Propuesta de Parque Museo Humano San Borja / Santiago

Description of sub-theme:

Participants identified how certain tasks were brought into the foreground at different periods in music therapy Masters’ education to assist learning and to help manage the complex practice-research environment. This theme had a particular relevance to the function of motifs in the opera outlined at the outset of the chapter. Educators chose to put into the foreground some aspect, and give space from others (as in Debussy’s score where we become especially aware of a particular motif, texture, colour and sound from the orchestra to emphasise meaning). A variety of strategies for ‘foregrounding’ were described by the music therapists and students in the study.

The simplifying of the tasks, and foregrounding of one thing at a time was a strategy observed and highlighted by the senior student at Site KT. She reported on a conversation with a supervisor where the staff member has said “Oh, so now you're a real researcher 'cause you're not doing the music

therapy as well," and she suddenly realised that it was helpful that her role was simplified: “…and I was like, "Oh yeah, I'd never really considered that it can be quite beneficial to come in and just sort of step into that researcher role rather than have to grapple with the complexities of ‘these are also your clients." (Abby 527-529)

Two programme directorsin Group-BA from Europe and USA identified two different strategies for bringing to the foreground particular processes in research-practice learning. One of these was to offer a research learning assignment where the students developed a project and research proposal based on a hypothetical topic (but that could happen in real life practice) so they went through all the necessary processes and developed their thinking and concepts, but did not undertake the study. The practice was in the background at this point. Both lecturers had tried this, and found it useful to prepare students for following ‘real’ projects. A second strategy was to focus a final research assignment very particularly on the process of writing for journals, and the task of presenting work for publication, (rather than the process of writing up a thesis for the university)

… the way they write it up, that’s not a thesis, they choose a journal and they prepare, their findings as a journal paper. And then they submit it to the journal, so that along the way we

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teach them a whole process of how to read the journals, and how to understand what a refereed journal is, how to present to a refereed journal, what you might get back and then

how to respond to that….’ (Hannah 348-352)

Perhaps this was a different sort of ‘spotlighting’ but it created a strong connection with what students read (and how to base their research within a body of knowledge) and what they produced in their university assignments had a real-life practice relevance and the traditional focus of a Masters’ thesis (the usual research stepping stone in most disciplines) was in the background or superseded. This was an example also of a specific integrating strategy on the part of the educator, devising a task that brings the allied health practice world and the learning process about research into close association.

Reviewing documentation of course modules at Site FV and interviews with clinical and research lecturers revealed some interesting ‘highlighting’ strategies to particular research and practice skills that fitted with the particular strength of location within a health research rather than music

department. One particular module discussed by the team concentrated on ‘evaluation of clinical practice’, and included various approaches to audit of clinical work, developing evaluation strategies which could then lead to research. The module was building on a generic first-year module for the health faculty on evidence-based practice, and provided students with example strategies for creating ‘evidence’. One lecturer said:

…what we have done is try to reduce the scope so that the people will produce primarily evaluative studies. People actually aren’t doing research on the Masters’ now they are doing evaluations, service evaluations, which is much more practically relevant and may be very useful in job creation. (Anna 349-351)

The modules were still being refined and worked on at the time of my visit in 2010, but students that year were undertaking two assignments for the module, one a critical appraisal of a method to evaluate their practice, and second a musical analysis of work drawn from practice. In each case the work related directly to their experience with patients, but isolated a particular evaluation task, rather than engaging in a full research project. The complexity was thus reduced and one aspect could be examined and ‘rehearsed’. It was notable here as in Group-BA that lecturers had an eye on making the assignments relevant to future work as registered practitioners, by encouraging familiarity with clinical audit. Integration of research and practice was observed in both examples.

Another different way of actively simplifying the work that students didwas described in detail by another Site KT researcher & clinical supervisor. Instead of taking away the clinical component, the student and supervisor worked together on building clinical record-keeping which became a form of research, dovetailing the clinical and research activities into one thing. (In the Pelleas opera analogy, this could be seen as both motifs being superimposed or ‘played together’.) This streamlined the work

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done on placement and used it as a basis for the research activity. The supervisor noted that she had to find a willing student who was interested in this but how valuable that joint process became, for building clinical understanding and research-wise for finding a really relevant research tool for them both as practitioners.

…when we thought of writing this, there were prongs to how we thought it could contribute,

or at least in my mind and the student agreed. And one prong was looking at (a clinical challenge – how to behave on placement), the other prong was a method, a research method and what was emerging for me was ways of thinking about how research practice was done. … that is, you can research your own practice and you can also be working as partners - in researcher/practitioner partnerships – where you help the practitioner to research (their own

work) …’ (Alex 578-585)

(This example was also coded as an example of the inspiration of collaborative practice in section 4.2.7)

The approach described above from Site KT was complemented by another process initiated in Group-E, which could be considered as a kind of integrating attitude to the whole curriculum. As in the previous example, linked to the musical frame of Pelleas, it could be a kind of superimposing of motifs) Group-E’s interesting variation on the integration of teaching approaches in practice and research, here viewed them as one and the same thing. One of the researcher-lecturers outlined their approach not to teach ‘research skills’ so specifically as a module, but weaving the idea of a curious or researching approach to practice throughout the courses taught from the outset of training:

[We try to have] …let’s call it a principle of reflective, integrative practice that then refracts

through the different skill-sets. So that might be personal assimilation, that actually you know how as a person with your own tendencies and qualities, that you’ve changed how you see yourself and how you’re able to engage in the total work (working with people, working with music, working with ideas, working with critical thinking)- how that goes? Then, in terms of tacit practices that are involved with each of those. Then involved with actual specific thinking skills, and how that is one ongoing flow, really (Eddie 446-452)

Lecturer Quentin added to this by emphasising that the aim was to really encourage students to “actually use the academic seminars as a place to explore something”.

There were some other solutions that this team demonstrated, for example:

a) Organising the order of the curriculum so that something was in the foreground for a period. (Bella, Helena, Beatrice)

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b) Making the research assignment shorter, more focussed and timing it not to coincide with other (clinical) elements too much (Beatrice and Helena)

However the senior student also noticed that perhaps it was valuable to practise negotiating the multiple layers:

I guess if it's part of the profession then probably having a course that makes you do that sets you up really well to do it. We're probably, by the end of the course we'll probably just be used to doing all those different bits and pieces that probably are part of music therapy work anyway, so. (Abby797-801)

She also recognised that her lecturers modelled the management of this complexity with their energy and interest. (If they were managing it with excitement, why not the student?) What the staff members were passionate about created a particular focus and a starting point and “…you just kind of hook onto

that enthusiasm I guess”. (Abby 941-2)