Routledge Addressing Issues of Mental Health in Schools through the Arts: Teachers and Music Therapists Working Together (Routledge Research in Arts Education)

This book outlines how teachers, music / arts therapists and teacher trainers have engaged in participatory action research to facilitate regular group music listening and improvisational music making with children and young people in their classrooms, highlighting its impact in addressing issues of mental health and providing social and emotional access to learning. The book includes examples of classroom practice, evidencing how safe, inclusive and interactive music making can stimulate experiences that alter children and young people’s moods, enhance their social skills and enable their connectivity with each other and with learning. It describes participatory action research approaches that support inter professional learning between teachers and music / arts therapists. Five narrative accounts of classroom episodes provide a basis for continuing reflection and critical theorising about young people’s relational health and sensory engagement. The book explores outcomes from non-verbal dialogic interaction and attachment focussed practices. It advocates new forms of rights respecting professionalism. Providing new frameworks with which to enhance the wellbeing of vulnerable children and young people in classroom settings, the book will be important reading for researchers and students in the fields of inclusive education, music / arts therapy and teacher training. The contents are significant for practitioners looking to support children and young people’s recovery and reconnections in the classroom. Review "This volume reports on a unique and ambitious project and many years of innovative work in integrating therapeutic and musical pedagogies, working with young people facing challenges in their lives. What Nick Clough and Jane Tarr have achieved through their collaborations with colleagues across Europe is a remarkable set of insights into the power of music and arts therapy in addressing the needs of young learners. The work is rigorous and underpinned by excellent scholarship, and also includes a set of fascinating complementary materials prepared by their colleagues. The book will certainly be invaluable to those specialists working in the field but will also inspire other teachers, psychologists and anyone who has an interest in links between therapy and arts education." Ian Menter Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education, University of Oxford, UK, Former President of the British Educational Research Association "So often in music education we value aspects of practice we don’t have the language to express. This book, by re-seeing music education through a creative / therapeutic lens, allows us to ‘go beyond’ existing understandings and language limitations to reconsider music’s role in relation to young people’s mental health. It therefore creates significant opportunities for teachers and teacher educators to critically reflect on how we are in the classroom, who our young people are and what they need. Of particular significance are discussions of whole group music making for relational health, the role of non-verbal interactions, the importance of communicative musicality to enable creative attachments, the role of improvisation, and rethinking what we mean by safety in the music classroom. This book, easily accessible through its graphics and descriptions of musicing, gives all involved in music education a very much needed justification to discuss, do and think differently about music education and young people’s mental health." Dr Carolyn Cooke, Music Education Tutor, Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies, School of Education, Childhood, Youth & Sport, The Open University, UK "This thought-provoking book has come just at the right time when music and the arts are seemly undervalued and concerns about the mental health and wellbeing of children are at an all time high. Running throughout is the importance of teachers’ actions and reflections in providing safe sp