A Field of Resonant Learning - abstract

A Field of Resonant Learning
Self-experiential Training and the Development of Music Therapeutic Competencies
- A mixed methods investigation of student experience and professionals’ evaluation of their own competencies

Abstract:

The study explored the phenomena of self-experience and personal therapy as part of music therapy training in Aalborg University from the student’s perspective. Secondly this phenomenon was contextualized professionally by describing how professional music therapists evaluate the influence of their former self-experiential training on their present professional competencies. The research questions was:

1) How do students experience and verbalize their learning processes, being in the client position, in the mandatory self-experiential training in the Aalborg Music Therapy program?

2a) How do music therapists trained in Aalborg evaluate their own clinical competencies and the impact of their prior self-experiential training on their clinical competencies?

2b) What is the relationship between what music therapy students experience and verbalize about their learning processes (as elicited in question 1), and how music therapists trained in Aalborg evaluate the impact of their prior self-experiential training on their clinical competencies?

The study used a mixed methods design, but the weighting of the study as a whole was qualitative. To answer the first research question, semi-structured qualitative interviews with nine students, and qualitative music analyses were conducted. The qualitative data collection was followed by a hermeneutic analysis and an art-based interpretation for each of the students, as well as a theoretical interpretation across data material were provided, applying the cybernetic psychology and theory of consciousness.

A descriptive analysis of results from an online survey-questionnaire provided material for answering question 2a. This lead to an overall qualitative discussion about the span between students and professionals in relation to self-experience, which gave answers to research question 2b.

The qualitative analysis of the students’ experiences gave insight into the learning processes and confirmed that a process of personal and professional growth takes place, through which the identity as music therapist begins to form. As a result of the vertical qualitative analysis an “improvisation narrative” was created for each student. The improvisation narratives were poetic and artistic small texts, which illustrated the diversity of music therapy students’ self-experience processes. Powerful polarities and moments of breakthrough in the narratives were common characteristics, and yet the narratives were individual “sculptures” as well, picturing a development for each student in which personal characteristics and uniqueness were cultivated.

According to the survey results, the conclusion was that self-perceived clinical competence was rated to be very high by the music therapists, and self-experiential learning was evaluated by the professionals to have an important and strong role in the development of specific clinical competencies.

The study showed how self-experience and practical-oriented training prepare students to go into the reality of clinical practice with a self-perceived capability to meet clients and their individual needs. The study also pointed out that learning through self-experience and personal therapy may bring the therapist to a more integrated and expanded personal complexity, because of which an advanced level of practice may be possible.