Abstract:
Client-centred music therapy with individual pre-school children, involving playful but
focused songs, behaviours and instrumental play, can enhance their speech and expressive
language development. Four constructs were inductively created using the principles of
grounded theory to represent how music therapy was used to support speech and expressive
language development for pre-school children with special needs. Secondary analysis was
undertaken of qualitative data drawn from usual clinical practice including clinical notes,
reflective journal, audiovisual recordings, and notes from communications regarding two
children from a student music therapist's caseload at a specialist centre in New Zealand. A
case vignette is presented to illustrate these four meaningful constructs of individual music
therapy and concepts that constitute each are presented, along with sample quotations from
the data, and are theoretically integrated within wider music therapy literature. A tree model
was used to capture these findings, which further suggested 'playfulness' may be a central
aspect of the work. Implications for my developing and future clinical practice of music
therapy are discussed, along with directions indicated for future research.
