Research on the Positive Impact of Dance Education

Many people have a general awareness that dance education (and arts education in general) have a positive impact of childhood development and on overall academic performance.  What is lesser known are details of the actual scientific research that has been done on this subject.

The link below is a comprehensive report by the National Dance Education Organization (NDEO) that summarizes many of the important studies on the relationship between dance education and childhood development in the K-12 age range.  

Some brief highlights:

• Dance education facilitates the kinesthetic learners’ exploration of abstract geometrical concepts, enhance their problem solving skills, and enable them to develop a mathematical-thinking process that can be verbally communicated
• Eighth graders who had high levels of arts engagement from kindergarten through elementary school showed higher test scores in science and writing than did students who had lower levels of arts engagement over the same period. 
  
• Students who had arts-rich experiences in high school were more likely than students without those experiences to complete a calculus course. Also, students who took arts courses in high school achieved a slightly higher grade-point average (GPA) in math than did other students. 
• In two separate databases, students who had arts-rich experiences in high school showed higher overall GPAs than did students who lacked those experiences. 
• High school students who earned few or no arts credits were five times more likely not to have graduated than students who earned many arts credits.
  

The complete report can be found here.