Using a Music Therapy Collaborative Consultative Approach - World ...

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In addition, the greeting song interventions provided a valuable step toward inclusion
for the target children and their families. Teachers, classroom peers and parents of peers had
a more positive attitude toward the target children, as evidenced by their comments and
reports. This replicates the results of earlier findings in which music therapy interventions
increased the social acceptance and improved attitudes of school-aged and preschool children
toward their peers with disabilities in inclusive school settings (Jellison et al., 1984; Humpal,
1991).
The teachers successfully embedded the intervention in the ongoing classroom
routine, even though they did not previously know the greeting songs, nor did they have
formal musical training or experience with music therapy interventions. Additionally, they
had very short training time and ongoing classroom demands to manage. This replicates and
extends earlier studies showing that classroom teachers successfully implemented
interventions related to other disciplines in ongoing activities (Garfinkel & Schwartz, 2002;
Kaiser et al., 1993; Kemmis & Dunn, 1996; Sewell et al., 1998; Venn et al., 1993; Wilcox &
Shannon, 1996; Wolery et al., 2002). In previous studies, however, the interventions were
not based on music therapy principles and guidelines.
Despite their success, teachers were challenged with parts of the musical
characteristics of the songs. For example, in both cases the teachers did not implement the
change in music indicating the good-bye part of the songs (part B of the song). Interestingly,
and perhaps coincidentally, it was exactly this part, that distressed both target children. This
raises the question if the implementation of the change in music signaling the “good-bye”