Learning from experiences in action: Music in schools to promote healthy coping with grief and loss

Abstract

This article describes three research projects that utilise a range of research approaches to investigate the benefits of music therapy as support for young people experiencing both bereavement and migration. Two of the research projects utilise formal action research principles in their design, whilst the original project employs a phenomenological approach to data analysis. The authors propose that the nature of adolescent grief and loss demands a participatory orientation, regardless of the formal research methodology utilised. Within this article, Kurt Lewin's approach to action research is used to retrospectively organise the cycles of learning that have become apparent to the authors i..