• Journal of Music and Human Behavior
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.85-108
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to examine how a therapeutic drumming intervention would impact middle school students with regard to school violence prevention. Participants were all in the third-year class of a middle school in Korea. A school music teacher and a music therapist designed and implemented the program collaboratively, and mainly used dyadic, synchronized, and improvisational drumming based on the Social Emotional Learning core competencies. A total of 65 students participated in a weekly 45-minute program for 10 weeks. Ten participants out of 65 were selected for interviews and the rest of the 55 participants were asked to fill out an open-ended survey. Content analysis of the survey and interviews produced 492 meaningful statements, which were categorized into seven themes: somatic responses to drumming, emotional processing, group cohesion, empathy, relationship with peers, self-esteem, and self-regulation. The findings indicated that dyadic, synchronized, and improvisational drumming may promote prosocial behaviors in students of this age. The author discussed that drumming produces physical input directly from the instruments, which prompts students to identify and empathize with their own or others' emotions. This study therefore suggests that collaborative work between school music teachers and music therapists may positively impact middle school students' prosocial behaviors, as they pertain to school violence in Korea.