Applying a Design Based Research approach for an occupational health education intervention for music teachers

Background and purpose:<br/>Existing research has advocated that health promotion in music education settings to help prevent playing-related injuries and that healthy music practices need to be incorporated into instrumental and vocal music teaching. However, a recent scoping review of literature on occupational health education for music students and teachers has highlighted the important gap in research on music teachers’ health education (Evans et al., 2024). Past research has acknowledged music teachers’ lack of health knowledge and need for further professional development to support their students’ learning (Gembris et al., 2020; Gill, 2020; Norton, 2016). In this project, an international interdisciplinary research team will design and implement an intervention to test whether providing pre-tertiary and tertiary music teachers with evidence-based musicians’ health education in online and blended learning settings will increase their occupational health literacy and, therefore, their capacity to integrate health information effectively in their music pedagogy.<br/><br/>Approach/Method:<br/>The intervention design will use a Design-Based-Research (DBR) approach, a health literacy framework and employ mixed methods data collection and analysis. DBR uses a collaborative, iterative process involving educational researchers and stakeholders to develop, test and refine curricula for real-world education settings (McKenney &amp; Reeves, 2019). The online professional learning designed in this project will be developed and trialled with pre-tertiary and tertiary music teachers in Australia and internationally. The four dimensions of health literacy, accessing, understanding, assessing and applying health information, provide a useful framework to scaffold this professional learning and investigate how instrumental and vocal music teachers’ occupational health literacy may influence the way they are able to integrate musicians’ health information in their pedagogical practice.<br/><br/>Argument:<br/>Design-Based-Research (DBR) seeks to solve a defined pedagogical problem through collaborative, iterative design and evaluation of best practice. This presentation will outline the conceptualisation of the work to be carried out in this new project in line with the four-phases of a DBR approach: 1) Analysis &amp; Exploration of the educational problem and design principles to fit the needs of the educational context; 2) Design &amp; Construction of an educational prototype involving researchers, industry stakeholders and learners; 3) Evaluation of the prototype curriculum by researchers and stakeholders and subsequent refinement of the design principles and modification of the curriculum based on user feedback; 4) Theory Building of transferable design principles and dissemination of these for application in other educational contexts.<br/><br/>Conclusions: <br/>Pre-implementation work has been undertaken to analyse teachers’ professional development learning needs and explore relevant curriculum content. This will inform further refinement of the prototype curriculum to be implemented and evaluated. Following completion of pre-implementation and implementation stages, the project team will evaluate the impact of online health education for music teachers on their occupational health literacy and teaching practice. <br/><br/>Clinical Implications: <br/>This research approach will firstly, facilitate effective professional learning in musicians’ health through collaboration between researchers and music teacher stakeholders to address health promotion within music education settings, and secondly generate new theory about the application of DBR in educating musicians about health. Empowering teachers with relevant health knowledge to support their students may help to address the ongoing challenge of effective health promotion in music education.<br/><br/>