My Shameful Secret, and How I am Fixing It

Yesterday, I did something I haven't done in a really long time (alert - this is the shameful secret that I don't admit often). I opened the most recent Journal of Music Therapy. Can you believe it? I actually opened it up, but that's not all. I actually started to read it!! I don't read much research and feel that most of it doesn't really do anything for me as a clinician. That's such a center of shame for me as I usually put the unopened journals on the journal shelf without even looking to see what is in them. (Shame!)

Now, before I opened this edition, I had a plan in place. I was going to work on a project that I've been thinking about for a long time, trying to translate the research being done into my clinical practice. This is something that I don't think we do well for our clinical folks - making the research something that is very relevant to each of us who live in the day-to-day trenches of music therapy treatment. There should be a link between these two things - research and practice - but I don't often feel it.

The other side of this is practice to research. Of all of the music therapy researchers out there, the person who I feel personifies this the best is Dr. Michael Thaut. I think that he was able to take a research question and find out the reasons why things were happening in a clinical situation through his research (and ability to use machines to see inside the body and the brain that most of us do not have access to). He then was able to take the information that he found in his research and see how it worked within a clinical setting with clients. Full circle research to practice, practice to research. I wish more of us could do that.

So, the plan was to sit down, find something that had some relevance to my clients and clinical practice, and start my processing procedure. I had a movie going on the computer for background noise. I had a big glass of water. I was in the comfortable chair at work, and I started to open up the journal.

Boom!

Surprise! The entire journal edition is on Arts Based Research.

Momentarily stymied, I sat and looked at the Table of Contents.

"Well, this isn't going to work," I thought in some confusion, "It won't really be a 'research to my practice' type of thing." Then I started reading.

My process for reading research is to write notes, identify words that I need to look up, and to write down questions that I think of while I am reading. I use composition books, post-it-notes, and different handwriting styles while I am processing what's being said in the articles. At the end of the article, I look over the questions that I have, look up as many of the words as possible, and ponder what I've written. (Just in case you are wondering, pondering looks like staring into space.)

So, I started reading the JMT. It was interesting. I found some things that I could transfer into my own professional development. There hasn't been much yet about using arts based research or specific techniques to use with my clients, but those revelations may come.

It is my goal to finish reading the JMT by January 22nd. I have already learned lots about arts based research, but still don't really feel that it has much to do about my day-to-day existence. I will see if there is anything I can glean from this edition of the JMT for my own processing techniques. Off to read the second article.

I have opened the JMT. Next step? Go and open the other unopened journals on my journal shelf.