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EDITORIAL
Attending to the Skills of Attention

Eric Booth, Cofounder and Contributing Editor, The Ensemble; Cofounder, ITAC; Senior Faculty, AIM

06-03-2026

“Spotlight attention vs. lantern attention.” I first encountered this distinction in the work of the U.S. psychologist Allison Gopnick.

Spotlight attention means bringing full focus to a specific task. We develop this capacity over time, and we must!—it’s hard to succeed in life without the ability to focus well. Schooling is dedicated to developing this capacity: all those hours sitting at a desk and “paying attention” to information that rarely feels relevant; all those tests to measure spotlight skills.

New Open-Access Report: “Intercultural Resonances among Music Teachers”

 

 

02-04-2026

RESONANCES marked the completion of its multi-year research project with a new report published in English and Portuguese: “Intercultural Resonances among Music Teachers: Their Impacts on Practices and Teaching Methods.”

 

EDITORIAL
Universal Design for Learning: A Natural Fit for El Sistema-inspired Programs

Graciela Briceno, teaching artist and Foreign Service Officer, Accra, Ghana

10-02-2024

Imagine that you are walking up a staircase that leads to a school entrance, and you notice a sign that says, “ramp located at the back door.” Okay, so the sign and the ramp make the building technically accessible—but a person who can’t use stairs has to go all the way to the back of the building, locate the ramp, and hope that the door is open.

What if, instead of a staircase in front and a separate ramp in back, the architect had created a walkway that incorporates stairs and ramps all in one place?

This is the foundational metaphor of Universal Design for Learning, or UDL.

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