Exploring the Impact of the Somatic Method 'Timani' on Performance Quality, Performance-Related Pain and Injury, and Self-Efficacy in Music Students in Norway: An Intervention Study

Risk Factors and Coping Strategies of Playing-Related Musculoskeletal Disorder (PRMD) in Tertiary Student Pianists: A Phenomenological Study

Purpose

While pianists enjoy the happiness of creating music, they also face many health problems, with playing-related musculoskeletal disorder (PRMD) being one of the most common occupational diseases. Compared with professional pianists, tertiary student pianists are easy to neglect, but they also suffer from playing-related injuries and face many difficulties and challenges. This study aims to investigate the risk factors of student pianists suffering from PRMD and the strategies to cope with PRMD from their lived experience using the method of descriptive phenomenology and the social cognitive theory (SCT) as the theoretical basis.

Patients and Methods

This study's data are derived from semi-structured one-on-one interviews with twelve student pianists at seven higher education institutions in China and are analyzed using Moustakas' improved Stevick-Colaizzi-Keen (SCK) phenomenological analysis method.

Results

This study developed nine themes related to PRMD risk factors and copy strategies within the SCT framework, they are: self-efficacy, personal psychological factor, self-regulation, piano-playing factors, receive medical treatment, outcome expectation, negative effects from social relations, help from social relations and physical environment.

Conclusion

The findings identify the profound influences of personal, social, behavioral, and environmental factors on the PRMD-related experiences of tertiary student pianists and highlight the importance of improving the self-efficacy and self-regulation ability of tertiary student pianists, as well as promoting social and healthcare attention and support for them.

Health education in conservatoires: what should it consist of? Findings from workshops with experts (Part II)

Although health education programmes have been implemented in higher music education (HME) and their evaluations published in peer-reviewed journals, guidelines as to what ought to be included in these programmes are still missing. This study aimed to document expert discussions on the content of an ideal health education curriculum for HME students in the UK, integrating critical thinking. Four interdisciplinary workshops were conducted, where 67 experts in relevant fields took part, and were asked to discuss four lists of topics and concepts created based on literature reviews (cognitive biases, logical fallacies, critical appraisal tools and health topics). Only the list on health topics is relevant here. Notes taken by the participants and ourselves were thematically analysed. Four themes were identified, two of which are reported in this paper: (i) The health education curriculum and (ii) A settings-based approach to health. Part I of this project (published elsewhere) is focussed on the critical thinking content of health education for conservatoire students. The present paper focusses on the ideal health education curriculum and its implications for the wider context of health promotion.

Are Student Teachers' Overall Expected Emotions Regarding Their Future Life as a Teacher Biased Toward Their Expected Peak Emotions?

Having functional expected emotions regarding one's future life as a teacher is important for student teachers to maintain their motivation to choose a career as a teacher. However, humans show several biases when judging their emotional experiences. One famous bias is the so-called peak-end effect which describes the phenomenon that overall affective judgments do not reflect the average of the involved emotional experiences but the most intense and the most recent of the involved emotional experiences. Regarding student teachers' expected positive emotions, such a bias would be functional since their motivation to become a teacher is enhanced. However, regarding student teachers' expected negative emotions, such a bias would be dysfunctional since their motivation to become a teacher would be decreased. The aim of the present preregistered study was to examine whether student teachers' expected future teaching-related emotions show a peak-end effect. Student teachers viewed 14 common events that could part of a typical everyday routine of a teacher and rated their expected emotional pleasure and discomfort for each of the events. Afterward, they were asked to rate their overall expected emotional pleasure and discomfort when looking at their future professional life as a whole. Results showed that expected pleasure was much larger than expected discomfort regarding both overall, peak, and average ratings. No peak-end effect was observed for overall expected discomfort which reflected the average expected discomfort across events. By contrast, overall expected pleasure was biased toward expected peak pleasure experiences. These findings indicate that student teachers judge their expected overall affect in a functional way: realistically when dealing with negative emotions but through rose-colored glasses when dealing with positive emotions.