Addressing Issues of Mental Health in Schools through the Arts

Teachers and Music Therapists Working Together

Nick Clough, Jane Tarr

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367145309
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429626869
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

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.

Chapter 1

Creating agendas for classroom based research to address issues of mental health

DOI: 10.4324/9780429032172-1

Introduction

Teachers working in schools in the UK and the wider European region find it challenging to include all children and young people in learning experiences in their classrooms. This applies particularly for learners with social, emotional and mental health concerns. This issue lies at the heart of the discussions in this book. It resists resolution and becomes compounded unless social and emotional access to learning can be provided within the classroom. Many strategies that are effective in addressing issues of mental health are implemented by specialists outside of the classroom. Although the continuation of such provision is acknowledged as most necessary, the discussions in this book focus on complementary measures that teachers themselves can introduce as part of educational provision. This book argues that social and emotional access to learning relies on creating spaces inside the classroom where shared relational health can flourish. It is recognised that adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can be held in the body for a long time (van der Kolk 2015). This book documents research into embodied music and arts based experiences that have provided momentary recovery within the learning environment. The enquiries find that teachers’ actions are critical for including this vulnerable group. Their interventions are understood as bridges and reset buttons that can provide safe, inclusive and interactive moments as preludes to learning. A significant finding is that this can happen inside the classroom and that the experience of social and emotional inclusion can be held by the same teacher who has responsibility for holding the learning experiences. It has been made possible through the introduction of nonverbal music and arts experiences supported by the inter professional work of teachers and music/arts therapists sharing and reapplying practical knowledge and psychological insights that are already available.

This chapter describes how such music/arts based interventions had been conceptualised during preparations for the ERASMUS + project, Learning in a New Key (the LINK project). It explores the contextual background to the project, including the national and international policy frameworks that were reflecting rising concern about issues of mental health in schools. It provides an outline of causal factors of mental health conditions and associated signs that may be presented in school. The chapter also outlines how the project had been designed to develop inter professional working practices through shared interventions and research within classrooms. It explores challenges surrounding the status of music and the arts in schools and the complex context for planning a research agenda for classroom based group therapeutic music making. It identifies early decisions by the project team to reapply ideas about communicative musicality in the group context drawing on perspectives from creative arts and community music therapies. The term music/arts based therapeutic teaching practice is introduced, confirming that the planned approaches to support young people's safe transitions into learning would be classroom based. The chapter outlines the overall structure of the LINK project and how this provided opportunities for the interventions and related research activities that are explored through the reports presented in the book.

The discussions are arranged under the following headings:

• introducing the LINK project interventions and related research and policy initiatives
• recognising the need for further research into mental health issues in schools
• recognising the need for innovative research within inter professional working practices
• recognising the need for research into music and arts as an entitlement for young people
• setting an intervention and research agenda for therapeutic music making in the classroom
• establishing a framework for the classroom based research agenda of the LINK project
• summary conclusions

Introducing the LINK project interventions and related research and policy initiatives

This book reports on the inter professional interventions and research of the ERASMUS + partnership Learning in a New Key: Engaging Vulnerable Young People in School Education: Agreement No: 2015-1-UK01-KA201-013752: 2015–2017 (Coordinator: Nick Clough) referred to as the LINK project. The activities which focussed on improving access to learning for children/young people with social, emotional and mental health concerns were made possible through the combined diverse professional skills and knowledge held by the team members. The teachers in the project already had enhanced professional and pedagogical expertise in sustaining communication on a day to day basis with groups of vulnerable learners and in supporting them through pastoral provision. The music/arts therapists had practicable psychological and professional knowledge that is not readily available in classrooms. They were supported by teacher trainers who had skills in implementing participatory practitioner research approaches to facilitate inter professional learning. Together they identified that the challenge of inclusion in learning was most clearly manifested during times of transition in the school day. The term transition was understood as representing moments in the journeys into and out of classrooms when new social groups and new learning approaches are encountered. The participatory intervention and research partnership enabled teachers to introduce regular music listening, arts experiences and music making as pedagogical approaches that enhanced young people's self regulation, well being and inclusion during these moments of transition and heightened fragility. This provision was named by the project team as music/arts based therapeutic teaching practice.

At the time that funding for the LINK project was being applied for and the first measures were being implemented, the need for such interventions had been clearly signalled in the World Health Organisation (WHO) European wide action plan for mental health 2013–2020. This identified that mental health disorders, including high levels of depression and anxiety in children and young people, were one of the top public health challenges in the European region (WHO 2015). More recent reports have indicated that the classroom interventions of the LINK project, which are explored in detail in this book, are still relevant to the needs of young people with mental health concerns. The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) Report has identified serious levels of anxiety and bullying amongst children in developed countries (OECD 2017). Moreover recognition of threats to emotional health and well being that adversely affect 850,000 children and young people in the UK (NHS 2018) was echoed in calls to address issues of mental health in schools (DoHSC & DfE 2018). Action for Children (2019) have reported that children in the UK are increasingly experiencing stress, depression, anxiety and bullying which they attribute to worsening circumstances including new forms of socio economic hardships that impact on family life. Their report focussed on poor access to affordable early childhood education and care services and the consequences of discontinuous parenting and care that can lead to significant experience of trauma in early childhood. Such experiences were identified as factors that have affected the growing proportion of young people who are worried about their own mental health. It was noted that the tendency to worry in this way increases with age with 9% of 11 year olds and as many as 53% of 18 year olds expressing such concerns (ibid: 8). Waters (2019) outlines a wide range of further current factors affecting the mental health of young people and their capacity to engage as learners in school. These include their concerns about the sustainability of life on the planet and their negative experience of social media interactions. At the time of writing, we can add that young people's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic is introducing another layer of complexity in assessing their mental health as increased levels of poverty, social isolation and domestic risk impact variably on different groups.

The impact of COVID-19 has compounded the anxieties of young people with vulnerabilities arising from other adversities (YoungMinds 2020) and a recession on their social, emotional and mental health is predicted (Power et al 2020: 301). Whilst children and young people may not experience severe physical symptoms when contracting COVID-19, they remain highly susceptible to its psychosocial effects because their coping skills are not fully fledged (ibid: 302). The interventions described in the book have been provided for young people whose mental health has been impacted by risk factors such as those identified by Deighton in her report on the work of the Anna Freud Centre. These risk factors include long term deprivation, special educational need (SEN) status and child in need (CIN) status. The Deighton report, which included a self reporting survey completed by young people in state secondary schools from Year 7 and Year 9, found that

2/5 young people (are) scoring above thresholds for emotional problems, conduct problems or hyperactivity. Gender, deprivation, child in need status, ethnicity and age were all associated with increased odds of experiencing mental health difficulties.

(Deighton et al 2019: 565)

It was again noted that young people are concerned about their own mental health. School based interventions were recommended as a positive way forward.

In the UK, responses to the Green Paper Transforming Children and Young People's Mental Health (DH/DfE 2017) have gradually led to the establishment of new Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) jointly delivered with the Department for Education. Such teams started work late in 2019 in some areas. These are intended to support schools in their general approach to issues of mental health and wellbeing and to provide early interventions with respect to some mental health and emotional wellbeing issues that reflect mild to moderate levels of anxiety. Children and young people who are referred with more extreme mental health needs would receive treatment through the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) within the newly proposed 4 week response period. Professionals working in the MHSTs in the school context may wish to consider the pedagogical approaches described in this book as a means to support teachers at the classroom level who work on a daily basis with children and young people with such mental health concerns, seeking ways to provide for their social and emotional access to learning.

Recognising the need for further research into mental health issues in schools

The Salamanca Statement (UNESCO 1994) that recommended the provision of inclusive education for all children and young people has acted as a primary stimulus for intervention and research in this field. Twenty-six years after this call, teachers and schools are being relatively successful in including children and young people with physical and sensory needs, with cognitive and learning difficulties and with language and communication difficulties. However, the inclusion of learners with social, emotional and mental health concerns in the classroom context continues to be relatively challenging for teachers. Practitioners in both education and health contexts have struggled to fully understand the complex needs of this group of children and young people. Further research is necessary to clarify the kinds o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of textual outcomes
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Preface: a review of the findings of the book in light of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Creating agendas for classroom based research to address issues of mental health
• 2 Designing participatory action research approaches to support the development of inclusive practices
• 3 Professional learning about group music making and relational health in classrooms
• 4 From sensory engagement to self regulation through music and arts experiences
• 5 Inter professional exploration of the dialogic dimensions of music based therapeutic teaching practices: towards establishing educational and therapeutic rationales
• 6 Creative attachment focussed therapy practices in the classroom
• 7 Exploring ways in which music/arts based therapeutic teaching practices exemplify the principles and values of the UNCRC
• 8 A review of participatory action research as a basis for inter professional learning within the school setting: developing teachers as music makers in the classroom
• 9 Exploring how the documentation of participatory action research activities supported professional learning and recognition of young people’s reconnections through music
• 10 Envisaging further collaborative music/arts based therapeutic teaching practices within educational settings
• 11 Introduction to the complementary materials
• Author Index
• Subject Index