Synthesis Sunday: Identity Formation and Adolescents - see the post for full reference

I spent a couple of insomnia hours this morning reading through my selected Synthesis Sunday article which comes to us from the most recent edition of Music Therapy Perspectives. I took my color-coded post-its and spent some time reading the article for the first time. I used my post-its and then collated them based on color (and on theme, of COURSE!).

I am now ready to get started organizing the things that I found on this first read-through. Here we go...

My system includes selecting four or five stacks of post-it notes (different colors) from my ever growing box o' post-its. I then assign a color to different aspects - the first is citations that are relevant; the second is quotations; the third is for thoughts or words I need to define; and the last is for takeaways from the study into my direct practice as a music therapist. Once I assign colors to each element of my reading, I start in, reading, taking notes, and using up those post-its.

So, here is the content-relevant part of this post.

The article I selected is from Music Therapy Perspectives, 37(2). The full citation is listed below (with apologies if I get some of the APA citation style wrong - I haven't bought the new version yet. I'm not really willing to pay 32 bucks for something that I don't use that often anymore...). I selected the article by Allison Echard, MMT, MT-BC on identity formation for adolescents in music therapy because it seems to be something that is directly relevant to my clinical life. I'm pleased to say that I learned some new stuff and have some clinical takeaways to contemplate. So, after this first read through, it seems to be a good choice for my foray into the world of research to practice contemplation.

I took my post-its and started out.

Here's a picture of what I ended up with after my reading. The orangish ones are the quotations, the CBMT ones are references, the blueish ones are questions and takeaways, and the purple ones are thoughts and words that I need to define. 

After this process, I start to organize thoughts and themes based on four different categories - starting with additional articles to read (Schwartz, 2008; Carpente, 2011; McFerran, 2011 - none of these are new to me, but I need to re-read them with this perspective) and other writings (Erikson, 1950 - not new to me either, but something to consider again; Marcia, 1993; Crocetti, Rubini, and Meeus, 2008; and Crocetti, 2017). This is one of the most valuable things about reading articles - the increased awareness of other ideas that helped to form the current investigation or inquiry. The next thing that I look for is the words that I need to define in order to fully understand what is going on. This article defined unfamiliar terminology pretty well, but there was one section where the quoted music therapist just seemed to be using as many big words as possible. I decided not to refer to any of that information because it seemed that the author (the quoted author) was getting paid by the letter rather than making an effort to be understood. [Oooh, that was really snarky, wasn't it?!?] I organize my thoughts and the quotations into content areas and then finish up with my takeaways and ramifications for current practice.


The next step is to transfer the post-it information into my format (yep, I have a format!) and then print it out for my reference book. I am going to do this next week, so there will be some more reading, note-taking, and thinking about this in the next several days.

Here is a bit of what interested me about all of this.

This article was mainly concerned with the concept of identity formation and offered many interesting ideas about how we establish our identities through and with music. There were some references to how the therapist worked with clients, but not enough for me! Sessions were focused on individual interactions rather than large group interactions (so not really something I can do in my current service delivery model), but there are transfers for my clinical practice. The main idea seemed to focus on a shift that took place in the therapist rather than anything else. Once the author (original one this time) realized that the clients' goals were different from that of the therapist's, the author was able to describe shifts in the therapeutic relationship that seemed to support the original idea. The format of autoethnography really made me think more about my interests which often focus on why we as therapists make the choices that we do in the midst of sessions. I could see a use for this sort of investigation in my own ideas, and I wish that I had known about it during my graduate school days.

I will formalize the post-it notes that I have collected into my form next Sunday. I am glad that I started with this article, and I am looking forward to solidifying my ideas about what the author identified as important to her.




Echard, A. (2019) Making sense of self: An autoethnographic study of identity formation for adolescents in music therapy. Music Therapy Perspectives, 37(1), 141-150.