“The data analysis will give an idea of the singing development of Icelandic five year olds in comparison with their peers in other countries,” says Helga Rut Guðmundsdóttir, Assistant Professor in music, who has in recent years participated in an international research project on the singing development of children, AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing).
“My interest in both musical development and singing were the reason for my participation in the AIRS project in its early stages in 2007, but we received a grant to get things started in 2009. We have gathered data among five-year-olds in Iceland in several kindergartens and are now preparing the data for further analysis,” says Guðmundsdóttir
“The children who participated in the research are in kindergartens that either has much organised musical work on their agenda or not. One of the aspects we will examine among the Icelandic children is whether there is a difference between these groups; and whether this difference can be measured by a singing development test as,” says Guðmundsdóttir.
The project is funded by Canadian Research Funds and connects numerous researchers from different academic fields who have the research of singing in some fashion, in common. “A part of the project is to have a singing test in many countries in order to develop better international tests than we now possess,” Guðmundsdóttir points out.
Helga Rut Guðmundsdóttir says that data on children’s singing is gathered in an international database that the researchers can access on-line. “Thus the researchers can share their data and increase the possibilities of comparisons between different age groups in different countries.”
Helga Guðmundsdóttir Assistant Professor in music.
Has in recent years participated in an international research project on the singing development of children, AIRS (Advancing Interdisciplinary Research in Singing).
