Addressing Music Educators’ Health Literacy: creating health education for instrumental and vocal music teachers

Background and purpose: Research into musicians’ health over the past three decades has identified the need to address high rates of performance-related injury and poor recovery outcomes in musicians. To date, research has focused primarily on survey-based studies and interventions targeting students in higher education settings, based on the premise that the provision of information and changing the health behavoiurs of tertiary music students will help to address this well-known problem. However, many tertiary students have already learned and played their instrument for a decade or longer prior to entering higher education, with physical and psychological habits already well-formed by the time they enter their tertiary studies. Numerous studies show that first-year students often enter tertiary studies with a performance-related health problem already (Brandfonbrener, 2009; Ballenberger et al., 2018). Ensuring that health promotion occurs in pre-tertiary stages of learning is, therefore, also vital and equally urgent.

Recent research on the role of instrumental and vocal music teachers indicates that, despite being engaged advocates of health promotion, their health education needs have not been sufficiently addressed, nor adequately considered, in the health promotion equation. This presentation will describe the results of a qualitative study of international music teachers that probed their experiences, perceptions of their oversight role for their students’ performance health, perceived capacity to integrate health information into their pedagogy, and health-related topics they prioritised. It will discuss how this participatory research process is critical to inform the content and development of musicians’ health education resources for music teachers and achieve their successful delivery, so that teachers are able to support healthy learning, practice and performance in their students at every stage of learning.
Methods: A convergent, parallel, mixed methods participatory research design was used in which the researchers engaged in an ongoing dialogue with participants to understand their “situated needs, experiences and perspectives.” Qualitative data were collected from 35 participants in eight different countries who volunteered to undertake an interview after completing an online survey. Data were transcribed and checked for accuracy, then open-coded. A collaborative, reflexive thematic analysis was carried out to identify recurring patterns and themes emerging from the data (Braun & Clarke, 2012, 2019).

Results: The international teacher participants in this study were generally experienced and familiar with musicians’ health issues and engaged with enthusiasm and passion with the research. Analysis of the data reveal new insights about music teachers’ experience and perceptions about their needs for accessible, evidence-based health education. Themes that emerged from the analysis aligned with current musicians’ health literacy research, highlighting concerns about the lack of accessible, reliable and applicable musicians’ health education resources for use by music teachers to inform their pedagogy (Wijsman & Ackermann, 2019). Participating teachers emphasised the need for mental health and performance psychology training for teachers, instrument-specific learning pathways, and practice strategies to integrate health concepts and information into teaching. Participants were keen for specific guidance about how to apply health information in their teaching, such as how to integrate health information into their pedagogy and manage performance-related health issues in their students.