Research TEAM|Who We Are (And how we got here)

Dr. Ardelle Ries
Principal Investigator

The FVC team acknowledges the necessity to position ourselves within the context of this research.  Our team is composed of individuals representing multiple ethnicities, neurodiversities and cultural backgrounds. We are grateful, privileged, and humbled to live and work, sing and play on the traditional and unceded lands of Treaty 6 territory on a land that is considered Western Canada. 

  • As a white, cis woman of Austrian, Dutch and German ancestry living in the province of Alberta, Canada, I have worked as a professor of music at the University of Alberta (UofA) for 22 years. I am entering the final phase of my post-secondary teaching career — a career dedicated to singing advocacy through song­based music education practices. 

    My fascination with singing voices is deeply rooted in my family of origin – the vibrant musical environment created by my mother and enriched by the poetry recitations of my paternal grandfather and the countless family sing-alongs that happened on a weekly basis throughout my childhood and adolescence. My undergraduate musical experiences led me to fall yet more deeply in love with the “phenomenon” of the singing voice.

    My professional “learning” career and love affair with the voices of children truly began in 1985 as a music specialist for elementary, middle, and secondary school students in an urban elementary school. The voices of these children kindled a desire to learn more and to be the best teacher that I could possibly be, prompting me to travel to Hungary to pursue graduate work in music education. Thinking that I would only study in Hungary for one year, the voices of Hungarian children beckoned. Between 1991 and 1994, I accepted a teaching mentorship position at the secondary school level in a renowned music conservatory within a specialized Kodály school in Kecskemét, Hungary. Throughout these early years in both Canada and in Europe, my musical and pedagogical journey was profoundly enriched by my experiences as a professional choral singer.

    Upon my return to Canada in 1994, I assumed an administrative role as artistic director of a well-­established community conservatory children's choral program, leading a large family of children’s and youth choirs and, as well, learning from a stellar group of bright and deeply inspirational young minds and voices drawn from my choirs and my private vocal studio. It was at this fertile time, while pursuing graduate degrees in voice and choral conducting at the University of Alberta that the perspectives about children and children’s voices began to transform. 

    Over the last four decades, my understanding of children, children’s voices and related pedagogical practices have evolved significantly. My identity as a music educator was heavily influenced by the tenets of Hungarian composer, ethnomusicologist, linguist, composer and philosopher, Zoltán Kodály, whereby I strictly adhered to his pedagogical philosophy that “only the best is good enough for children” (Kodály in Bonis, 1974). For the first twenty years of my career, this adage was deeply imprinted in my approach to teaching, profoundly shaping the manner in which I taught, the repertoire I chose, and what I thought to be the desired sound “ideal” for children’s choirs and the “proper” way for children to sing. My work was laser focused on traditional “treatment” of the child singing voice with the primary objective of developing the upper vocal register — the purported “head” voice. Through the exploration of children, childhood and the enculturation/acculturation of the child singing voice from physiological, pedagogical and sociological perspectives, eventually led me to reconsider these deeply ingrained pedagogical beliefs and praxis, challenging my view of the “child voice” as a literal object in need of “taming” or “training.” (Ries 2004). At that halfway point in my career I was called to release my own pedagogical agenda, step back and listen carefully to the children, their speech and their song, and to accept their natural abilities to teach us all, well beyond the limits of what is considered to be the “best,” the “good,” the “right,” and the “proper.” 

    It is from these perspectives that FVC research has been conducted, to provide our team with yet another step toward understanding and listening to the “authentic” voices of children with the best of intentions to forge a path for children to be respected, honoured and celebrated as legitimate research collaborators. While childhood is a construct, vulnerable to societal fluctuation and change, it is a precious, temporal place that can never be revisited. There is much to be learned from those who inhabit that ever-changing world. 

    Whether we are children or adults, the SARS-CoV-19 pandemic has now transported us to a land dependent on technology to the extreme, adding yet another question to our pandemic-related investigations. Will this electronically dominated environment continue to draw children away from the wonders of their unmediated singing voices and the freedom of expression through singing? It is our hope that FVC research will provide insight and prompt others to make space for deep listening and transformational learning through joyful singing.

Chloe Shantz
Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • Coming soon

Stephanie Schuurman
Graduate Research Assistant

  • My relationship to this project grows out of a lifetime spent singing. I grew up in Alberta and British Columbia, immersed in choral music shaped largely by Western European traditions – cathedral repertoire, formal choir structures, and pedagogies that often emphasize precision, blend, and discipline. These musical worlds gave me a deep love of singing and a strong sense of musical community.

    At the same time, they also shaped my assumptions about what singing “should” sound like and how musical learning is expected to unfold. Coming to this research, I carry both gratitude for those traditions and curiosity about their limitations.

    Today I work as a teacher, researcher, and artist whose work moves between classrooms, rehearsal rooms, and experimental sonic spaces. My music education teaching and learning experience continues to expand: I have been an early childhood music educator since 2008; I have taught K-12 music in both independent and public school systems in AB and BC since 2011; I have taught undergraduate music, music education, and education courses since 2020; and I have conducted a number of different community children’s and multigenerational choirs at various times since 2009.

    My research interests include sound studies, affect theory, queer and feminist thought, critical disability studies, and research-creation. I am particularly interested in the agency and voice of children and in challenging dominant assumptions that frame children as passive recipients of knowledge rather than active contributors to shared worlds of learning and creativity.

    These commitments shape how I approach the From the Voices of Children project. As an adult researcher studying children’s experiences of singing, I recognize that I hold institutional and social power within the research process. My role in this work is therefore not to speak for children, but to help create conditions in which their perspectives can be heard and taken seriously. The project invites children to reflect on their own experiences with singing – in school, at home, and in community settings – and positions their insights as meaningful contributions to how we understand music education.

    My own positionality includes identities and experiences that shape how I listen and interpret what I hear. I am a white, cisgender woman with invisible disabilities. I am a first/second generation European settler. I identify as queer and neuro-atypical, identities that inform my sensitivity to questions of belonging, difference, and the ways institutions sometimes reward conformity over expression. These perspectives make me particularly attentive to the wide range of ways children experience singing – whether with joy, hesitation, curiosity, resistance, or delight.

    My engagement in the FVC project is guided by a simple but powerful question: What might change in music education if we took children’s own perspectives about singing seriously?

    My role in this project is not to arrive with answers, but to listen carefully, remain reflexive about my own assumptions, and make space for children’s voices to shape the conversation.

    You can read more about me and my projects at www.stephschuurman.com

Hannah Nichol
Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • Coming soon

  • As a caucasian woman in an urban setting, I have grown up being exposed to music and French, as it has been woven within my being, even though I grew up in a household where my parents did not play a musical instrument, or speak a second language. I have experienced critical incidents in music and in French Immersion school along my journey about being mentored. I have vivid recollections of my first time as a music student. I was two years old and I remember sitting at the piano, learning “The Suzuki Method,” playing one note, one finger at a time, from memory, which soon became two hands. My mother took me home and sat with me to practise daily in between lessons. My piano teacher and my mother were my first teachers and mentors. They were guides, who fostered a love of music within me. I attended a French Immersion school where my music teachers were critical guides and mentors to me along my journey.

    As I continued to play music into high school, I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in music education. I attend the Campus Saint-Jean, at the University of Alberta (UofA), to fulfill a Music Education degree (2000). I was then hired by Edmonton Catholic Schools to begin a music program at a junior high school, which never had a music program. After a few years of experience, certain aspects of teaching had become familiar and less time consuming, while new ones offered challenges. Somehow, I felt my life as a student was not yet over. I sensed there were some serious gaps in my learning, and that these were evidenced in my teaching and in speaking with other colleagues. I chose to return to university part-time to pursue a Master’s in Music Education.

    What I found most beneficial was being in the classroom at the same time as I was a researcher, thus enabling me to implement what I was learning. I graduated in 2005 and while continuing to teach at the same junior high school, I sought new opportunities to enrich my teaching and learning. I began to mentor student teachers and eventually was asked to lead the Mentorship Program for Beginning Teachers through the Edmonton Catholic Teachers Local, of the Alberta Teachers’ Association. This opportunity gave me the desire to complete my doctoral dissertation at the UofA entitled “Mentoring Beginning Second Language Teachers: Perceptions of Challenges and Expectations of Support” (2013).

    After 15 years of teaching in the classroom, I am blessed to have had the opportunity to teach undergraduate courses in Music at the Campus Saint-Jean, as well as my current role of supervising French student teachers in many schools during their practicum experiences. I have a very deep understanding of the impact of one’s own mentors on their experiences. Along my journey, I have been blessed with two incredible girls, Ella and Lizzie, who have been born into a very musical family. They play the piano, harp and violin, and sing in a choir. Music is heard in our house daily and teaches us the value of hard work, resilience, patience, joy, and love.

    Regardless of our ability, age, race, religion, or where we are on our journey, all of us have a voice: “Music replays the past memories, awakens our forgotten worlds and makes our minds travel.”  ~ Michael Bassey Johnson   

Melissa Hiebert
Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • Coming soon

  • As an undergraduate music student of East Asian descent at the University of Alberta Augustana Campus, my connection to the From the Voices of Children project grows from my own lifelong relationship with music and singing. I am currently studying classical guitar and aspire to become a virtuoso classical guitarist and music educator. Music has been central to my life for as long as I can remember, and my musical experiences have taken place across several countries, including Japan, China, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.

    I began my musical journey as a koto player, performing on stage by the age of five. While living in Japan and China, I performed various East Asian zither instruments in different ensembles and musical contexts. At around the age of 14, I picked up a guitar for the first time, and I have never stopped playing it since. Although I loved performing instrumental music, I also had a strong desire to sing. However, opportunities to explore singing in school were limited. At one point, I hoped to join the choir, but I was persuaded to remain in the band because my teachers needed a strong zither player. More broadly, music education in the schools I attended was often constrained by academic priorities, and most students (myself included) were expected to give up music classes for subjects considered more “important”. In addition, my parents were concerned that playing guitar might distract me from more traditional academic pathways. These experiences made me highly aware of how access to music education can vary depending on institutional, cultural, and educational expectations.

    Before beginning my studies at the University of Alberta Augustana Campus, I was close to completing a four-year degree in Earth Sciences at the university’s main campus. During my first year, the COVID-19 pandemic began and continued through much of my undergraduate experience. As my courses moved online, I found it increasingly difficult to reconnect with in-person academic life when campuses reopened. This period became a time of reflection in which I began to question the direction of my studies and consider what I truly wanted to pursue. Although I had invested several years into Earth Sciences, I realized that my strongest sense of purpose and motivation came from music. During this time away from formal instruction, I spent nearly two years creating music independently, taking small commissions, composing, and developing my musicianship outside institutional structures. My parents initially opposed this path, believing that music was not a practical field of study. However, after many conversations and reflection, I was able to express how meaningful music was to me and how important their trust, understanding, and support would be for my education. Ultimately, this experience strengthened my commitment to music and affirmed my belief that music can open many different paths, and I hope to bring this awareness to others.

    My experiences volunteering in elementary school music classrooms have further shaped how I think about children and their relationships with singing. Observing choir rehearsals and classroom music activities has shown me that children approach singing in diverse ways. Some participate with immediate confidence and enthusiasm, while others explore their voices more gradually. These experiences remind me that each child carries a unique musical identity and that supportive learning environments play a crucial role in helping children feel comfortable expressing themselves.


    As an undergraduate researcher on the From the Voices of Children project, I approach this work with curiosity and humility. Working alongside experienced scholars and educators, I recognize that I am still learning while contributing to the research process. My role is to listen carefully and reflect on how children describe their own experiences with singing in school and in their everyday lives. My international musical background also encourages me to remain attentive to the cultural assumptions that can shape music education practices, allowing me to contribute a perspective informed by multiple educational and musical traditions.

Anna Wiebe
Undergraduate Research Assistant

  • Coming soon

Dr. Kristina Kastelan-Sikora
Collaborator

Nova Xu
Undergraduate Research Assistant

Research | Methodology.

In an effort to generate a rich and rigorous collection of data, the From the Voices of Children study consisted of three different phases to investigate the following questions:

  • With COVID-19 health restrictions now behind us, what are children's current attitudes toward singing in home, school, and community contexts? 

  • What are the factors that contribute to these attitudes?

  • How have the COVID-19 pandemic and the related health restrictions since then influenced children’s perceptions and attitudes toward singing? 

  • What are the benefits of singing for children, as identified by the children?

Each phase of the research employed a different method, data collection, and analysis. 
The initial two studies were designed as pilot studies. The methods and findings of these first two pilot studies have greatly informed the third comprehensive study. 

Research | PHASES OF RESEARCH.

PLEASE Use the drop down menu arrows to learn more about each FVC research phase

  • Phase One of the FVC project was generously funded by the Endowment Fund for the Future (EFF) and the Support for the Advancement of Scholarship (SAS) at the UofA. Based on the FVC review of the current literature, it was thought that a qualitative approach would contribute to the field in more significant ways than a quantitative approach would offer. Where previous pandemic-related music education studies considered teacher and administrator perspectives (Morin & Mahmud, 2021), the perspectives of the children themselves could provide a more fulsome contribution to the ongoing conversation about the lasting impacts of COVID-19 on singing and musicking.

    In the Spring and early Summer of 2022, the From the Voices of Children research team planned to conduct one-on-one interviews with 25-50 children between the ages of 6 and 12. Children from urban and rural areas within a 100 km radius of our UA Augustana campus in Camrose, Alberta, along with their guardians, responded to an open call for participants issued to community choral organizations, school divisions, and private studios. 

    In 1998, music educator and ethnomusicologist Patricia Shehan Campbell wrote Songs in Their Heads, an investigation into how children think about music and singing. While Campbell’s investigation included fifteen children, From the Voices of Children hoped to expand on her work to gain greater depth and breadth of understanding. However, our research team never could have anticipated the interest garnered by this study. The response was overwhelming. Though the goal was 25-50 interviewees, at the conclusion of the study, 83 children were interviewed, providing more than 22 hours of interview footage. Participation in the research project was voluntary, and both caregiver and child consented to the research agreement, which, in an attempt to challenge current child educational research practices, identified the child participants as co-researchers. Video and audio footage were taken during each interview, with identifying information removed before the AV files were transcribed. Our team of undergraduate research assistants transcribed the interviews. 

  • Although the qualitative interview-based Phase 1 prioritized depth over breadth of data, it was evident that a larger sample size would lend additional validity to our findings. Where Phase 1 garnered 83 interview responses, Phase 2 aimed to hear from 250 research participants. For this phase of the project, colleagues suggested that a quantitative survey approach would be the most efficient and effective way to gather and analyze responses from a participant group of this size. Additionally, it was posited that an online survey would reach students in other areas of the province. Where Phase 1 was centred geographically within 100 km of Camrose in central Alberta, Phase 2 would be accessible online to students in both urban and rural areas in southern Alberta as well. Phase 1 respondents were drawn from school, community choir, and private music studio contexts. Since Phase 2 funding was available through a partnership grant between the Kule Institute for Advanced Studies and the Alberta Teachers’ Association (the ATA), Phase 2 respondents would be recruited from school jurisdictions. This focus on school settings would balance the data source responses and perspectives, providing a clearer picture of the pandemic's impact on school music programs. 

    The anonymous online survey was designed for children within the public school system to complete in their own homes. Guardians accessed the survey and completed the parental consent form before passing their device to their child, who would then complete the child assent form and continue to the survey. The survey existed as two versions — one created for children ages 9-12 who had experienced school-based music-making in pre-pandemic times, and the other for children ages 6-8 who would have been very new to the school experience or even entered into the school system when COVID-19-related restrictions were already in place. Interview questions were adapted from Phase 1 to suit survey-style responses, and children answered questions using a prescribed Likert scale. Inspired by Cobb’s (2007) survey, our survey utilized emojis paired with common numerical and descriptive responses in an attempt to make the survey appealing and accessible to children. The survey took students approximately 20 minutes to finish, and was available to complete online between February and June of 2023. 

    Students accessed the survey via QR code published in school newsletters, school social media accounts, and school websites. The survey itself was created using a combination of Google Forms, a third-party application called Formfacade, and the web design software Squarespace. The survey in its different forms existed on a unique, password-protected From the Voices of Children domain page: www.fromthevoicesofchildren.com. Because the survey was created through Google Forms, student responses were automatically recorded and charted through the application. Analysis is currently underway, involving the synthesis of results from multiple survey versions to generate summative responses. 

    Because the funding for this phase of the project came from the ATA — the Alberta school teachers’ professional governing body and labour union — it was necessary to carry out this phase of FVC in partnership with school divisions across the province. Ethics approval was granted for research within 5 different school divisions across Alberta. From those 5 divisions, 62 school principals were contacted about participating in the study. Of the 62 contacted, only 14 schools responded favourably. When the survey closed mid-June 2023, we had received a total of 17 student responses. Due to the stringent ways in which researchers gain ethical access to students from within the school systems, our response numbers were significantly lower than the ~250 we hoped to collect. 

  • In the final phase of the From the Voices of Children research, our team comprehensively explored the attitudes of children (aged 9-15) drawn from school, studio, and community choral settings across the province of Alberta through both qualitative one-on-one interviews and quantitative online survey methods during the 2023/2024 academic year.

    While Phase 1 and Phase 2 of From the Voices of Children operated as pilot projects, Phase 3 was a multi-method, comprehensive study. Informed by the successes and challenges discovered during Phase 1 and Phase 2, Phase 3 generated both qualitative and quantitative data through interviews and surveys conducted in a wider geographical area within the province of Alberta.

  • The video and audio recordings collected during the interview process, paired with additional footage filmed in February 2024, have been used in the creation of a 15-minute documentary that reveals children’s own perceptions of singing. This short film was released to enthusiastic audiences in March 2025.

    We intend for this short film to serve as an advocacy tool for music educators as rebuilding efforts continue in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In keeping with the title of our project and with children’s voices literally and figuratively centred through their interviews with each other, the core philosophy of this film is that adult voices are largely absent, revealing the attitudes, perspectives and lived experiences of the children themselves. Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council through an Insight Development Grant, this aspect of Phase Three is based on a partnership between the University of Alberta and local Alberta documentarian, Holly Mazur Productions. 

Research | Transcription & CODING PROCEDURES

With a mandate at any research institution dedicated to the mentorship of future researchers, integral to the research process, a stellar team of undergraduate RAs were employed to complete the interview transcriptions. This dedicated team generated 865 pages from 99 transcribed interviews.

In terms of qualitative data analysis, Phase One & Phase Three employed a constructivist, interpretive phenomenological framework to construct and interpret the “phenomenon” or experience of the research participants through the frequency with which particular themes or codes are referenced within each interview. 

Within this framework of qualitative analysis, a system for coding the interviews was developed, which organized data into categories or themes, codes, and subcodes. At the macro-level, categories included different contexts: general perceptions, singing at home, singing at school, singing in extracurricular choirs, perceptions of singing, and pandemic-related insights. On the next tier, relating to each of the categories independently, were codes connected to the physiological/cognitive, psychological/emotional, social/cultural and spiritual benefits of singing. On a micro-scale, subcodes existed underneath each code. These subcodes were the specific phrases, words, or themes that were drawn from the interviews themselves. Overall categories and codes generated, a total of 248 subcodes. With coding complete as of February 2025, the number of codes assigned to each individual interview ranged from as few as 15 to as many as 195, with a total of 7200 codes assigned to all 99 interviews. We are grateful for the insights that these 99 children so generously shared.

RESEARCH | PUBLICATIONS

Ries, A. (2026). How did the pandemic affect children’s attitudes to singing? Futurum, (37). https://doi.org/10.33424/FUTURUM669

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This article was produced by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE). For more information, teaching resources, and course and career guides, see www.futurumcareers.com

RESEARCH | EVENTS & PRESENTATIONS

July 2026 37th International Society for Music Education World Conference, Montréal, Québec, Canada 

June 2026 Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CACS/CSSE), Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

October 2024 Proceedings of Music Conference Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

May 2024 Proceedings of Podium 2024, Choral Canada National Conference, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

August 2023 Proceedings of the 25th International Kodály Symposium, Los Angeles, California, USA

April 2023 University of Alberta Augustana Faculty World Cafe, Camrose, Alberta, Canada

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Welch, Graham. (2017). “The Identities of Singers and Their Educational Environments” in MacDonald, Hargreaves and Mielle (Eds). The Handbook of Musical Identities. London, UK: Oxford Scholarship Online. 

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