ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Performance Science
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1595834
This article is part of the Research TopicMusic Education, Embodiment & Flourishing - Volume IIView all 3 articles
Music Education, Embodiment & Flourishing -Volume II Singing, health and well-being in young children
Provisionally accepted- Institute of Education, University College London, London, England, United Kingdom
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This exploratory, pre-post study considers the impact of collective singing within inner London Primary classrooms on young children's vocal development and sense of health and well-being. Data on singing and well-being were collected from children between the ages of five and seven before and at the conclusion of a whole class singing programme. The programme was led by professional singers from a charitable singing foundation who visited the school every two weeks over a period of six months (January 2024 -June 2024). Class teachers were expected to lead collective singing with their classes between the visits and the programme concluded with performance in central London. Singing development was measured using the Rutkowski (1997) Singing Voice development Measure (SVDM) and Welch's (1998) revised model of vocal pitch-matching development (VPDM). Children's perception of their health and well-being was assessed through the Very Short Well-being Questionnaire for Children (VSWQ-C) (Smees et al., 2020), the PANAS-C (Laurent et al., 1999) measure of emotional well-being (modified for younger children by Smees et al., 2020) and focus groups at the end of the programme. Results suggest that there was a significant improvement in children's singing competency and that their perceptions of health and well-being were sustained across the period. However, there was no clear evidence statistically of a significant relationship between singing, health and well-being, primarily because, although their singing competency improved, these young children were very positive on the health and well-being measures throughout the focus period. Nevertheless, children in focus groups reported being very positive about the singing programme and its positive impact on their health and well-being.
Keywords: Children, Singing, development, Health and well-being, exploration
Received: 18 Mar 2025; Accepted: 27 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Welch and Baxter. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Graham Frederick Welch, Institute of Education, University College London, London, WC1H 0AL, England, United Kingdom
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