Music Therapy and Its Impact on Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disorders

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As Plato once said, "I would teach children music, physics, and philosophy; but most importantly music, for the patterns in music and all the arts are the keys to learning.” Music has been a part of learning since children could hear the melodies their mothers would sing to them as infants. Music always has been a valuable source for education because it inquires human beings to be active physically, emotionally, and cognitively; as children, we all learned to sing our ABCs in order to read and write. Music can facilitate children in transferring their knowledge to all subjects in school; for example, a child who partakes in playing an instrument has an enhanced understanding about math due to the rhythms he/she plays. Does music therapy help students with emotional and behavioral disorders? If so, can music therapy provide helpful strategies for children with emotional and behavioral disorders to assist them the classroom environment? Can the knowledge of a music therapist provide general and special education teachers’ insight to implement these valuable techniques in their teaching lessons? With these ideas in mind, I am going to investigate how music therapy can aid a child with emotional and behavioral disorders. I want to explore the benefits of music therapy through meta-analysis from previous research, explain the different types of behavioral disorders a teacher may witness in their classroom, and how general and special education teachers can make a difference in the students’ lives with the help of music being integrated in the classroom. Music therapy is an ongoing study of how music can affect human beings physically, emotionally, and cognitively. This distinctive type of therapy has been an idea since Aristotle an... ... middle of paper ... ...apeutic research. JSTOR. Montello, L. and Coons, E. E. 1998. Effects of active versus passive group music therapy on preadolescents with emotional, learning, and behavioral disorders. Journal of Music Therapy, 35 (1), pp. 49--67. Sausser, S. and Waller, R. J. 2006. A model for music therapy with students with emotional and behavioral disorders. The Arts in Psychotherapy, 33 (1), pp. 1--10. See, C. 2012. The Use of Music and Movement Therapy to Modify Behaviour of Children with Autism. Pertanika Journal of Social Sciences & Humanities, 20 (4). Shafer, C. 2014. Emotional and Behavioral Disorders. [online] Available at: http://www.catherineshafer.com/emotional.html [Accessed: 18 Mar 2014]. Smith, T. E. C., Polloway, E. A., Patton, J. R. and Dowdy, C. A. 2012. Teaching Students with Special Needs in Inclusive Settings. 6th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.

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