I Got Nothing to Synthesize...
I've really turned away from the habit of reading for professional enrichment lately. I got a bit too sucked in by the stories of trauma in my current reading, so I've been avoiding all professional reading. This is ridiculous, so I am going to stop beating myself up over it, and find something else to read that I'll be able to process a bit more easily (i.e., without secondary trauma or compassion fatigue).
This is a process that I took up a couple of years ago to enrich my understanding of research in my field. I chose Sunday (merely because of the alliteration!) to be my day of pulling together the things that I read about into my practice of music therapy. It is a labor, at times, but it is a labor of love. See, I believe that a good music therapist is one who knows what is happening in the research world and strives to enrich his or her comprehension of that world through reading, writing, and integrating what is appropriate into practice.
In my opinion, it is that last element, integration of knowledge from research into practice, is the one that is often missing in learning about research in our music therapy educations. I know that it was neglected in mine. Sure, we learned about research, we had to do research, we did countless literature reviews, but everything we learned was directed towards how to do research - not really about how to use research to deepen our understanding of what our clients were doing in our practice. That's the part I am figuring out now.
I have a procedure. I have a way that I read textbooks and research articles, and I use it occasionally (probably not as much as I should as I have countless volumes of the Journal of Music Therapy and Music Therapy Perspectives that are still in their plastic sleeves) to gather more information about this profession.
I try.
I really do, but my population is not one that many music therapists research, so EVERYTHING I read has to be synthesized into possibilities that always have caveats - "this would work, except..." - lots of work. So, all this to simply restate that I have not been doing anything Synthesis Sunday themed lately.
Time to choose a textbook to read (I like texts better than articles). So, I go over to my music therapy text shelves to select something to read...
That was easy. I went to my shelves and this text jumped out at me - Music, Therapy, and Early Childhood: A Developmental Approach by my friend, Elizabeth Schwartz. I read this book when I first bought it from Barcelona Publishers, but it has been some time ago, so I will read this again.
Now, I do not work in early childhood primarily, so there will be some need to do my transfer stuff from this population into my own setting, but the developmental aspect is one that I truly find to be valuable in my setting working with kids with I/DD and trauma histories. I will be reading this over the next several Sundays, and I'll write about it when I can. I hope that you join me in this reading and this synthesis.
Now it is time to label this a Synthesis Sunday post and get going.
See you next week!
Schwartz, E. (2008). Music, therapy, and early childhood: A developmental approach. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.
This is a process that I took up a couple of years ago to enrich my understanding of research in my field. I chose Sunday (merely because of the alliteration!) to be my day of pulling together the things that I read about into my practice of music therapy. It is a labor, at times, but it is a labor of love. See, I believe that a good music therapist is one who knows what is happening in the research world and strives to enrich his or her comprehension of that world through reading, writing, and integrating what is appropriate into practice.
In my opinion, it is that last element, integration of knowledge from research into practice, is the one that is often missing in learning about research in our music therapy educations. I know that it was neglected in mine. Sure, we learned about research, we had to do research, we did countless literature reviews, but everything we learned was directed towards how to do research - not really about how to use research to deepen our understanding of what our clients were doing in our practice. That's the part I am figuring out now.
I have a procedure. I have a way that I read textbooks and research articles, and I use it occasionally (probably not as much as I should as I have countless volumes of the Journal of Music Therapy and Music Therapy Perspectives that are still in their plastic sleeves) to gather more information about this profession.
I try.
I really do, but my population is not one that many music therapists research, so EVERYTHING I read has to be synthesized into possibilities that always have caveats - "this would work, except..." - lots of work. So, all this to simply restate that I have not been doing anything Synthesis Sunday themed lately.
Time to choose a textbook to read (I like texts better than articles). So, I go over to my music therapy text shelves to select something to read...
That was easy. I went to my shelves and this text jumped out at me - Music, Therapy, and Early Childhood: A Developmental Approach by my friend, Elizabeth Schwartz. I read this book when I first bought it from Barcelona Publishers, but it has been some time ago, so I will read this again.
Now, I do not work in early childhood primarily, so there will be some need to do my transfer stuff from this population into my own setting, but the developmental aspect is one that I truly find to be valuable in my setting working with kids with I/DD and trauma histories. I will be reading this over the next several Sundays, and I'll write about it when I can. I hope that you join me in this reading and this synthesis.
Now it is time to label this a Synthesis Sunday post and get going.
See you next week!
Schwartz, E. (2008). Music, therapy, and early childhood: A developmental approach. Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.
Comments
Post a Comment