Care Ethics in music therapy higher education: Shared care across the community of music therapy educators

Care ethics offers a valuable framework for understanding the relational, contextual, and ethically responsive nature of music therapy education. While care is foundational within therapeutic practice, its role in higher education, and particularly in the preparation of future music therapists, has received far less attention. This position paper applies key care ethics scholarship to music therapy higher education, proposing that care is not the responsibility of individual educators alone, but is shared across the community of music therapy educators including placement supervisors and guest practitioners. As academic leaders, the authors reflect on how decisions made about learning environments, curriculum design, and work-integrated learning shape students’ experiences and influence the evolving profile of the profession. We outline the core concepts of care ethics, including Noddings’s language of care and Tronto’s phases of care, and suggest how these can inform relational, ethical, and responsive andragogical approaches. The discussion is situated within the broader relational, institutional, and legislative contexts of higher education, and alongside the Australian Music Therapy Association’s Professional Standards for Music Therapy. We reflect on how educational rights, reasonable adjustments, and institutional expectations intersect with these professional standards and the ethical responsibilities of music therapy educators, and highlight areas of tension and alignment. Two vignettes consider how responsibility and responsiveness can be expressed through attention to students’ personal, musical, and cultural resources. We articulate our shared care stance,
anchoring our approach in care ethics and positioning care as a central ethical commitment in music therapy education.