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.