Project
Music therapy study
Purpose
To use music therapy to help young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties, and demonstrate the benefits
Funding
More than £60,000 from the Music Therapy Charity. It was also supported by the Institute of Education in London, Cottenham Academy and Anglia Ruskin University
Background
While the effectiveness of music therapy in younger children has been evaluated extensively, there is less research on its impact on older children and teenagers. Music therapist Philippa Derrington was keen to explore the benefits of music therapy for young people with emotional and behavioural difficulties and embarked on a research project at The Cottenham Academy in Cambridgeshire. The academy includes a special school – The Centre School – so Derrington could work with both pupils in specialist and mainstream secondary provision.
Action
Derrington worked with 22 students over nearly two years as part of a PhD at Anglia Ruskin University. She worked with pupils from across years 7, 8, and 9, split into two groups to allow her to compare and contrast results.
Each participant had 20 individual music therapy sessions in the academy’s “Music Therapy Garage”, which includes drum kits, guitars, percussion and microphones.
“Sessions were very much about actively making music,” says Derrington. “You have to put in a lot of energy. Afterwards, students who might normally have found it hard to open up were able to talk really openly.”
Outcome
A range of methods was used to observe changes in students involved in music therapy including the Beck Youth Inventories monitoring tool. Quantitative data was collected from students, teachers and school records at four different times during the study. Qualitative feedback was gathered via before and after interviews with pupils.
The study found music therapy had a positive impact on all 22 students who took part, with a 95 per cent attendance rate. Fifty-six per cent reported an improvement in their self-esteem while 58 per cent of the 66 teachers surveyed said they felt pupils’ social development and overall attitude to learning had improved after music therapy. Forty-one per cent of students said they felt they were socialising more as a result and 56 per cent of mainstream students who took part felt their concentration had improved.
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