Adventure Therapy & Music Therapy Competencies [blog 9]

How do competencies for becoming an adventure therapist compare and contrast with a different method of experiential treatment?

Something that caught my attention from the reading was when the distinction between competencies and skills was made, "As pointed out by Sperry (2010), skills development primarily pertains to attaining areas of competency acquired for training aspects, but not the background knowledge, theory, or value components associated with the learning of skills. Competency refers to the 'knowledge, skills, and attitude components which are necessary for professional practice'" (Gass, Gillis, and Russell 2012).

There are many different qualities and skills that can qualify someone to work as an adventure therapist, a music therapist, or any other type of therapist or counselor. With each category of work there comes different experiences that are required before you can actually participate effectively in each of these types of care. For Adventure Therapy, some of the competencies needed are listed through this metaphor: a competent leader of adventure experiences needs to have bricks of hard skills including technical skills, bricks of soft skills including facilitation skills, and mortar of meta-skills.

It it says in the chapter, the development of competencies from the adventure therapy field can be traced to the early 1990's, thanks to Dr. Gillis! These are the different levels of adventure therapy: Recreation, Education, Enrichment, Adjunctive Therapy, and Primary Therapy. Before an adventure therapist would be able to work in all these different areas they would have to learn the appropriate skills that would allow them to do so and gain the experiential knowledge to help the clients. 

There are thirty-eight competencies necessary for entry-level adventure therapists, here are the categories that all of those fall under:
A. Personal Component
B. Adventure Component
C. Programming Component
D. Therapy Component
E. Operational Component

Let's take a look at the competencies required for Music Therapists. According to research done by Edward Schwartzberg and Michael Silverman, the education and training of future music therapists is a topic that has received much attention. Researchers have been focusing on the different set of skills each student would have when they entered training, the technological aspects of training, the emotional stages during their internships, and many other factors that would play a role in the learning outcomes for future music therapists. One of the main differences first is the obvious one, with music therapy (different from adventure therapy) you would have to have some sort of understanding of music and experience with that. According to the AMTA Professional Competencies list you have to have completed either a bachelor's degree or its equivalent in music therapy. "The use of competency-based training seems to permeate across many allied health, education, and medical professions, including music therapy." All of these fields are directly and indirectly guided by theses professional competencies outlined in their professional organizations.

Here is a full list of all of the professional competencies needed in Music Therapy. To break them down into the smallest categories we have:
A. Music Foundations (history, composition, different instruments, etc.)
B. Clinical Foundations (terminology, typical human systems, principles of therapy, etc.)
C. Music Therapy (methods, techniques, current technologies, etc.)

Citations

American music therapy association. (2009). Retrieved from: http://www.musictherapy.org/about/competencies/

Gass, M. A., Gillis, H.L., Russell, K. C. (2012). Adventure therapy: Theory, research, and practice. New York, Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group.

Schwartzberg, E. T., & Silverman, M. J. (2011). Categorization by Competency of Studies Involving Music Therapy Students in the Journal of Music Therapy, 1964-2008. Music Therapy Perspectives, 29(1), 50-64.