I have been having some good conversations with colleagues recently about research in music and related disciplines. During this year I have been engaged in the opening stages of a research project based on what music therapists (at various stages of their professional lives) think about the place of research in a clinical training, and it has been fascinating to share ideas with others on this topic.
What constitutes research in practice-based and creative subjects is of course open to a wide and sometimes controversial range of interpretations, as is well known to academics trying to complete their university research assessment exercises (or Performance-Based Research Fund PBRF as it is known in New Zealand). Debates have been well-advanced in Europe and America about allowing music, dance and drama performance and creative acts of painting, installations, design, music composition, poetry and theatre to stand as research in their own right and ongoing discussion happens (in our country at least) about the nature of any writing or reflection that accompanies the creative work. Should it be measured in word length? What weighting should it have in proportion to the creative/practical work? Is it the measure of critical thinking (a crucial factor in postgraduate work) or is this also displayed within the practical and creative components? Should it be required at all, for example in composition, which is after all, also a form of writing? Some composers in our faculty are still arguing for the potential of all-music-no-words in higher degrees in composition.
While it may be easier for music therapists, than for other practical musicians, to see the place of written material in our practice and training (given that reporting on and sharing our knowledge with others in words is critical within multidisciplinary teams and within our discipline as a whole) I was also struck recently in watching graduating students undertake assessments of practice, that there is real beauty, poetry and critical thinking present in the act of an emerging clinician really grasping what their subject is about. They have learnt to question, test hypotheses, work rigorously with a client, reflect, establish and negotiate appropriate goals, find creativity in the shared moment, make a wonderful object together, and through this, allow the client to fulfill his or her potential. Encouraging this magnificent process is so important to the growth of music therapy, and probably what prospective students think they are coming to do. Undertaking a written research study alongside can be challenging for all – it takes huge time and concentration in the second year of a masters' programme. Does our beautiful and magnificent process get endangered as a result? Are students so busy calculating, planning, reflecting, measuring, and writing that they lose touch with the deeply human personal process they were aiming to practice? ("They can write about it, but can they DO it?", as a pioneer music therapy friend wryly commented to me some years ago.) I should acknowledge that I am playing devil's advocate a little here, as I have been very committed - like most of my international colleagues - to the development of research within music therapy training; but I keep feeling the dilemmas as we wrestle with the imperative to facilitate the needs of the evidence base and academic clout whilst also nurturing good safe practitioners.
To return then to these conversations with colleagues. Some fellow lecturers and research students came to a Music Forum I was involved in presenting in October, at the New Zealand School of Music and one issue we debated was whether everyone involved in music study should be expected to undertake research? One senior staff member felt it was only realistic to expect some people to become researchers. She observed that in recruiting musicians to academic posts they tended to be strong either in the practical "executant" field or in the theoretical/research field and rarely confident in both. However a colleague in ethnomusicology observed that in his branch of music, there was really no division between research and practice. The discipline is imbedded in enquiry about peoples of the world and their music and if you are an ethnomusicologist, you do both! This moved into a discussion about what constituted research in music? A musicologist, studying aesthetic theory, was indignant that reflecting on one's own performance of a Beethoven sonata might constitute research. Research, he felt, was relating to "all that has gone before" and that imbedded in the definition of research was the relationship to an existing body of knowledge. A qualitative study of personal experience of practice (music therapy, performance of an instrument, a painter's journey with their art form) would probably not make the grade here. Action research, where an practitioner identifies "problems" in her practice and endeavours to facilitate reflection and change in the work would also fall short of this definition.
Another musicologist brought an interesting development to discussion by thinking- out-loud about where musicology fell in this debate. He mused that having a slightly blurry distinction between research (or theory) and practice (or performance) was often an advantage. Writing a programme note, undertaking a pre-performance talk and playing your instrument all used aspects of research and practice, and dipping between those processes was of great advantage to musicians engaged in the work of thinking about their art. Finally Daphne, my music therapy colleague, wondered if we might need to make a distinction between Big R research and little r research in our definition process: Big R meaning the funded studies and major research degree projects and little r meaning an enquiring and critical thinking process that could underpin many levels of teaching and practice. As a seminar group we could certainly agree that exposure to research process – and developing research awareness or research- mindedness in music students at all levels was highly desirable for our institution. We remained more divided and uncertain as to whether Big R Research should be a requirement for all.
So what implications does this kind of discussion have for music therapy? Firstly, it was good to be reminded of issues of definition for the concept of research and that there might be different ways to fulfill research requirements for higher degrees. (For example it may be useful to articulate both little r and Big R components within training.) It was also interesting to see how musicology and ethnomusicology interpreted the distinctions (or lack of them!) between research and practice and to think about instances where a practical activity can have intrinsic research elements. As the discussion developed, I felt proud of the growing discipline of music therapy research, particularly for the way it has drawn on a great range of interdisciplinary research practices (as witnessed in Wheeler's 2005 edited text and the increasing numbers of research articles internationally). Music therapy has important contributions to make back to other areas of music study through its range and specificity of research. Finally, it was very reassuring to see that other musical practitioners, artists and scholars grapple with similar problems in bringing together practical work, art and research and that sharing solutions can be fruitful.
My own personal solution so far to some of the dilemmas encountered in building research into music therapy training, has been to hold on to the link points between research processes and music therapy practice. For example:
However, other conversations that began to develop with colleagues at the XII World Congress in Buenos Aires, July 2008, as I started to gather my own research data, made me realize that music therapists have found many interesting and varied ways to integrate research into clinical learning. I have a lot to learn! Psychology of music enquiry, annotated bibliography, clinical audit, intriguing exercises to practice simple aspects of research skill and developing research literacy in gradual ways have been developed by international colleagues, and I look forward to finding out more about some of these strategies as I progress with my study. In the meantime I would like to thank my music therapy colleagues in Argentina, and my work mates at the New Zealand School of Music for the help they have given me in recent discussions. Passionate conversation in the area of your research topic, sharing ideas and problem solving, is so stimulating and comes with my highest recommendation.
Sloboda, J. (1988). Plenary Discussion. In S. Hoskyns (Ed.), The Case Study as Research. Proceedings of the 4th Music Therapy Research Conference. London: City University.
Wheeler, B. (2005). Music Therapy Research. 2nd Edition. Gilsum: Barcelona.
Hoskyns, Sarah (2008). Conversations about Research and Practice in Music Therapy. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 08, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=colhoskyns171108