Music, dance, theater and, in fact, all of the arts, can help special needs individuals improve certain of their skills through a combination of appropriately designed and properly aimed activities employed systematically. The Differentiated Didactic Approach to Teaching the Arts (D.D.A.T.A.) is a relatively new teaching approach in the field of Special Education, developed during the period 2012-2020. One of its main goals is to help Special Education professionals to teach persons with Intellectual Developmental Disorders (IDD) or Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) music, dance, and drama, thus cultivating their cognitive, emotional, mobility, expression, communication, social, and artistic skills. Its second key goal is to help teachers form art ensembles comprised solely of special needs individuals which, in turn, could work in harmony with ordinary art ensembles. The D.D.A.T.A. model provides individualized programs adjusted to each special needs person’s abilities; and creates the right, positive psychology and motives for all participants. The present article aims at presenting through D.D.A.T.A. those pedagogical and psychological folds that could improve the life of special needs learners by means of culture, self-knowledge, self-actualization, and the sense of belonging.

Speaker: Ioannis Makris

Published in: World Congress on Special Needs Education (WCSNE-2021)

• Date of Conference: 22-24 November 2021
• DOI: 10.20533/WCSNE.2021.0005
• ISBN: 978-1-913572-43-3
• Conference Location: Virtual (London, UK)