The Singing Voice Development Measure (SVDM), designed by Penn State University Professor Emeritus Dr. Joanne Rutkowski is a developmental test to identify the physical coordination of student's use of singing voice, has been used to support students in Newark CSD since 2018 when Lara Larsson first began teaching music at Perkins School.
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As part of a data-informed music classroom, the SVDM, paired with the PMMA (Primary Measure of Music Audiation) assessment, provided Larsson with the information she needed to meet a wide variety of her music student’s needs.
"Teachers of young children who struggle to sing in tune now have rigorously tested and valid assessment tools alongside teaching strategies to help children develop their musical minds, musical muscles, and musical self-esteem so that no child is left to sit silent in a music classroom or ensemble," said Larsson, who now is the vocal music teacher at Lincoln School who also teaches 8th grade general music students at Newark Middle School.
Larsson continues to use data-informed assessment and instructional practices in her classroom, but now utilizes the Intermediate Measure of Music Audiation (IMMA) and the most updated version of the SVDM, one that she worked collaboratively on with Dr. Rutkowski.
In 2018, Larsson first met Dr. Rutkowski at the Early Childhood Music & Movement Association (ECMMA) convention at SUNY Buffalo, and ever since has formed a close working relationship focusing on research that promotes meaningful assessment and instruction for early childhood music teachers. Also, since 2020, Larsson has served on the board of the Early Childhood Music & Movement Association as Vice President of Development (2020-22), Corporate Sponsorship Manager for Conventions (2022-2023) and holds a Level II Certification from the organization as an early childhood music & movement practitioner.
Larsson, in collaboration with Dr. Rutkowski and Libby Brozik, who was the music teacher at Lincoln School from 2020-2023, formulated a study to determine if a newer version of the SVDM, especially the patterns children sing, would be more effective in identifying student singing voice development and therefore would help teachers better identify student needs for instruction.
Larsson designed an activity, with modifications and updates from Brozik, utilizing Newark district technology of iPads with the instructional app "Seesaw" to have students self-administer the measure for the first time in its history. In the spring of 2023, the measure was delivered to over 200 students in both Perkins and Lincoln schools over a period of several weeks, where students completed both the old version and the new version of the SVDM.
Both Larsson and Brozik combed through each student's submission, each consisting of 32 individual audio samples, to identifying faulty samples and to code each valid submission with a unique identifying collection of letters and numbers that would keep the student identities anonymous. After each sample set was catalogued, both teachers scored all the samples using the SVDM scoring system. Their scores were compared to insure they agreed on the scoring.
“This is called inter-rater reliability. Then the teachers rescored 20 samples. Their second scoring of these 20 samples were then compared with their first scoring of those samples. This enabled us to compute the intra-rater reliability to ensure that each teacher’s scoring was consistent and reliable. Both reliability coefficients were very high indicating strong reliability,” Dr. Rutkowski said.
After this long process of organizing and scoring, the data was then sent to Dr. Christina Svec, Associate Professor at Iowa State University who joined the team to provide meaningful data analysis.
The results revealed that Newark students did exceptionally well on both the old and new versions of the SVDM. The research team believes that the students did so well because the assessment was delivered at the end of the school year, after one or two school years filled with classroom instruction that includes developmentally appropriate singing voice instruction. And that these teachers are exceptional in helping children learn to sing – not the norm for sure!
Despite the minimal change in scores between the two assessments, it was still enough to tell the research team that the new version of the test may in fact, provide a better window into the development of the children's singing voices. The recommendation from the study is that researchers and teachers who use the SVDM use the new patterns moving forward.
The results of the study were presented by Larsson and Dr. Rutkowski at the 2024 Biennial National Association for Music Education (NAfME) Music Research and Teacher Education Conference September 25-28th in Atlanta, Georgia. The conference drew over 650 attendees and featured a pre-conference forum on transforming music teaching and learning, two plenary sessions, 170 plus presentation sessions, and more than 240 poster presentations. Larsson demonstrated the Seesaw tool to attendees who asked questions about the process of collecting and assessing the data. Researchers are hoping to continue discussions regarding the use of the tool in future research regarding musical cognition skills and use of singing voice.
“This study would not have been possible without Lara’s and Libby’s contribution,” Dr. Rutkowski said. “Their development of an app (Seesaw) to assess children’s singing made it possible for data to be collected in a “child-friendly” way without disrupting instruction. I plan to work with Lara to include the app in a book so other teachers can use it as well. These teachers also spent hours of their own time to manage the data and score all the samples. In addition, it is becoming more and more difficult to conduct research in schools with children so this collaboration, and the support of Newark Schools, is a rare example of being able to really learn about children and designing instruction to help them improve their skills and to help teachers better meet the children’s musical needs.”
Brozik, Larsson, Dr. Rutkowski and Dr. Svec are grateful to Perkins Principal Pete Czerkas, Lincoln School Principal Kari Hamelinck, Assistant Superintendent for Curriculum & Instruction Krista Lewis, Music Department Leader Cindy Briggs, and the Newark community for their support in the work of this study.
Larsson will make a presentation on the results of the study at the October 16th Newark Board of Education meeting.
Newark community members interested in learning more about the study can reach out to co-researcher Lara Larsson, music teacher at Lincoln/Middle School by email at lara.larsson@newarkcsd.org.