This article presents findings from a critical interpretive synthesis of the literature pertaining to music therapist teacher support. Descriptions of music therapists providing support to teachers were identified in 40 publications and subject to a process of critical interrogation. Through this process, three tensions were identified that had the potential to impact negatively on teachers’ sustainment of outcomes from the music therapist teacher support experience. These included the challenge of a prevailing focus on students rather than teachers, an underlying tension between descriptions of education and therapy, and a lack of teacher-driven learning intentions. Within the following paper we argue for a shift from a focus on the needs of students to the agency of teachers to maximise possibilities for achieving sustained outcomes from future music therapist teacher support programs. We further propose widening the scope of music therapist support in schools to better align with the professional role of teachers.
This article seeks to contribute a critical review on a selection of publications pertaining to the practices of music therapists working in schools. Within this publication the phrase “music therapist teacher support” has been used to refer to any instance in which the music therapist intended to impart knowledge, skills, or guidance to a teacher through their interaction. These programs have previously been framed in various ways, such as music therapy consultation, interactive therapeutic music skill-sharing, and community music therapy informed collaboration. The synthesised findings of this review are offered in response to three tensions that emerged from critical engagement with this body of literature. These tensions related to the focus, frame, and intended outcomes of the descriptions of music therapist teacher support in the publications reviewed.
The impetus for engaging in a critical reading of this body of literature emerged soon after the first author had joined the second and third authors in a research project labelled Building Schools Through the Arts (BuSTA) that was funded by the Australian Research Council. The project involved our team of music therapy scholars working with industry partners to explore factors that help and hinder the sustainability of school arts programs, specifically those with a wellbeing focus.
The team of BuSTA researchers began their investigations with the shared assumption
that school arts programs can contribute to a plethora of benefits for student
learning and wellbeing (
First author Meg
There is a long history of school-based music therapy practice across a range of
special education (
Music therapist teacher support typically involves the delivery of a short-term program in which the music therapist provides consultation and training to classroom or music teachers. The support offered by music therapists to teachers takes many varied forms and seeks to address a range of educational, developmental, therapeutic, and wellbeing related student needs. Music therapist teacher support has traditionally intended to develop teachers’ ability to use music with their students through the use of active music-making or music-listening activities.
The first descriptions of music therapist teacher support coincide with the advent
of antidiscrimination legislation in the late 20th century (
Supporting teachers through consultation programs was additionally suggested as a
way for music therapists to retain professional relevance and maintain
opportunities for employment alongside the movement of students with disabilities
to mainstream school settings (
More recently, McFerran and Rickson (
One often implicit intention of music therapist teacher support is that teachers
will not only develop their ability to implement musical engagements with their
students but that these outcomes will be sustained after the music therapist
leaves the school. Over the past decade, music therapists have written about the
importance of sustainable program design as an ethical aspect of short-term music
therapy projects in schools (
In general, however, sustaining outcomes for teachers through music therapist
teacher support programs has been shown to be a challenging undertaking. For
example, Coombes and Tombs-Katz (
Additionally, when reporting on four classroom teachers’ perceptions of the music
therapy consultation process they had facilitated, Rickson and Twyford (
One of an initial four school arts programs investigated in the BuSTA research was a
dance program facilitated by a teaching artist employed by one of the research
partners, The Song Room. The aim of the program was for the teaching artist to
introduce the students to dance while simultaneously supporting classroom teachers to
develop their ability to use dance activities as part of their own teaching practice.
DeWalt and DeWalt (
The dance program took place one day a week over two school terms at a large and culturally diverse primary school in the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Australia. The dance teaching artist worked with six groups of grades three and four students and their teachers. In the second half of the program the dance teaching artist worked to teach a choreographed song, dance and acting routines to each year level of students for performance at the whole school production.
We approached the research from a constructivist perspective as described by Lincoln
and Guba (
Finlay (
At the conclusion of the dance program, Meg conducted open ended interviews with five of the classroom teachers and two members of the school leadership team to capture more information about their experiences. At this point, only one of the five classroom teachers described being able to embed dance into their everyday classroom teaching practice.
Reflecting on the teachers’ words in light of her own experience allowed Meg to notice ways in which the program facilitator had focused the dance sessions on teaching the students rather than addressing the professional needs of teachers. She realised that an opportunity had been missed to get to know the teachers at the start of the program that seemed to limit their engagement. This missed opportunity appeared to have had a flow-on effect through planning and implementation stages of the program. Recognising that the program facilitator had forgone addressing the needs of teachers led Meg to contemplate that a consideration of the needs of teachers may have been similarly omitted from previous descriptions of music therapist teacher support. These understandings inspired a return to the music therapy literature with a critical lens to investigate the guiding question: How have teachers been described in publications referring to music therapist teacher support?
The method of critical interpretive synthesis initially described by
Publications were identified for review through an iterative process. Firstly, academic databases were searched for English language publications using a keyword combination of “music therapy” and “school/s”. In keeping with the intention to explore the representation of teacher support, any references that detailed a music therapist intentionally imparting knowledge or skills to a teacher through their interaction in a mainstream school setting were kept for review. It is acknowledged that not all of the papers included in this critical review used the same terms to describe the interaction between music therapist and teacher. However, for the purpose of clarity, within this critical interpretive synthesis, any publications that made mention of a music therapist intending to impart knowledge or skills to a teacher were categorised as “music therapist teacher support” and were reatained for interrogation.
Identified manuscripts included several papers in which the support relationship
between music therapist and teachers was suggested rather than described (
The process of analysis began with Meg reading back over field notes and interview transcripts from the dance program and identifying aspects that appeared to have helped or hindered teachers’ engagement and subsequent sustained development. These insights were used to create a series of questions to explore in the literature. Information from the 40 publications was extracted into a spreadsheet to respond to the questions noted in Table 1.
These initial questions formed two overlapping and intersecting foci of interrogation for extracting information from the publications. Firstly, Meg paid attention to the descriptions of teachers within the literature across the stages of the music therapist teacher support presented in the publications. In line with the critical perspective of this review, this process included being mindful of instances in which teachers were not described as well as instances where they were. Additionally, Meg explored explicit or implied descriptions of factors that appeared to either help or hinder teachers’ engagement in the process of providing support to teachers and any subsequent sustained outcomes.
Rather than attempting to exclude personal thoughts and feelings from the review, Meg
drew on personal responses to problematise the current presentation of music therapy
teacher support in schools and explore new ways of thinking. McFerran, Hense, et al.
(
The interpretive process of critically reflecting on the literature involved reading and re-reading each publication to obtain information and insights and developing new iterations of the initial questions listed in Table 1. For example, through responding to the questions in Table 1, Meg noticed that teachers did not appear to be the focus of the music therapy teacher consultation programs. This realisation led Meg to perceive a sense of discomfort about the way educative concepts such as curriculum were presented within the publications. A set of additional questions, presented in Table 2, was therefore developed to further interrogate the literature related to the use of language when planning for and evaluating programs. At this stage, the body of literature for this inquiry was widened to include publications that explored the presentation of educative concepts more generally, (as mentioned previously in the section above titled “identification of publications for review”). Once again, Meg explored explicit or implied descriptions of ways in which educative concepts were described, as well as ways in which these descriptions appeared to have related to factors that helped or hindered teachers’ engagement and sustained outcomes.
Initial Questions Used to Interrogate how Teachers were Described in the Literature
How were program intentions described? |
How were teachers described? | What were goals for teachers? | How did music therapists and teachers negotiate goals and program content? | How were teachers involved in program implementation? | What outcomes were described for teachers? | What appeared to help / hinder teachers’ engagement? |
What appeared to help / hinder sustained outcomes for teachers? | What is my embodied response? |
Additional Questions Used to Interrogate how Language Related to Program Planning and Evaluation was Presented in the Literature
How are the needs of the focus person / people presented? | How are student goals framed? | How are teacher goals framed? | How are outcomes described? |
After data had been extracted, a further iteration of analysis began by reflecting on responses to each question across the body of publications as a whole. This involved grouping our responses to each of the questions together and searching for commonalities, as well as further reflecting on the underlying assumptions that appeared to have shaped the construction of this body of literature. Through this process, three overarching tensions were identified that would be likely to impact negatively on teachers’ sustainment of outcomes from the music therapist teacher support experience. These tensions related to the focus of the program itself, the frame of student goals and intended outcomes for staff learning. These tensions are presented in synthesised form in the following section of this paper alongside a discussion of key learnings gleaned from reflecting on these findings.
The first major tension identified within this critical interpretive synthesis was
between the needs of the teachers participating in the music therapist teacher
support and the needs of their students. We noticed that, on the whole, in spite
of the intention to support teachers to develop outcomes from the process,
identifying the needs of teachers was not prioritised within music therapist
teacher support programs. When references to teacher needs were present, authors
tended to portray ways in which teachers were able to cope with challenging work
conditions, rather than strengths or personal experience with music. For example,
Coombes and Tombs-Katz (
Conversely, authors overwhelmingly described the identification of student needs
as the initial focus for their music therapy work with teachers. For example, when
writing about her music therapy school consultation protocol, Rickson (
Furthermore, the enduring initial focus on student needs perceived within the
literature seemed to have a direct impact on the experience of the participating
teachers. In one publication, Rickson and Twyford (
In a later publication, Twyford and Rickson (
To be empowered to feel and act in 'naturally' musical ways, and to not only maintain but develop their use of music, individual staff members might need the carefully planned support of a music therapy consultant, offered within a confidential consultation relationship, focused specifically on them, rather than the child (p. 133).
We agree with this statement and through critical reflection noticed that ways in which the focus of teacher support was depicted within this body of literature did not always appear to be compatible with the needs of participating teachers.
With further immersion in the literature, it also became clear that very few
publications explicitly detailed ways in which teachers even volunteered to
participate in the music therapist teacher support process. In their description
of a music therapy program exploring music therapy for grief and loss with
students in Ireland, McFerran & Hunt (
Several authors of more recent publications reviewed have suggested that building
strong positive relationships with school staff members (
Some authors describing music therapist teacher support programs explained that
music making needed to take place out of the classroom as the musical activities
were either too noisy (
Many authors alluded to the difficulty of engaging in ongoing conversations with
teachers due to time constraints faced by both teachers and music therapists. When
outlining a community music therapy approach to teacher support, McFerran and
Rickson (
Through questioning the initial focus of music therapist teacher support programs we do not wish to imply that the needs of teachers are somehow more important than the needs of students, or that the needs of students and teachers are not interconnected within a classroom setting. However, it is proposed that the order in which music therapists focus on the needs of teachers and students should differ depending upon who is the intended primary recipient of the music therapists’ support. When the intention is to provide support to teachers so they may sustain outcomes from the music therapy program, we argue that the primary focus is the teacher. Focusing directly on the teacher is then more likely to result in sustained practices and benefits. Students also stand to greatly benefit from a shift in focus.
The second major tension identified through this critical interpretive synthesis was between use of therapeutic and educative frames for planning and evaluation. One commonly understood aspect of music therapist teacher support was that a music therapist partners with teachers to set goals for students based on an assessment of students’ needs. The music therapist then supports the teacher to address these goals through music making, regularly evaluating progress and changing goals as needed. However, through critically reading the literature we noticed that framing student goals as therapeutic seemed to restrict the potential for effective collaboration with teachers and subsequent sustained teacher outcomes. Furthermore, we identified that student goals set by music therapists did not always appear to align with teachers’ professional obligations.
Several authors have differentiated between educative and therapeutic frames for
the student goals set within descriptions of music therapist teacher support. For
example, Bunt (
This distinction between therapeutic and educational goals for students was often
also acknowledged through comparing music education and music therapy programs.
Some authors described a certain level of overlap between music education and
music therapy yet proposed that each discipline had its own unique goals for
students (
A further illustrative example of the differences between frames for goals used by
music therapists and teachers was presented in a comparison of outcomes from two
drumming groups addressing a school violence prevention initiative (
Furthermore, it seemed that some authors prioritised their own therapeutic agendas
to further the profession of music therapy which served to limit their ability to
effectively collaborate with teachers. For example, Woodward (
Naming a tension between therapeutically and educatively framed goals within this literature base is not intended to imply a hierarchical relationship between therapy and education, nor suggest that setting therapeutically oriented goals for student growth is not a valuable and much needed intention for music therapy programs in schools. However, in rejecting the assumption that student needs must be prioritised over teacher needs, working with teachers to set educationally framed learning intentions for their students is vital. Furthermore, supporting teachers to set educatively framed student learning intentions is expected to contribute to teachers’ sustainment of developments from the music therapist teacher support program after it has ceased.
In her book about music therapy group work in special education, Goodman (
Music therapists who feel challenged by the prospect of supporting teachers to set
educationally framed student learning intentions are encouraged to develop their
knowledge of therapeutically oriented and critical approaches to education.
Indeed, Mitchell (
One of the key aspects of a teachers’ professional role involves the education of students related to the relevant curriculum framework. Engaging in this critical review allowed the identification of some challenges with the current understandings of the educative concept of “curriculum” presented in the body of literature.
Some publications outlined ways in which session goals could be aligned with music
curriculum (
In her chapter about the possible forms of music therapy service delivery, Johnson
(
We realised through reflecting on language used to describe planning and evaluation in the music therapist teacher support literature that music therapists could benefit from a greater knowledge of curriculum. In particular, it would likely be helpful for music therapists to deepen their understanding of the relevant curriculum framework in their own setting. This knowledge would likely assist them to support teachers to develop educatively framed student learning intentions to address in their work together.
Reconceptualising the primary aims of music therapist teacher support as assisting
teachers with their task of educating students led us to critically re-examine
descriptions of teacher learning goals presented in the literature. This
investigation revealed that learning goals for staff almost always related to
skill development to address identified student needs rather than the professional
learning needs of the teachers. When writing about facilitating in-services for
teachers, Heine (
Again, this is not to suggest a hierarchical relationship between teacher and student needs in which one is prioritised at the expense of the other. Rather, it is advised that working alongside teachers to set professional learning intentions within music therapist teacher support programs may potentially mitigate the challenges reported within the literature of teachers not being able to sustain outcomes from their interaction with the music therapist.
As previously outlined, many authors commented that teachers found it difficult to
sustain gains in their ability to use music with their students after the program
had ended. However, there were some positive additional sustained outcomes
described in the literature. McFerran, Crooke, and Bolger (
Another powerful sustained outcome presented in several publications was that the
music therapist teacher support programs exposed staff members to other ways of
seeing and being with students. Some authors reported that the music therapist
teacher support programs provided an alternative framework for understanding a
child with additional needs (
These outcomes caused us to consider ways in which outcomes described from music
therapist teacher support programs could be aligned to outcomes reported in the
professional learning literature. For example, authors have described the way that
teacher professional learning programs can also result in improved student-teacher
relationships (
This proposition is not intended to prohibit music therapists supporting teachers’ ability to use music in their classroom. Rather, this recommendation intends to honour the agency of teachers as professionals. Placing emphasis on teacher-driven learning may in turn assist music therapists in ensuring that music therapy interventions are supportive of the needs of teachers, who may then better support the needs of their students.
Several pertinent possibilities for future directions in music therapist teacher support
emerged from this critical interpretive synthesis on the literature. It appeared that
the initial assessment of student needs often prohibited music therapists from
addressing the needs of teachers in a way that might lead to sustained outcomes from the
process. This overall finding echoed the words of Coombes (
Indeed, it became clear as the project progressed that the tension between providing a satisfactory training experience for staff and at the same time ensuring that clients were also catered for was an enormous challenge. In hindsight perhaps more time spent with the trainees helping them devise activities might have stimulated the emergence of a more culturally and contextually specific programme (para. 71).
Critically reviewing these publications has also led us to grasp that an advisable aim for music therapist teacher support is to provide teachers with help to meet their professional obligation of educating children rather than attempting to provide teachers with the skills to use music therapeutically. Therefore, the first recommendation from this critical interpretive synthesis is to focus on the agency of teachers when aiming to build sustained teacher skills through music therapist teacher support programs.
By paying attention to the depiction of teachers in this review, a number of processes that may assist music therapists in engaging in future music therapist teacher support programs were identifed. These processes include ensuring that the teachers volunteer for participation, are respected for the time pressures they are experiencing, and consider teacher-preferred strategies for music making. Furthermore, it is recommended that music therapists consider collaborating with teachers to:
Shift the initial focus to teachers and conduct a strengths-based and contextual assessment of teachers’ professional learning needs
Support teachers to set their own professional learning intentions and
Collaborate with teachers to set student learning intentions in line with the appropriate curriculum framework.
Teachers may then be supported to address student learning intentions (through facilitating music related to the appropriate curriculum framework) while addressing their own professional learning intentions.
This review also confirmed what Rickson alluded to as a gap in the training of music
therapists to be able to work sensitively when providing support to teachers (
This paper presents the findings of a critical interpretive synthesis that explored the representation of teachers in literature pertaining to music therapist teacher support programs. Through this process, we noticed that a lack of attention to the needs of teachers appeared to impact on the sustainment of outcomes from such programs. We also perceived a discrepancy between commonly described intentions for teachers’ development and descriptions of positive outcomes from music therapist teacher support. Working towards teacher-identified professional learning intentions may assist music therapists in facilitating programs in ways that support teachers to sustain outcomes after the music therapist ceases working with the teacher. This has the potential to positively impact students in a sustained manner.
Enacting this shift in practice necessitates music therapists developing knowledge about the professional obligations of teachers in their context so that they may support teachers to set student goals in line with educational legislation. The findings of this critical interpretive synthesis suggest exciting potential for music therapists working in schools to support teachers with their professional learning needs, so that they may in turn better support their students. The recommendations that emerged from this critical interpretive synthesis of the literature are not offered to diminish the value of music therapists striving to address the immense needs of students in the current day educational climate. Rather, it is expected that through paying greater attention to the needs of teachers, music therapists will be well placed to support teachers to sustain developments in their own teaching practices for the benefit of both teachers and their students.
Meg Steele is a Graduate Researcher at the University of Melbourne exploring music therapist teacher support programs. Meg is a music therapist and teacher with interest in supporting teachers to develop their use of creative and inclusive teaching practices. Meg is also passionate about the continuing professional development of music therapists, and the use of music in self-care.
Dr Alexander Hew Dale Crooke is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. He is a transdisciplinary researcher who works across the fields of music therapy, social science, adolescent mental health, music education and cultural studies. His current research agenda centres on the benefits and challenges of school-based arts programs, focusing on issues of psychosocial wellbeing, research methodology, policy and contemporary youth culture.
Dr Katrina Skewes McFerran is Professor and Head of Creative Arts Therapy at The University of Melbourne. She is a music therapist and researcher with a deep interest in music and young people in a range of educational, medical and community contexts. She has written a number of books, including: Creating Music Cultures in the Schools (Barcelona Publishers) with Daphne Rickson.
Meg is the first author, and the PhD Candidate involved in this research. We have chosen to use her name to ensure that her presence is reflexively noted in the text. This PhD research is supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.
In the Australian context, the term “mainstream” is used to refer to a non-special education school setting. All students who reside in the local area are welcomed to enrol in a mainstream school.
Ethical approval for undertaking data collection for this study was granted by the University of Melbourne humanities and applied sciences human ethics sub-committee (Project 1545449.4) and Catholic Education Melbourne Analysis, Policy & Research Team (Project 2165).