Dance Education

Revision with unchanged content. Writing about traumatic or stressful experiences has been shown to have physical and mental health benefits. This book describes two studies that were designed to test the hypothesis that programmed writing would enhance the mood, health, and dance skill of students enrolled in dance education classes. Study 1 included 40 participants with a mean age of 17.1 years who were enrolled in a community-based summer dance camp. Study 2 included 100 participants with a mean age of 20.5 years who were enrolled in university-based dance education classes. Both studies utilized a pre/post design, and participants were randomly assigned to a programmed writing group or a control writing group. The programmed writing group was instructed to write about their thoughts and feelings about dance, and the control writing group was instructed to write about what they learned in class that day. Participants also completed questionnaires about their mood, health, and perceived dance skill, and were rated by independent observers on dance skill and attitude. A series of multivariate analyses of variance (MANOVA) examined the effects of programmed writing on mood, health and dance skill.