The Value Of Personal Group Music Therapy In The Training Of Music Therapists

A Research Project funded by the National Appeal for Music Therapy, UK in association with the British Society for Music Therapy and Anglia Polytechnic University.

Elaine Streeter, July 1999

The aims of this project were:
i) to understand which components of experiential group music therapy have proved in the long and short term to be of most benefit to music therapists and trainee music therapists, and
ii) to look at the difference between how group music therapy is valued during training as compared with the way in which it is valued after training, i.e. in retrospect.

Conclusion:
The results of the student questionnaires returned (a small number), showed a very high evaluation of music therapy training groups, indicating that almost all of them valued aspects of their experience highly and found it relevant throughout their course.

Working therapists clearly continued to value their past learning experience in relation to their present professional work. A larger proportion of those who valued it differently (after they had concluded their participation in the group) and had started working, valued it more highly in retrospect than they had at the time.

Research Projects