Music therapy students' reflections on their participation in a music therapy group

Abstract

Participation in Music Therapy Group (MTG) is an important component of the education and training of music therapists. The notion of participation in MTG has rarely been studied in terms of the students' perspectives on their experiences in such groups. Thus, the objective of this retrospective exploratory study was to analyze students' reflections on their participation in the MTG during the course of a year. Each one of the 13 music therapy students who were participating in the second year of an MTG that was led by the authors of this paper was asked to write three themes, limited to one page, describing the most important events of each session, and email them to the group leaders after each session. The data (from 13 sessions out of 22), which consisted of 169 reports, were analyzed qualitatively, using a modified version of grounded theory, and quantitatively, by comparing statistically the percent of references in each category. The qualitative analysis yielded two core categories: the ways and styles of participation in MTG. Four subcategories of ways of participation were found, which were talking, playing, observing, and vocal activity, as well as four subcategories for styles of participation, which were identifying with, silent participating, leading, and being a group child. The quantitative analysis revealed that some subcategories were correlated, and the number of times they occurred fluctuated during the course of the year. The possible significance of these findings for MTG is discussed.

Keywords:

• group dynamics
• group process
• improvisations
• music therapy
• styles of participation
• MTG
• music therapy training

Acknowledgment

We wish to thank our students who kindly permitted us to use their themes for this article.

Notes

Both authors contributed equally to this article.