Functional Musicianship of Music Therapy Students: Entering Internships as Perceived by Internship Directors

Functional musicianship - the ability to play an instrument effectively for therapeutic purposes - is an important skill in the education and training of music therapists, and has a long history as a building block for students, teachers and professionals. The first bachelor's degree program in music therapy, introduced by Roy Underwood in 1944 at Michigan State College, strongly emphasized functional piano skills as a core competency of the degree program (de l'Etoile, 2000). Functional musicianship was also a component of the first official National Association for Music Therapy (NAMT) curriculum approved in 1952 (de l'Etoile, 2000). The importance of functional musicianship to the practice of music therapy continued to be cited in the music therapy literature in subsequent years following the establishment of the official NAMT curriculum (Braswell, Decuir, & Brooks, 1985; Braswell, Decuir, & Maranto, 1980; Crocker, 1955; Ficken, 1976; Jensen & McKinney, 1990; Schulberg, 1981).Functional musicianship is presently included among the AMTA Professional Competencies. These competencies list eleven different categories under Musical Foundations, including composition, guitar skills, piano skills, vocal skills, proficiency on other instruments, improvisation, and ability to conduct and lead movement experiences (AMTA, 2010). Each category lists minimum competencies the student should achieve for entry-level music therapy practice.Functional musicianship will likely continue to be of importance to music therapists in the future (Decuir & Vega, 2010). In a recent Delphi poll, psychiatric music therapy internship directors ranked functional musicianship among the top six changes predicted to increase in importance in the profession by the year 2016 (Cassity, 2007).Although this literature acknowledges the importance of functional musicianship in the practice of music therapy (Braswell et al., 1980; Cohen, Hadsell, & Williams, 1997; Jensen & McKinney, 1990; Petrie, 1993), there are indications that students may be arriving for internship with inadequate functional musicianship skills. Cassity (1987) surveyed 180 internship directors to determine the degree to which music therapy interns were mastering functional piano skills. The 100 internship directors who responded indicated music therapy interns training to enter the field - preservice music therapists - were performing below the midpoint on 64 of the 74 skills presented. For example, 80% of the internship directors indicated preservice music therapists were receiving inadequate functional piano training. The only skill on which preservice music therapists received a superior rating was the ability to read a one-part melody line.Improvisation competencies are listed in the AMTA competencies and have been cited as important in past literature (Cassity, 1987). In a more specific survey of music skills, Hiller (2009) asked board-certified music therapists to rate the use of clinical improvisation and improvisation instruction received in undergraduate or equivalency pro- grams in the United States. Results of the survey indicated that while improvisation was considered important, the instruction of improvisation methods was neither widespread nor consistent in undergraduate programs.Traditionally, functional musicianship has been taught in the university setting (Wheeler, 2000), which has been considered the most appropriate place for teaching such skills (Cassity, 1987; Jensen & McKinney, 1990; VanWeelden, Juchniewicz, & Cevasco, 2008; Wheeler, 1987). Despite this belief, many internship directors have discussed the need to remediate their interns' fundamental skills (Farnan, 2001). This is despite the fact that most internship directors do not consider teaching functional musicianship to interns to be among the most rewarding aspects of intern supervision (Tanguay, 2008).Since the university is considered the most appropriate setting for the teaching of functional musicianship, it is important to evaluate the extent that preservice music therapists are learning functional musicianship skills before entering internship. …