives and career challenges.

Lisa: Whenever I’m meeting someone, I’m like yeah, I’m a musician too.
Well, not really a musician because I don’t play easily. I sort of tap out
with the guitar. I can practice, practice, practice, but it’s just always been a
love-hate relationship for me personally playing.

Jared: Things sometimes will get frustrating, and sometimes I feel like
you question yourself whether you’re in the right line of work and should
be doing something else. But then, based on my dyslexia and things, well,
can I do those other things? Do I have the skills and abilities to be able to
learn those being the age I am?

Theme #3 Physical and Mental Health

The World Health Organization constitution defines mental health as “a state of

well-being in which an individual realizes his or her abilities, can cope with the normal

stresses of life, can work productively and is able to make a contribution to his or her

community (World Health Organization, 2018). The participants in this study described

ways that their physical and mental health posed challenges in their lives.

Physical Health. In my view, it was not surprising that some participants

experienced mental or physical health challenges, given the amount of effort they

expended to surpass numerous obstacles. For example, Kelly overcame various physical

and mental health issues, including spinal fusion surgery, to correct complications caused

by spina bifida. She also dealt with an eating disorder, was diagnosed with bipolar

disorder in high school, struggled with alcoholism in college to cope with performance

anxiety, and was recently diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. A recovering alcoholic,

Kelly volunteers her time to work with women overcoming drug addiction.
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Another example was provided by Lisa, who described a vocal cord injury for

which she needed corrective surgery. As a result, she is no longer actively singing but

considers herself a producer, songwriter, and arranger. Skylar reported having poor

eyesight, which he felt contributed to difficulties reading sheet music. Samantha

disclosed that she had a physical and emotional breakdown in college due to exhaustion

and had to take a leave of absence for two weeks.

Mental Health. Some participants reported experiencing various types of anxiety,

including generalized anxiety, performance anxiety, math anxiety, and test-taking

anxiety. Comments related to the topic of anxiety include:

Generalized Anxiety.

Emily: I also should tell you I have an anxiety disorder as well. I told you
before I would lose homework or forget to do homework or something
like that. I think those experiences of losing things feeds my anxiety.

Hannah: I waste a lot of time, and I have been known to panic. I have
anxiety and depression, and I’ve gotten to the point that I don’t because I
got strategies to deal with it, and I just tell myself it’s really not that big of
a deal.

Math Anxiety. Math anxiety can be defined as “negative feelings or apprehension

toward math” (Choe et al., 2019). Based on a thorough overview of research conducted

on math anxiety, Dowker et al. (2019) assert that “there is a strong bidirectional

relationship between math anxiety and low attainment in mathematics,” but it is clear that

the findings on math anxiety are complex and involve many components. Ashcraft

(2019), for example, describes two models of mathematics anxiety, including a

personality and cognitive construct. While an extensive review of literature on math

anxiety is beyond the scope of this dissertation, it was apparent that many of the
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participants in this study found the prospect of math and musical concepts related to

mathematics anxiety provoking.

Researcher: Right now, with your present experiences with numbers and
math, how do you feel when you encounter math in daily life?

Jared: It depends on what situation I’m in. If I’m on my own and I’ve got
to work something out, I’m okay. If I’m having to do something in a
crowd or in front of people, I get nervous. And again, that fearful feeling
as I did when I was at school.

Samantha: Math and the physics and anything involving math was the
only homework over which I would actively sob. And thinking about
doing math now in instills a sense of anxiety and shame because I was a
gifted kid.

Paul: I can grade an academic paper or give feedback on it very well, but
budget items, bills that need to be paid, there’s almost a fear of dealing
with it that I’ll mess it up.

Test Anxiety.

Hannah: I had panic attacks. I don’t have them as much anymore, but a
throat closing off sensation...hot, kind of feeling flushed. That’s usually
how I feel when taking a math test. I can remember taking one in
particular where the air conditioner sounded so loud that I couldn’t focus,
and it really wasn’t that loud. It was just I couldn’t focus. I was so worked
up about the test that that’s all I could think about was the humming of the
air conditioner, and throat closing off, being really upset kind of deal.

Jared: For me, I don’t do well at exams, I don’t like pressure. I don’t like
the time limit. Again time management. It’s all about boiling it down to
these bullet points. I’ve got this much time to do this, and this much time
to do that. It’s just very academic, and it’s, do I want to put that pressure
on myself right now? No. Maybe in the future again, possibly.

Music Performance Anxiety.

Kelly: I went to do the recital and I had the most horrific panic attack at
the recital, I couldn’t even play. I had an out-of-body experience. My
hands shook so violently, I couldn’t breathe, and I could not play. I had to
get up and walk out (sigh). I still have really, really bad performance
anxiety, and that’s another reason I continue to hold myself back.

Kristin: When I’m practicing alone, when it’s just me and the dog, then
it’s okay if I sound terrible, you know because I’m working on things. I’m
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trying to get better at things, so the anxiety is only really when I’m playing
with other people.

Researcher: Do you get nervous when you perform?

Skylar: Sometimes, but I’m just so used it. I’m doing this now, but for
example, if there’s someone important in the audience that I know, if I’m
nervous or wonder like what do you think of it so far?

These participants’ experiences emphasize that individuals with learning

disabilities may experience increased anxiety or stress, which can impact their physical

health. The implication of this is an important one that parents and educators must

consider when working with individuals with learning challenges.

Theme # 4 Math Avoidance

As noted by Choe et al. (2019), one consequence of mathematics anxiety is

mathematics avoidance. These authors posit that math avoidance behaviors include

taking less science, technology, engineering, and mathematics courses than people who

do not experience math anxiety. Math anxiety was evident in the participants’ comments

relating to their daily lives and career.

Researcher: How is your math anxiety these days?

Hannah: I think if I stay away from it, it’s mostly avoidance.

Paul: I put it off as long as possible to the last minute, and then I do it as
little as possible. Sometimes, I go and do it even if I know it’s wrong
because I’m not going to get it right. It’s easier to just do it wrong and
have somebody correct it and let them do the work for me. I don’t like
doing that, but it does work.

A notable finding was that many participants relied on their significant others for

help with money management.

Lisa: The bills are where my husband helps me keep straight when I get
paid. This is how much money I need to move into that account so that
these bills get paid on time.
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Emily: My husband has a degree in physics, so he does any and all the
math necessary. So, I really don’t touch math outside of grading.

Jared: I was eating a meal, me and my girlfriend. We finished up, and we

paid the tab, and you know, she did the math straight away (snaps). It’s
like okay, I’ll never compete with that because she might as well do it
because she’s so much quicker at it than it then I am.

Kristin: I am super nervous and anxious when it comes to dealing with

financial stuff. My husband balances the checkbook; he does the taxes. I
don’t do any of that because I get really panicky. Taxes make me panicky.
So that’s definitely an everyday kind of and just dealing with money stuff
in general.

Theme # 5 Perseverance

It was clear that the participants in this study demonstrated a desire to persevere,

which was evident in how they tackled a wide variety of life challenges. Comments

related to this topic include:

Jared: These guys at the private music school gave me this job, and I
started teaching, and you know, got it wrong for a bit, and then slowly
started to realize I could do this, and it started to make more sense. Yeah,
and slowly got better at it, and they gave me a chance. It was really good,
and I worked my way up the ladder.

James: I tend to be stubborn, and if you tell me I’m not, I can’t do

something, just get out the way it’s going to get done.

Emily: I think I can say that I never gave up per se, at least, because we
would start a chapter, like okay, I’m going to try to get it this time, and
you know, try to get it, and try, and try.

Jared: I like to prepare these days as far ahead as possible for any kind of
demonstration I’m doing, or anything I’m learning. I know that I probably
won’t get anything the first time around, and I know I’m a slow learner.
But for me, it’s like just keep going and going, and I know I’ll get there in
the end.

James: Remember when we were talking earlier about my freshman year,

with the left and the right and all that? At the beginning of that freshman
year, I was labeled probably the weakest player in the high school band.
By the start of my sophomore year, my director would just point out these
little things and work with me, and I got into the jazz band and stuff. I
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went from being the weakest player to the strongest player without private
lessons.

Lisa: So I think just this kind of intuition or instinct— just keep at it. Lisa,
just keep at it. This is what you’re hearing in your head. Don’t let someone
tell you it’s this because a lot of people are trying to help you work
something out. So I guess that coping thing was kind of a stubbornness.

Samantha: I knew if I didn’t fill in those holes, I was done because they
separate the wheat from the chaff, and there was no way in hell I was
going to be one of those folks who dismissed halfway through her degree.
I just buckled down and did it.

Theme # 6 Empathy

Many participants expressed demonstrating empathy to students with learning

challenges. In accordance with the findings of Shessel & Reiff (2011), participants in

their study indicated five areas in which their learning disabilities had been a positive

influence: (1) helping them to be a better person, (2) allowing them to think creatively,

(3) increasing their sensitivity to others, (4) making them better professionals, and (5)

instilling in them the desire to help others.

The comments related to empathy were particularly insightful and suggested that

educators who experience learning challenges are more compassionate toward their

students. This result has powerful implications for music educators because, as reflected

in the participants’ memories regarding educators’ positive and negative impact on their

lives. Those educators who were patient and invested in their students’ learning outcomes

were viewed positively by the participants and informed the type of educators they

desired to be. The participants’ comments related to empathy include:

Paul: I had the experience of teachers taking a personal interest in me. I

want to be the same kind of teacher. I don’t have office hours. I have a
door, and it’s open.

Skylar: I’m a very helpful and empathetic person. So that’s just a big part
of who I am.
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Hannah: It’s actually been a great thing for teaching because the best I
heard somebody say this once, some of the best teachers struggle because
we know what it’s like to struggle, and we get random strategies that we
can kind of pass on.

James: But also at the very beginning when we are starting recorders and
stuff, I turned it into a game where we kind of play Simon Says where
they’re picking them up, and they’re trying to not let me trick them into
picking it up with the wrong hand. We turn it into a game just to do that
because I understand, and I remember what it was like to be embarrassed
about not knowing your left and right.

Kelly: The helpful thing. A strength of mine is I tend to see where people
are coming from. I won’t get into politics or anything like that, but I can
look at different people who have these very strong opinions that are very
different. And I don’t feel very judgmental about it, because I feel like
everybody is coming from a different place.

Jared: Well, as a teacher, you know, some people, some kids or whoever,
need some encouragement in the right way. And then some people, they
need a stern word of like you need pull up your bootstraps and get to work
here. And then some people need an arm put around them and just saying
you did really well because especially being dyslexic and being a teacher.
I can spot that when I’m teaching someone, I can see they’re struggling,
and you know it’s they’re climbing Mount Everest here in trying to do
this.

In contrast to the participants in Shessel & Reiff’s (2011) study, the participants in

this study did not directly specify whether their disabilities positively impacted their

lives. However, some of them mentioned various personal strengths that they believed

might be an outcome of their learning disability. Furthermore, some participants also

considered that when one skill or sense is compromised, another skill or sense may be

enhanced.

Lisa: But it’s a weird thing, would I low- it, now that I know about the
creativity, and that creativity is really special, I think. And sometimes I
wonder, do I have it? Can the brain only deal with this part? I can’t seem
to deal with this and this. But I have a lot of this, and I like this.

Lisa also confirmed that when she received her psychological assessment results,

which indicated that she had dyscalculia, her doctor acknowledged that it is not
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uncommon for individuals to compensate for skills impacted by a learning disability. She

stated:

Lisa: And that’s what the doctor who evaluated me said also. On my test
assessment my visual processing, around English composition was in the
very high, good range, but then my visual processing speed, and skills
were in the very low range. And she was telling me that she thought I had
developed these other skills to compensate, and it sounded like to her,
that’s not uncommon.

Summary of Emergent Themes

The first theme, the impact of teachers, emerged as many participants shared

memories of teachers who positively or negatively impacted their lives. Positive

educators who demonstrated patience and understanding were highly valued, and in some

instances, they were instrumental in the participants’ musical success. On the other hand,

it became evident that the participants’ experiences with negative teachers made a long-

lasting impression on their lives and perceptions of mathematics and their mathematical

ability.

The participants to express how their learning disabilities impacted their self-

esteem, the second theme, as students, individuals, and musicians.

The participants described negative experiences in school in which they struggled

with low self-confidence, feelings of frustration, anxiety, and shame. These experiences

left a long-lasting impression on their perceptions of mathematics and their mathematical

ability.

Furthermore, regarding the third theme, mental health, it was apparent that

sometimes the daily life, musical, and career challenges the participants faced resulted in

depression or various types of anxiety, including generalized anxiety, math anxiety, test-
 225

taking anxiety, and performance anxiety. Furthermore, in some cases, their stress affected

their physical health as well.

The fourth theme, math avoidance, was a coping strategy that participants used to

deal with the frustration and anxiety of working with numbers. As a result, in many cases,

the participants relied on their significant others who were better at math to manage

money matters.

The fifth theme, perseverance, manifested, as all participants revealed the various

ways their learning disabilities posed multiple challenges in their lives. Instead of giving

up, the participants adapted and developed coping strategies to become successful

musicians.

Empathy emerged as the final theme in this study. In most cases, the participants

felt that they were more empathetic to others with diverse backgrounds and learning

needs due to their learning difficulties. In particular, among the music educators in this

study, it was clear that as a result of their academic and musical struggles, they made a

point to ensure their students’ learning needs were met by modifying instruction and

demonstrating compassion towards their students.

Research Questions # 2 and # 3

The participants in this study struggled to learn mathematically related or

visuospatial musical concepts. The second and third research questions were (2) How did

the participants’ dyscalculia affect their music learning experiences and their professional

lives, and (3) Do musicians with dyscalculia develop or use specific compensatory

strategies to overcome learning challenges or utilize their musical strengths in unique

ways. The participants’ primary musical challenges and associated musical coping
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strategies will be discussed. Some of these challenges include counting, sight-reading,

rhythm, memorizing, music theory, left-right confusion, and motor skills.

In Chapter 1, I shared my personal experiences as a musician with dyscalculia.

Due to the autobiographical nature of heuristic inquiry, I will compare and contrast the

musical challenges and musical coping strategies used by the participants to my own.

Learning Style

Concerning these research questions, the participants’ learning styles, whether

auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and musical strengths, played a role in the types of coping

strategies developed. Moreover, taking the time and effort to improve musical skills in

which the participants were less proficient was also a contributing factor in some of the

participants’ success. Also, developing an understanding of how they learned best was

apparent in how some participants described their music learning process.

First, similar to Skylar, identify as an auditory learner. I rely on my ability to

memorize quickly and play by ear to overcome some of the challenges I experience with

sight-reading and deciphering rhythm. Similar to other participants in this study, I also

use a combination of strategies when learning music. For example, similar to Samantha, I

use various multisensory music learning strategies when learning music, including

audiation, conducting, tapping, clapping, or singing a rhythm in combination with one

another.

Counting

Basic counting is a difficult task for individuals with dyscalculia. As losing track

when counting is probably the most troublesome issue with which I struggle. To avoid

missing entrances, participants stated that they notate key occurrences in the music to
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listen for, write in musical cues, or rely on a stand partner or section leader to come in or

count on their fingers.

Several participants in this study, including Skylar, Paul, and Kristin, implement

counting techniques that included a physical component. Skylar uses each pad of

individual fingers to keep track of each measure. Kristin keeps count using her strings to

minimize the likelihood of getting lost—both strategies I have never considered.

Similarly, as other participants suggested, I feel the phrase structure internally to

discern when entrances occur after long resting periods. Jared noted that it sometimes

takes trial and error to become familiar enough to know when to come in.

Memorizing

The ability to memorize music was considered both a strength and a weakness

among different participants. Skylar, Jared, Kelly, and Lisa felt that memorizing was one

of their strengths. While finding memorizing music to be difficult, James experienced

success memorizing music through repetition. Listening to a recording was a strategy

employed by most participants and aided in memorization. Samantha used a unique

technique of learning a piece of music backward.

Sight-Reading

Sight-reading music was a challenge by numerous participants. Emily noted that

when playing the trumpet or violin, she was quite proficient at sight-reading. On the other

hand, she found sight-reading choral music more challenging. In contrast, Samantha

described herself as an excellent sight-reader of vocal music, admitted that she struggled

with reading rhythm and piano music. Her coping strategy is to focus more on the right

hand and interpreted the left-hand part.

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Like James, Kelly, and Samantha, I sight-read slowly with a metronome, often

counting aloud. I engage in strategies such as counting aloud, writing in counts or

clapping the rhythm. Skylar, James, Emily, Hannah, Paul, and Jared all indicated that

listening to a recording of a piece of music they were learning was an essential coping

strategy they all utilized. One of the first steps I take when learning a piece of music for

myself or to conduct a concert is listening to a recording of the music.

My ability to memorize quickly allows me to memorize the score so that I do not

need to rely on the notation to conduct an ensemble or perform the piece of music.

However, I keep the music on the music stand for reference, as does James and Paul. To

help when sight-reading, Skylar developed a highlighting system to remind himself of

significant music changes to aid in his vision difficulties

Rhythm

Several participants, including James, Emily, and Hannah, noted that they prefer

using rhythm syllables or words to count rhythm rather than numbers. As an auditory

learner, I rely on my ability to memorize quickly and play by ear to overcome some of

the challenges I experience with sight-reading and deciphering rhythm. Similar to other

participants in this study, I also use a combination of strategies when learning music. For

example, Samantha and I use various multisensory music learning strategies when

learning music, including audiation, conducting, tapping, clapping, or singing a rhythm in

tandem. Also, we both employ multisensory techniques when teaching music, as well.

Music Theory

Regarding music theory, I expected participants to find music theory challenging

due to its mathematical nature. In my case, I possess an excellent understanding of music

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theory fundamentals, such as scales and chords, but struggle with harmonic analysis.

When analyzing chord progressions in music, simple triads, dominant seventh chords, or

inversions are straight-forward. However, for more difficult chord progressions involving

Italian, French, or German sixth chords, the task becomes more difficult.

When working with secondary dominants, I count on my fingers to decipher

relationships between keys. For example, if I analyze a piece in E flat major, I write out

the chords and corresponding roman numerals for E flat Major and the subdominant and

dominant. Doing so allows me to identify the relationships between chord progressions

and modulations that may occur more easily, but it is still challenging. As Samantha and

James stated, I also feel a sensation of mental resistance when engaging in harmonic

analysis due to its mathematical and visual-spatial nature.

Left-Right Confusion, Visual-Spatial Skills, and Movement

Some participants had difficulties distinguishing their left from their right, which

impacted their ability to read fingering charts, hold an instrument, or participate in and

teach movement activities such as dancing or choreography. James shared that his

problems destringing his left from right, and dyscalculia emerged when he joined the

marching band and called out for being on the wrong foot.

I had a similar experience, but unlike James, I did not have a sympathetic band

director who worked with me one-on-one. His director suggested using a band-aid to

remember left and right, a strategy he employs when teaching. This strategy never

occurred to me before but is an effective way to avoid embarrassing students who might

find distinguishing left from right tricky.

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Similar to James and Hannah, I also struggle when learning or teaching

movement activities. I also never thought to refer to objects in the room to avoid

revealing my difficulty performing this task. Both Hannah and James mentioned facing

the students’ direction when modeling choreography, something I also do. Like Hannah, I

find it helpful to hold an instrument when modeling clarinet and saxophone fingerings

and face in the student’s direction.

Other participants struggled with the motor skills and hand-eye coordination

necessary to carry out specific tasks such as learning instrument fingerings, forming and

smoothly transitioning from one guitar chord to another, or playing the piano with both

hands at the same time. Moreover, several participants, including Hannah and James,

reported difficulties distinguishing their left from their right, which impacted their ability

to read fingering charts, hold an instrument, or take part in and teach movement

activities.

Unlike some of the participants who experienced motor difficulties, I excelled at

learning instrument fingerings and understanding the relationship between instruments in

the brass and woodwind families. I chose to play the flute when I joined the school band.

In the eighth grade, I sought more of a challenge and switched to the French horn. Later

on, throughout middle school and high school, I taught myself how to play other

woodwind and brass instruments, which I chose as a beginning band student. When I

audiate or sing music sometimes, I find myself miming the flute fingerings.

Summary of Research Questions # 2 and # 3

The concepts with which many participants struggled included counting,

memorizing, sight-reading, rhythm, music theory, left-right confusion, visual-spatial

 231

difficulties, and issues with motor skills. Learning style seemed to play a role in the kinds

of coping strategies used. However, many participants used similar types of coping

strategies regardless of their preferred mode of learning. Some musical challenges the

participants identified were strengths for others.

For example, to aid in memorization, many participants listened to a recording

even if they were primarily visual learners. Most participants stated that they struggled

with rhythm due to its mathematical nature as well as music theory. Some participants

disclosed that they struggled with left-right confusion, and those who were music

educators used the strategies they developed to help their students with similar problems.

This issue has also affected the participants’ motor skills in some cases. Regarding this

concept, some participants cited that they overcame this challenge through slow practice

and repetition.

Conclusions

The results and conclusions of this study suggest several implications for practice

and further research in this area. First and foremost, this dissertation’s findings

demonstrate the long-lasting ramifications that dyscalculia can have on an individual’s

personal and professional life—from managing one’s finances to impacting self-esteem

and affecting career success. In deciphering the emergent trends and themes, numerous

ramifications of dyscalculia on the participants’ lives were identified (Appendix H).

1. Difficulties with numbers and math may affect educational attainment, self-

esteem, lead to challenges in one’s career, and affect overall career success.

2. Challenges experienced in daily life may affect self-esteem, transfer over to one’s

career, and impact overall career success.

 232

3. Music learning challenges and the type of music training one receives, whether

formal or informal, may affect career success.

4. Challenges experienced as a result of dyscalculia may impact physical or mental

health.

5. Musical challenges may affect the type of music coping strategies developed.

6. Learning style and musical strengths may affect the types of music coping

strategies developed.

When asking participants for artifacts that represent their experiences with

dyscalculia, Emily offered a reflection regarding the emotional ramifications that her

mathematical difficulties have had on her life that reinforces the points just mentioned:

I feel a lot of anxiety and frustration and apprehension to do anything

math-based that goes beyond 4th-grade mathematics. My husband, who
has a degree in physics and who is a high school math and science teacher,
tried to explain to me what an imaginary number was and I was
completely lost. That made me feel so stunted and through no fault of his
own. I feel very limited by my dyscalculia as far as my figure goals—I’m
very worried about taking the GRE, as stated earlier, and spending money
to take it and study it, but I’m afraid I’ll ultimately fail it. I’m almost
worried about taking graduate-level music theory because of how much I
struggled with music theory.
In some ways, I rely way too much on my husband for math-based
things (such as budgeting and other money issues) because I despise it so
much, and he is so good at it (he doesn’t seem to mind, though, and he
understands I have anxiety about money as well).I also feel a lot of anger
and resentment that my disability, which was presented very obviously
(textbook definition of a disability-when effort does not correlate to grade,
or when there is a significant discrepancy between subject grades), was
not caught by my parents or any of my teachers K-12, even though my
dyscalculia clearly presented itself in 2nd grade. I imagine that they
thought I was simply “lazy” or “disorganized.”
For my parents, I can kind of understand because they had a child
with more severe disabilities. The school district with my graduating class
of less than a hundred, well-funded, with small class sizes and very little
behavioral problems, I can see no excuse, and for that, I am resentful,
especially after going through a battery of tests for a disability.
 233

I remember in high school, a close friend of mine who also

struggled with math was finally diagnosed with dyscalculia. I think a large
part of her diagnosis was due to both her parents being teachers in the
district, and therefore had on a different “lens” to see disabilities.
Honestly, the emotions toward my disabilities, especially dyscalculia-
anxiety, anger, resentment, apprehension-affect me moderately in daily
life and significantly when it comes to pursuing my future goals.

Additional Considerations

Nelson’s (2014) study examining adult musicians’ lived experiences with

dyslexia served as a basis for this dissertation. Therefore, it is worthwhile to compare the

participants’ musical challenges, strengths, coping strategies in this study to those used

by the participants in Nelson’s (2014) dissertation. This information may provide

valuable information to music teachers about the nature of learning disabilities and music

learning.

Nelson’s study focused on the notion that individuals with dyslexia found reading

standard music notation a challenge. It turned out that three out of five participants in

Nelson’s (2014) study struggled with sight-reading standard music notation. Most of the

participants in this study reported issues counting and processing complex rhythms.

While some participants in Nelson’s study reported struggling with reading music

notation and rhythm processing, it is not explicitly mentioned which aspects of music

notation, and rhythm reading were challenging. In contrast, several participants in this

study noted that subdivision and using numbers to count rhythms were complicated.

Furthermore, two participants in Nelson’s study gravitated toward other musical

genres with less emphasis on reading standard music notation, such as popular music

genres, as did three participants in this study. Another strategy the participants in Nelson

and this study utilized was the isolation of musical components when learning new music

and slow practice until they could play the music fluidly.
 234

In both Nelson’s study and this study, some participants reported struggled with

aspects of music theory. In this study, participants mentioned challenges using solfege,

using terminology to describe chord progressions, audiating intervals, and memorizing

musical facts or concepts. For instance, Samantha revealed that she has a hard time

holding on to certain musical information when playing the piano, such as key signatures.

One participant in Nelson’s study also reported similar challenges. However, whereas

this participant in Nelson’s study received an official diagnosis of dyslexia, Samantha did

not identify with having dyslexia.

Finally, several participants in Nelson’s study and this study utilized multisensory

strategies when teaching and learning music, using technology such as listening to a

recording to learn and memorize new music, and playing by ear if they were so inclined.

Samantha and a participant in Nelson’s study utilized movement when learning new

music.

Some additional trends in the lives of the participants in Nelson’s and this study

were discovered. Some of these trends reported by the participants were struggling

feelings of low self-esteem, the impact of positive and negative role models, including

teachers and parents, and the idea that their learning disabilities made them more

empathetic to students struggling to learn.

In Nelson’s study, for example, four out of five participants suggested the benefit

of students disclosing their learning disability to their music teachers. In their view,

music teachers who are aware of a students’ learning challenges are less likely to assume

the student’s problems result from not practicing or lacking musical ability. Music
 235

educators can use this knowledge to develop creative solutions to music learning

problems they may not have otherwise considered.

In this study, several participants repeated the same sentiment that their lives

might have turned out differently if their educators knew were cognizant of their learning

disabilities. Two participants indicated that disclosing their diagnosis was helpful for

them in the workplace, and one participant suggested a feeling of relief in telling her

family.

Two participants in Nelson’s study noted that they did not experience learning

challenges in music as they did in other academic subjects. Therefore music classes

provided a respite from feelings of low self-esteem caused by their academic struggles

and boosted their confidence. While Samantha was gifted academically in all subjects

except for math, she described music as “a refuge” and “the place where I simply

excelled as a human being.” Skylar also mentioned that the choice to study music

professionally rather than other subjects was a natural choice. On the other hand, despite

their challenges with music learning, three participants in my study indicated how their

love of music provided them with the desire to persevere despite their challenges.

Nelson’s second research question focused on whether or not the participants felt

that their learning disability contributed to their musical strengths. In contrast, this

study’s participants did not indicate strong feelings about whether this was true for them,

but they considered that this idea might be plausible when prompted. On the other hand,

some participants in this study indicated that they believed that their dyslexia resulted in

increased creativity, problem-solving, greater empathy towards students with learning

challenges, and more effective educators. Finally, participants in both studies cited the
 236

importance of supportive parents, patient teachers, and constructive classroom

environments as indicative in helping them succeed in music-related fields.

The numerous similarities among the participants in Nelson’s research, and my

own, speak to the complexities of the human brain and the role that neural plasticity has

in how different parts of the brain compensate for impaired areas. Hodges & Sebald

(2011) write:

Neural plasticity means that brain structures can be modified under certain
conditions, most specifically as a result of injury or through learning
experiences. In some circumstances, healthy parts of the brain can assume
functions once performed by diseased or injured portions (pp. 158–159).

Limitations and Recommendations for Further Research

Dyscalculia is still not as well-known as dyslexia, and this is evident in the lack of

in-depth knowledge available in music-specific special education resources. Further

research must be conducted on dyscalculia and music learning to fill in this gap. That

said, future studies should focus on exploring the lived experiences of musicians who

have received an official diagnosis of isolated dyscalculia. In this way, it will be easier to

ascertain if musicians with dyscalculia have unique musical challenges, strengths, or

employ different coping described by those musicians with dyslexia. The dissemination

of these findings to music educators is essential.

One limitation of this study was that most participants did not receive an official

diagnosis of dyscalculia. In the ideal case, this study may have produced more accurate

results if all of the participants had been tested by an educational psychologist. In a

similar vein, another limitation was that some participants had multiple comorbidities in

addition to mathematical difficulties. Thus, the coping strategies described by the

participants with dyslexia may be more apt to address musical problems caused by
 237

dyslexia than dyscalculia. Further research must be conducted to examine the coping

strategies of musicians with isolated dyscalculia to address this issue.

Moreover, time restraints prevented me from following Moustakas’s (1990)

recommendations to engage in open-ended interviews in timeless immersion. Still, the

fact that most participants blocked off enough time to address all of the interview

questions, I was able to obtain in-depth insight into how dyscalculia affected the

participants’ lives in various domains that captured the essence of the phenomenon.

Regarding the second interview in which the member checking process occurred,

not all the participants could commit to a second interview via video conferencing

software. Instead, a couple of participants completed their second interview via phone

call. When all of the second interviews were completed, any suggested edits were made

and were sent via email or discussed on Facebook Messenger for final approval.

Implications for Music Teachers

Three things need to occur to create positive classroom environments in which

students with mathematical difficulties can thrive. First, administrators and music

educators must receive the necessary training to identify the signs of dyscalculia and how

a child’s mathematical problems can impact learning in various domains other than

mathematics. Providing such professional development opportunities will increase the

likelihood that children’s music learning challenges will be recognized, and the correct

accommodations implemented.

Second, some universities require music education students to take a general

course on special education. However, offering music-specific special education courses

and degree programs is vital because pre-service teachers can use the knowledge gained
 238

to identify children with learning disabilities in musical environments. For those

interested in obtaining music education degrees specific to special education, Potsdam

State University of New York offers a degree in music in special education concentration,

and the Boston Conservatory of Music at Berklee offers a music education degree with an

autism concentration. More music education degree programs should be created with

concentrations geared explicitly to learning disabilities, which can provide music

education majors at the undergraduate and graduate level with the opportunity to obtain a

more in-depth view of dyscalculia.

Third, the knowledge gained from this study indicates that individuals with

dyscalculia may struggle to learn music theory. Therefore, professors teaching this

subject need to be aware that students with dyscalculia may require extra tutoring or

additional time on exams. Professors who are sensitive to these students learning needs

can reduce the frustration or anxiety these students may face.

Music educators can glean several implications from this study that align with

Piaget’s Theory of Educational Implications. Piaget’s theory has had a significant impact

on the theory and practice of education This theory helped create a perspective where

attention is focused on developmentally appropriate education, referring to an educational

environment, curriculum, materials, and instruction consistent with students’ physical and

cognitive abilities as well as their social and emotional needs.

Slavin (2018) notes there are four main points associated with Piaget’s theory of

educational implications. Piaget’s theory asserts that children go through all of the same

developmental stages but do so at different rates. Therefore, teachers must make a special

effort to create classroom activities that are student-centered and appropriate for students
 239

with diverse learning needs rather than always implementing activities for the entire

class. The results of this study and that of Nelson’s (2014) study indicated that the use of

multisensory approaches to teaching music was beneficial for the participants in both

studies. This idea is supported in the way participants expressed that they are intelligent

but learn differently.

Another notion integral to Piaget’s Theory of Educational Implications, discussed

by Slavin (2018) is that reviewing material students have already learned may be

particularly beneficial for students who struggle to remember musical concepts and facts,

which is also an essential element in remedial instruction. This idea was also apparent in

how the participants in this study used slow practice and repetition to learn musical skills.

Furthermore, this idea was also an implication of Nelson’s (2014) study, as the

participants emphasized the importance of one-on-one music instruction and patient

music teachers.

Moreover, this study revealed the need for an increased understanding of

dyscalculia among music teachers and administrators. The participants’ accounts of their

lived experiences with dyscalculia illustrate how an educator’s teaching approach and the

kind of classroom environment they foster can affect a child’s academic, musical, social,

and emotional development. It was evident that the participants’ empathetic teachers and

positive classroom environments made a difference in their learning experiences.

However, it was also apparent how negative learning experiences continued to

impact their lives into adulthood and had significant implications in their self-confidence

and how they viewed themselves compared to their peers. Finally, in some cases, the

participants’ negative learning experiences had far-reaching ramifications on their

 240

educational attainment and overall career success. Most importantly, as evidenced by the

individuals who took part in this study, educators must not underestimate their students

who struggle with learning challenges. Research on the post-secondary outcomes of

individuals with learning disabilities indicates how their dedication and belief in their

ability to succeed played a role in their ultimate success.

Final Thoughts

Conducting this study allowed me to explore a phenomenon that has interested me

for most of my life. In embarking on this journey, I not only learned more about myself,

but I also learned that others with dyscalculia have struggled with similar challenges in

their daily life, education, and career. Furthermore, I discovered that these difficulties had

long-lasting ramifications on their lives regarding their self-esteem, mental health, and in

some cases, career success. I also found that the musicians with dyscalculia in this study

struggled to learn many of the music concepts that I have and have developed similar

music coping strategies to overcome these obstacles. This discovery shows that

individuals with diverse learning needs possess the ability and resilience to achieve their

personal, professional, and musical goals and should not be underestimated.

The aim of phenomenology, the approach in which this dissertation is grounded,

is to discover the essence of a phenomenon. Through the process of conducting this

dissertation, I believe that musicians’ lived experiences with dyscalculia can be reduced

to these essential concepts: struggle, trial, and error, and perseverance. An important take

away from this study is the impact of positive influencers, whether they be teachers,

friends, or parents who believed in the participants’ abilities to succeed. After all, human
 241

beings thrive on making positive social connections and shared understandings with

others, which should be at the heart of any educational environment.

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 APPENDIX A
VERBAL CONSENT FORM

The Lived Experience of Adult Musicians with Dyscalculia: A Heuristic Inquiry

Hi, my name is Sheerin Hosseini and I am involved in a research study called The Lived
Experiences of Adult Musicians with Dyscalculia: A Heuristic Inquiry at the University
of Miami.

PURPOSE OF STUDY:

You are being asked to take part in this research study because you identify as a musician
with a mathematical learning disability called dyscalculia. The purpose of this study is to
discover how dyscalculia may affect the way musicians learn and understand musical
concepts.

Here are some reasons you may want to participate in this research: the information you
provide about your musical experiences and the coping strategies you have used to
overcome any musical challenges provide educators with a knowledge of coping
strategies to use when teaching children with dyscalculia who may then have more
successful and rewarding musical experiences.

Here are some reasons you may not want to participate in this research: Before you
decide to enroll in this research study, you should consider the time commitment
(approximately 3 to 4 hours) as well as your comfort level in sharing your personal
experiences. You may not want to participate if you don’t have time to complete the
study.

You will be asked to take three surveys to determine if you will be a suitable candidate
for this study. The first survey is a questionnaire which is based on the dyscalculia
symptom checklist provided on the website www. dyscalculia.org. To be included in this
study you must have experienced musical challenges associated with dyscalculia and
identify as either a professional or amateur musician.

The second survey asks about your musical experience that a person with dyscalculia
might find such as reading music notation, learning instrument fingerings, and processing
rhythm. Finally, the third survey will be used to discover your level of seriousness about
music. To be included in this study you must indicate at least five-seven symptoms of
dyscalculia, have experienced musical challenges associated with dyscalculia, and
identify as either a professional or amateur musician.

Those participants who are most suitable for the study based on the survey results will be
asked to take part in two Skype interviews. The first interview will take approximately 90
minutes and the second interview will take approximately 60 minutes and will occur two
weeks after the first interview. You will also be asked to explore your past and present
life experiences as a musician with a mathematical learning disability in a creative
manner such as journaling, or creating artwork, poetry, or music. The video and/or audio

252
 253

recording will be transcribed and analyzed. You will be able to read the initial analyzed
data as well as the final write up to ensure of its accuracy and make any final suggestions.

There is a risk that your information could become known to someone not involved in
this study. There are also questions being asked that may make you feel uncomfortable;
you may skip any questions we ask. There are no potential benefits to you for being in
this study.

You will be given the option of selecting a pseudonym of your choosing or have one
assigned. This pseudonym will be used throughout the research document and any
subsequent publications.

All of the data collected throughout this study including emails, surveys, Skype session
recordings and interview transcriptions will remain confidential and uploaded to a
password-protected secure online account for three years after the completion of the
study. If you feel uncomfortable with a video recording, only an audio recording will be
used. Only people who are directly involved with the project will have access to those
records.

Your participation in this study is voluntary. You can decline to participate, and you can
stop your participation at any time, if you wish to do so, without any negative
consequences to you.

You will not be paid for your participation in this research study. At the end of this study,
the researchers may publish their findings. Information will be presented in summary
format and you will not be identified in any publications or presentations.

By you answering the survey/interview questions that I will ask and completing the
interviews, this means you consent to participate in this research project. If you have any
questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact Dr. Stephen Zdzinski
at 305-284-6658 or szdzinski@miami.edu or Sheerin Hosseini at 617-548-6371 or
smb320@miami.edu

If you have questions regarding your rights as a research participant, contact the
University of Miami, Human Subject Research Office at (305) 243-3195.
1
According to Moser (1980, "Chisanbop" is a Korean word which means finger calculation method. It is
based on the Korean abacus, and its emphasis is on fives. By using Chisanbop techniques, one can add,
subtract, multiply, and divide large numbers.
 APPENDIX B
MATH DISABILITY CHECKLIST

Please indicate the number of all of the following statements that apply to you.

1. I have difficulty telling time, following directions, or recalling schedules and

sequences of events.

2. When performing written and mental mathematical calculations I often get

inconsistent results.

3. I frequently have trouble with money management.

4. Making change and calculating tips and tax on purchases is difficult for me.

5. Difficulty with motor sequencing, noticeable in athletic performance, difficulty

keeping up with rapidly changing physical directions.

6. I experience math anxiety during math tests or examinations, or when I know I will
be in a situation where I will be required to perform mathematical calculations.

7. I use my fingers to count when solving arithmetic problems or lose track when
counting.

8. Numbers and math seem like a foreign language.

9. I have trouble remembering mathematical concepts, rules, formulas, and the order
of mathematical operations.

10. I have difficulty remembering and retrieving mathematical facts.

11. I frequently get lost or disoriented easily and/or have poor sense of direction.

12. I have difficulty with motor sequences and keeping up with radically changing
directions (i.e. dance moves, sports activities).

13. I have trouble remembering the rules and keeping score during games (i.e.,
bowling, board games, sports games)

Additional Comments:

254
 APPENDIX C
MUSICAL EXPERIENCES SURVEY

Please answer the following questions:

1. Are you a vocalist?

2. Are you an instrumentalist?

3. What instruments do you play?

Please indicate whichever of the following statements that apply to you.

1. I struggle learning concepts of formal music education.

2. I have trouble reading music notation or sight-reading.

3. I have trouble understanding and reading rhythm.

4. It is hard to learn the fingerings required to play a musical instrument.

5. Memorizing music is easy for me.

6. I like to compose my own music or improvise.

Additional Comments:

255
 APPENDIX D
MEASURING SERIOUS LEISURE IN MUSICIANS

Please indicate the extent to which you identify with the following statements.

1. I overcome Strongly Moderately Mildly Mildly Moderately Strongly

musical Disagree Disagree Disagree Agree Agree Agree
difficulties
by being
persistent.
2. I try hard to Strongly Moderately Mildly Mildly Moderately Strongly
become more Disagree Disagree Disagree Agree Agree Agree
musically
competent.
3. I feel that I Strongly Moderately Mildly Mildly Moderately Strongly
have made Disagree Disagree Disagree Agree Agree Agree
musical
progress.
4. There are Strongly Moderately Mildly Mildly Moderately Strongly
defining Disagree Disagree Disagree Agree Agree Agree
moments in
which music
has
significantly
shaped my
involvement
in it.
5. Others that Strongly Moderately Mildly Mildly Moderately Strongly
know me Disagree Disagree Disagree Agree Agree Agree
understand
that music is
part of who I
am.
6. I share many Strongly Moderately Mildly Mildly Moderately Strongly
of my Disagree Disagree Disagree Agree Agree Agree
musical
groups’
ideas.

Please answer the following question:

I most identify as an: (a) professional/apprentice, (b) amateur, (c) hobbyist, or (d)
recreationist/dabbler.

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 APPENDIX E
INTERVIEW GUIDE

Personal and Educational Experiences

1. Tell me about your personal background.

2. When did you first learn about dyscalculia?

3. Have you ever been formally diagnosed with dyscalculia?

4. What is the hardest part of having dyslexia?

5. How does dyslexia impact your daily life?

6. Have you developed any strategies to overcome any challenges that have arisen as a
result of having dyscalculia?

7. What would you say are your biggest strengths?

8. When you think of your experiences with numbers and math in terms of your
education are there any vivid memories or experiences that come to mind?

9. When you reflect upon the time period and place in which these experiences
occurred, what stands out to you?

10. Are there any people in particular that played a significant role in these
experiences?

11. When you think about your present experiences with numbers and math presently,
what stands out to you?

12. Has your relationship with numbers and math changed over time?

13. Describe your thought process when you solve a math problem?

14. What thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations come to mind during this process?

15. Did having dyscalculia affect your career choices?

16. What do you want people to know about dyscalculia?

17. Are there any other experiences you would like to mention associated with
dyscalculia?

Musical Experiences

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1. Do you think there is a relationship between music and math?

2. When you think about your musical experiences are there any significant
memories or events that stand out?

3. In what ways did you participate in musical activities in school?

4. In what ways did you participate in musical activities outside of school?

5. When did you decide to study music?

6. Were there any particular people who influenced your decision?

7. What thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations come to mind that may have
influenced your decision?

8. What does music mean to you?

9. Why do you think music is important?

10. What thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations come to mind when you engage in
music making?

11. In what ways did your mathematical difficulties play a role in the way you learned
music? (i.e., sight-reading, music reading, learning to play an instrument etc.).

12. Have you developed any strategies in particular to help you when studying music?
(i.e., memorization, playing by ear, movement activities etc.).

13. Do you have any particular musical strengths?

14. In what ways do you currently engage in music making?

15. What do you want people to know about being a musician with dyscalculia?

16. Are there any other musical experiences you would like to mention associated
with music and dyscalculia?
 APPENDIX F
LIST OF FACEBOOK GROUPS

Group Name Participants

Accordion Music and Learning 1.4 K
Adults with Dyslexia 2.7 K
Alabama Musicians 1.7 K
Attention Deficit Disorder the Official Open Group 10.4 K
Band Directors 28.9 K
Bassoonists United 8.8 K
Boston Musicians Network 3.7 K
Chicago Musicians 8.5 K
Classical Musicians in Boston 1.8 K
Composers 21.2 K
Conductors Group 1.2 K
Disability Studies, Arts, and Education 300
Dyscalculia 8.4 K
Dyscalculia (Math Learning Disability) Research Group 117
Dyscalculia Support Group 2.7 K
Dysgraphia 8.3 K
Dyslexia 26.2 K
Dyslexia and Learning Disability Support Group 8.3 K
Dyspraxia Awareness 10.4 K
Eastern Iowa Musicians the Past to Present 598
Elementary Music Teachers 13.9 K
Euphonium 3.6 K
Female Musicians of New York State 311
Flute Forum 16.4 K
Georgia Musicians Network 3.4 K
Guitar 8.2 K
Horn People 17.9 K
I’m a General Music Teacher 18.1 K
Idaho Musicians 3.2 K
Iowa Musicians 356
Learning Disabled and Proud and the people who support them 3.0 K
Los Angeles Musicians 11 K
Maine Musicians 1.3 K
Maryland Musicians 963
Massachusetts Rock and Roll Musicians Network l 3.3 K
Middle School Band Directors 10.9 K
Middle School Band Directors Forum 2.1 K
Montreal Musicians Network 5.7 K
Music and Disability The SMT Interest Group and the AMT Study Group 329
Music Teachers 36.8 K
Musicians Unite Group 19.6 K

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Group Name Participants

New Mexico Musicians 1.1 K
Orchestral Percussion Talk 11.3 K
Overcoming Dyscalculia because Math Matters 1.8 K
Percussion 5.6 K
Pianists and Piano Lovers 63.1 K
Professionals with Dyslexia, Dysgraphia, Dyspraxia, Dyscalculia 1.0 K
Researchers in Music Education 4.1 K
Saxophone 16.5 K
Singers and Vocalists 85.0 K
Teaching Disability Studies 8.1 K
The Clarinet Channel 8.6 K
Vermont Musicians 2.6 K
Violinists 13. 5 K
Women Choral Conductors 2.9 K
Wyoming Musicians 467
 APPENDIX G
INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS

261
 APPENDIX H
RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL FACTORS

262
 APPENDIX I
JARED’S JOURNAL ENTRY

Musical Strengths, Weaknesses and potential Ways to Improve:

Strengths

• I enjoy playing by ear and being creative in that way.

• I am good at developing arrangements.
• I am good at blending textures and understanding musical mood
• I am a good listener
• I am good at using Dynamics
• I am stylistically aware because of the different styles of music and I have heard
growing up in the house.
• Passion before technique.
• Technique might help me become a better professional, but passion could help me
become a better artist!
Weaknesses
• Learning
• I can lack the technical skill to convey the sound in my head
• I have slow processing
• I find it hard to learn lots of music in a short amount of time
• I have a bad short term auditory and visual memory
• My short-term memory capacity is small so it can become overloaded quickly
• Practice
• Planning my practice session and executing it well.
• Time management
• Performance
• Following a conductor
• If I try to sight-read it can be hard if I am trying to count at the same time (nearly
impossible).
• I compare my musical ability against others too much
• I want to be liked for my musical ability
• Auditions or exams
• I don’t cope with pressure well
Ways to Improve
• Aural
• Study more aural based learning such as Batá/Samba as this will help with my bad
short-term auditory memory.
• When learning a new rhythm, try to put a mnemonic (words) to the rhythm quickly
in order to memorize the pattern.

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• Sing the rhythm I want to play then try singing rhythm and clapping the pulse.
• Go to Jam nights to help my listening skills!
• Practice
• Make plans in practice diary before/during/after each practice session in order to
stay on track with achieving goal.
• Record myself and analysis what could be improved
• Learning
• Score/Sight Reading:
• Visually mark the rhythms on the score with numbers to understand
• I need time to prepare due to slow processing
• Use a multi-sensory learning approach
• I need score (Visual) and Music (audio) in order to make full sense of what I am
trying to play.
• “The visual image has to be translated into a kinesthetic experience.”
• For any hard sections of songs – Isolate the rhythm I want to play and sing it first.
Once I can sing it, clap the pulse or stomp in time to it.
• Learn the song aka the melody in advance before the notation really helps!
• Sound before symbol
• Focused regular practice routine and lots of repetition is needed.
• I would probably be more creatively fulfilled working in a studio.
• For learning things in rehearsal – In order to commit new rhythms to long-term
memory try writing down a mnemonic phrase for the rhythm as quickly as possible.
 APPENDIX J
JARED’S DYSLEXIA AND DYSCALCULIA RESOURCES

British Dyslexia Association. (2018, January). Music and inclusive teaching: Information
from B. D. A.
https://cdn.bdadyslexia.org.uk/documents/Advice/Music/BDA_Music_informatio
n_booklet_REV_jan_2018.pdf?mtime=20190408173756Music.

Chinn, S. (2019). Maths learning difficulties, dyslexia, and dyscalculia. (2nd ed.). Jessica
Kingsley Publishers.

Eide, B.L., & Eide, F. F. (2011). The dyslexic advantage: Unlocking the hidden potential
of the dyslexic brain. Hudson St. Press.

Hornigold, J. (Host). (2018, April 20). Dyscalculia, traits and practical ways to help.
(16.) [Audio podcast episode]. In Dyslexia Explored. BulletMap Studio.
https://bulletmapacademy.com/dyscalculia/

ISM. (2017 March 31). Music & dyslexia- Definitions, difficulties, strengths, and
strategies [Video]. YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yx3KqfsTmsY&fbclid=IwAR3InN5rysHp_0
07Ddidu3hhhh1kMiJcetn_RFJfJF5B79JFKiuFLbm03Yw&ab_channel=ISM

Marshall, K. (2018). (Ed). Making music accessible: Teaching students with dyslexia
Accessible music teaching G=guide. ABRSM.
https://gb.abrsm.org/media/63918/making-music-accessible-teaching-students-
with-dyslexia.pdf

Orglethorpe, S. (2002). Instrumental music for dyslexics (2nd ed.). Whurr.

265
 APPENDIX K
CREATIVE SYNTHESIS PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
LIVED EXPERIENCE IN SOUND

The idea for this musical work emerged during numerous immersion and

incubation cycles, as I reflected on James’ early musical experiences. At this point, I saw

an image of a frustrated child sitting alone at a desk. This image was emphasized during

this process, I began to hear a descending motif in the key of E flat Major on the notes E

flat, D, and G. These three notes led to the creation of an initial theme in measures 1-8.

An essential component of a person’s musical development involves learning

scales. The scale in the left hand from measures 1-8 represents the fundamental

knowledge children gain in school as they learn to read, write, and perform arithmetical

calculations. I view this material as an introduction to a story. As this section evolves,

there is a slight accelerando. I conceptualize the next section form measures 9-16 as a

story unfolding as the learning process occurs. The plodding quarter notes in the left hand

represents the idea of struggle.

Measures 17-24 contain transitional material, which I felt gave the impression of

the vocalists who participated in this study. In measures 25 to 33, the block chords

building up throughout this section reflect Emily’s description of how it is difficult to

identify each note within a chord. She sees each note as a different color, which then

blurs together to create a different color. This idea is represented by the superimposed

chords in the left hand and right hand. The rhythmic pattern occurring in measure 25 – 32

gave the impression of guitar strumming depicting the sing-song writers in this study.

Measures to measure 42 emerged as improvisational material, which I interpret as

the participants’ utilization of coping strategies to find ways to achieve their goals. In this

section, the scalar passages become more complex, leading to the apex of the piece as the

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scale ascends to the B flat in measure 43. which represents the success the participants

ultimately achieved through hard work. Measures 44 to 50 begins with a variation of the

initial theme, which leads to the concluding measures 51-54 in which the initial motif

returns, and the E flat pedal dies away.

It should be noted that this piece was not developed created solely with

predetermined programmatic ideas in mind but was based on a combination of where I

felt the chord progressions needed to go, the subsequent notes I heard leading to the

development of new musical material, and the ideas and images that were reinforced as I

engaged in the creative process.

 APPENDIX L
MUSICAL COMPOSITION: LIVED EXPERIENCES IN SOUND

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