Research Programme Overview
Sing For Wellbeing CPD training programme is part of a research partnership between Love Music and Queen Margaret University.
** This research has full ethical approval from Queen Margaret University and Edinburgh Council. Further information about the research study, including Participant Information and Consent Forms will be sent upon sign-up to the study.**
We are looking for 8 primary schools in Edinburgh to sign up to be a ‘research school’. The research intervention will take place with upper primary P4 – P7. The research programme lasts 3 years, starting in September 2025 and ending in June 2028.
Programme shape & time commitment
In the first year (September 2025 – June 2026), we will only measure the wellbeing impact of the CPD programme on the participating primary teachers. There is no research within school settings or with children.
In the second year, CPD leader Stephen Deazley will deliver singing and body percussion workshops in each research school. The workshops will be evaluated and the effects on the children measured by a specialist researcher from Queen Margaret University to understand the wellbeing impact on children.
In the third year, we will work with teachers who have taken part in the CPD programme and the pupils in their classrooms. Similar workshops as in year 2 will be delivered by the teachers themselves, with the effects on the children measured by a specialist researcher from Queen Margaret University. The two key areas for measurement in both years will be ‘wellbeing’ and ‘flow’.
It is likely that the school time required each year will be in the region of either: 30 minute workshops once per week for 8-12 weeks, or 30 minute workshops four days per week for 3-4 weeks. 3 classes will be required to take part per school: 1 to receive a singing workshop, 1 for a body percussion workshop, and 1 control class with no music activity additional to what the class would usually get. Following these initial workshops, there will be a series of mixed singing and body percussion workshops for all the children involved in the study, including the control group.
Research aims
- Provide robust quantitative and qualitative evidence of the benefits of singing on the wellbeing of children, and on in-service primary school teachers;
- Provide robust quantitative and qualitative evidence into music education training programmes that empower and enable inclusive singing practices within school settings;
- Establish teaching communities that enable confidence and competence in inclusive singing leadership amongst current and future teachers in Scotland.
Through our research we hope to demonstrate that singing can be a catalyst for increased positivity and contribute to the ongoing wellbeing of primary school learners, their teachers and wider school community.
After the research programme is completed, we hope that the findings will help to evidence the importance of singing on the wellbeing of children, to influence a new national CPD programme which will benefit all children in Scotland. By becoming a research school, you will be helping other schools, teachers and children, now and in the future, to be more creative and well.
Staffing
The research programme is led by Queen Margaret University Senior Lecturer in Education and former Primary School Teacher Dr Kat Lord, and Queen Margaret University Senior Lecturer in Psychology Dr Stuart Wilson. They will be supported by an extended team of PVG checked research assistants.
Please visit Queen Margaret University’s Centre For Applied Social Sciences webpage to find out more about their research.
Sing For Wellbeing CPD programme
Information & sign up form for the Sing For Wellbeing CPD programme.