From practice to publication: the story of the Peppa Pig song

by Rosie Walton and Susan Young

I’ve often found that as soon as the article is written, reviewed, revised and accepted for publication – in EECERJ, hurray! – that I come across an idea which would have exactly captured what we were trying to say when we wrote the article.  So it is that I came across Korsgaard’s article about ‘exemplarity’ by which he explains how specific examples from practice prompt professional reflection and can lead to rethinking pedagogical principles (Korsgaard, 2020).  Our article with the title:  ‘I’m Peppa Pig’: Young Children’s Self-initiated Song-singing with a Digital Device as Multi-modal Expressive Practices’ tells the story of how examples from practice led to deeper thinking about children’s song-singing. 

Let me explain how the article came about. 

Rosie was the practitioner running a Gloucestershire Music project in the Forest of Dean. Rosie and I had first met as student and mentor (respectively) on the Certificate for Music Educators (CME) programme which CREC runs, so I knew she was an excellent and gifted practitioner.  She has now, incidentally, progressed to become a tutor and mentor on the same CME programme.

As one of the project aims Rosie was trying out digital voice recorders – the kind which have often been used to encourage talk among young children – but we had the idea to use them to encourage children to sing.  She trialled various voice recorders and settled on one that was easily operated by the children.  And sing they did. What we noticed, however, was that among the songs the children sang, was the inclusion of songs they had learnt from media – from watching, films and cartoons.  What we also noticed was that these songs carried certain meanings.  One four-year-old boy, improvising versions of Peppa Pig songs, brought the character and playfulness of Peppa Pig, splashing in muddy puddles, into friendly encounters with his friends in the nursery.   

This example – among others – got us thinking. First we realised that children are learning songs from their home-based experiences of audiovisual media.  That should have come as no surprise to us. But perhaps, because there is a strong belief that children ‘ought’ to be singing traditional nursery favourites, the songs they know from media viewing at home may be brushed over.  Then we realised that those songs are more than just a song per se: they are interwoven with the characters, the story-lines and the aesthetic qualities of the cartoon or film.  And then the song arrives in the setting bringing all the vitalness, the audiovisual multi-modality and meaningfulness with it.  The Peppa Pig song isn’t ‘just’ a song, but has character and storylines compressed within it, and which will spill out into musical play in a conducive early years environment. 

Having discussed this, and other examples of children’s song-singing from media, Rosie and I first presented the work at the conference organised by MERYC (Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children).  All this culminated in writing the article based on our examples – ‘exemplarity’ – from practice.

We are both committed to research that starts with children and what they do and that tries to respond to their needs, interests and motivations. And we are also committed to models of collaborative, participatory research in which researchers and professionals co-produce insights and understandings that are grounded in practice.  This of course is a founding principle of CREC and why we are so proud of our connections and affiliations. 

Korsgaard, M.T. (2020), Exemplarity and education: Retuning educational research. British. Eational Research Journal, 46: 1357-1370. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3636

Walton, R., & Young, S. (2026). ‘I’m Peppa Pig’: young children’s self-initiated song-singing with a digital device as multi-modal expressive practices. European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350293X.2026.2720044

The project was funded by Youth Music and by Gloucestershire Music. 

We thank the staff, children and parents of the setting for hosting the project. 

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About Susan Young

I first came to CREC many years ago as a member of the Moonbeams project team and have managed to stay ever since!  Next I set up the early childhood music strand of the MA and taught it for some years and then initiated the Certificate in Music Education as a partnership between CREC and Trinity Music College, London.  I am now retired but have been honoured to receive an affiliation with CREC as Honorary Distinguished Research Fellow.  From the very start the ethos, values and ambience of CREC felt exactly right to me and the centre has been a committed supporter of early childhood music education initiatives. The MA programme and the CME programme have enabled many, indeed probably more than a 100 educators to receive professional training and qualifications in early childhood music – and thus have benefitted the music education of young children across the UK. 

About Rosie Walton

My connection with CREC began as a student on the CME: EC course. I had already worked in a range of educational contexts by this point – as a music coordinator in a large inner-city primary school, as a musicianship tutor at The Brimingham Conservatoire’s Junior Department and as a Strand Leader at The Glasshouse International Centre of Music, where I had set up and coordinated a Young Strings Project. But I was keen to develop my understanding of children’s musical development further. I was fascinated by where young children’s musicality comes from and the many ways that it can be developed. The course at CREC enabled me to explore these issues in detail; it sharpened my observational skills, helping me to recognise children’s musicality as a feature of their everyday lives and as an important mode of expression; it introduced me to a range of playful pedagogies and inspired me to develop my practice to become more flexible and responsive to my young learners. 

The course also opened doors. It enabled me to take on a Youth Music early years music project – The ‘Gloucestershire Songscape Project’ – in which I explored and developed innovative forms of practice. And it introduced me to the conferences hosted by Music Educators and Researchers of Young Children (MERYC) where I presented my research from the project.

I now combine my work as a practising music educator with my role as mentor and tutor on the CME:EC course. I am hugely grateful to the team at CREC who have inspired and encouraged me on my journey from student to mentor to journal writer – in particular to Dr Susan Young, Jane Parker, Margareta Burell and Kate Comberti.