Aldona Vilkelienė, PhD, is a professor at the Education Academy of the Vytautas Magnus University (Lithuania). She has been active in advancing special and inclusive education as well as music therapy. She also carried out research in music therapy and gives lections for music therapy students at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre. For more than a decade, she has been leading the Alytus Music School.
For the past 30 years, her research has focused on the scientific problems of learning and training students with special educational needs, strategies and principles of inclusion and arts integration. She is the author of the following books: Opera, Integrated Education of Exceptional Children, Special Arts Pedagogy, Special and Inclusive Art Education, Some Aspects of an Intercultural Approach to Music Therapy.
Research conducted by prof. A. Vilkelienė and her presentations at the conferences in Cambridge, Paris, Vienna, Seoul presuppose a new model of artistic education for students with special educational needs, based on freely integral interaction of education as the emergence of spontaneous and structured communication in the inclusive classroom.