Dance Education - Adding Writing to Your Dance Curriculum as an Expressive Process

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. The results of Study 1 suggested that programmed writing had a positive effect on mood, but failed to have a significant effect on health or dance skill. The results for Study 2 suggested that programmed writing did not have a significant effect on health, mood, or dance skill. These studies appear to be an appropriate application of programmed writing in an applied setting, and call into question the ability of programmed writing to effectively cause positive changes in health, mood, and goal attainment, as is typically reported in the literature. Ideas for future research such as linguistic analysis of participants' journals and further clarification of the role of stress and emotionality in dance are discussed.