Week 6 - Methodology

This week, we dived into how to create the methodology sections for our research proposal.  When I began this research proposal, I think I went through about 6 different topics before I settled on the topic of sight singing.  Last week, we created a review of literature that pertained to our topic.  I found that James L. Reifinger Jr. was one of the leading researchers on sight singing in an elementary classroom.  He has done multiple studies on what the best method of sight singing is for young students.

I have set out to replicate his study in order to determine what the best method of sight singing is for my own students in my own classroom.  I have hypothesized that using solfege is the best method.  However I have found research that suggests that singing on a neutral syllable such as "loo" might be better for students because it doesn't cause a cognitive overload.

After I created my review of literature last week, I set out to determine the method in which  I would conduct the study were it to be approved by a research committee.  I determined that Reifinger had a great method.  In his study, he split students into different treatment groups by class.  One treatment group learned sight singing using solfege and patterns that were familiar to them (4-note tonal patterns that had been pulled from songs the students had learned previously).  Another treatment group learned sight singing by using solfege and patterns that were unfamiliar to them.  Another treatment group learned sight singing by using a neutral syllable with patterns that were familiar to them.  And the last treatment group learned sight singing by using a neutral syllable with patterns that were unfamiliar to them.  In his study, he spent 16 lessons developing the sight singing skills in each group.  I proposed, in my study, to spend 21 lessons.  Perhaps a longer time period would yield results different than those of Reifinger's study.

Like Reifinger, I proposed that two outside teachers (his were retired music teachers) grade the recorded pretests, posttests, and retention tests.  This would eliminate any bias that would occur if the teacher that taught the students and knew the students graded the exam.  In addition, two separate teachers who did not converse with each out, would grade the tests without knowing the answers first.  They would determine what notes the students were attempting to sing.  Then the grades of the two teachers would be compared for validity.  (Reifinger found an 89% validity in his 2009 study using this method).  After that, the grades for each treatment group would be compared.

In addition to learned about how to create a methodology section of a research proposal, we analyzed data in excel.  I learned how to find the correlation in excel.  Remember that just because there is a correlation between two items, it doesn't mean that the correlation is positive.  The correlation between two items can be negative as well.  In addition, there can be low, moderate, or even high correlation.  In addition to the Pearson function in excel, I put the items into a scatter plot graph that helped me determine if the correlation was positive or negative and if the correlation was low, moderate, or high.