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

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models, including hierarchies of skills (Briggs, 1991; Steele, 1985), Davis presented three
levels of functioning and related goals “through which children can learn, practice, and
expand their repertoire of skills” (p. 37). The described program incorporates many aspects
of McWilliam’s (1995) proposed model of integrated therapy, and emphasizes the
importance of interdisciplinary collaboration and the possibility of co-treatment with other
specialists. No research has been conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of this music
therapy model.
One intervention technique Davis applied to enhance social interaction within
classroom routines was first introduced and studied by Gunsberg in 1988 and 1991. He used
improvised music and lyrics to facilitate and maintain social play between children with
developmental delays and their typically developing peers age three to five during free time
play in a preschool program. By analyzing ten videotaped episodes, Gunsberg’s
investigation provided evidence that when using this technique (Improvised Music Play),
social play episodes lasted more than three times the duration of typical free-time play
episodes among children with developmental delays and their typically developing peers. In
William’s (1995) continuum of six models of service delivery, Gunsberg’s approach can be
seen as a group activity within classroom routines.
Another pilot program conducted by Hughes, Robbins, McKenzie, and Robb (1990)
provided structured music activities and unstructured social playtime activities for one
hundred pre-kindergarten children with special needs and typically developing children
coming from various schools. Although quantitative data were not reported due to