Images of “gatekeeping”

Abstract

An increased attention to anti-oppressive practices has informed critical explorations of ‘gatekeeping’ in the music therapy profession, including issues pertaining to academic education, supervision, and ethics (Gombert, 2022; Hicks, 2020; Hsiao, 2014; Wetherick, 2024). Gatekeeping practices, as Fansler et al. (2019) write, become established based on which knowledges are regarded as acceptable or unacceptable. Such knowledges depend on

understandings about health and illness, disabled and enabled, therapist and “client,” teacher and student, “appropriate” behaviors, “inappropriate” language (including censorship of participants, minoritized music therapists, and musics within music therapy practice, as well as the elevation of “standard English” in academic contexts), who is “at risk,” what is normal, and so on. These understandings lead us to construct academic requirements/curricula, standards of practice, professional competencies, codes of ethics, research standards, and so on, which all work to reinforce the borders that have been constructed in the development of the profession. (Fansler et al., 2019)

These layers of gatekeeping shape our professional discourse and underpin the behind-thescenes processes of academic publishing too. Indeed, journal editors and peer reviewers are often perceived as ‘gatekeepers’ holding the power to legitimise research findings and influence the construction of knowledge and future professional directions in a field. Such power is not neutral. It involves highly complex processes coloured by sociocultural influences, disciplinary assumptions and, at times, competing professional agendas and power dynamics.

In this editorial, we take a step sideways to share our views and experiences of ‘gatekeeping’ as editors of Approaches as it completes its 15th anniversary. Each of us reflects creatively, drawing on images of gates, sounds, and metaphors. We invite you, the reader, to engage with these reflections as invitations, opening a space to consider your respective experiences too.