Programs that engage young children in movement and song to help them learn are popular but experimental evidence on their impact is sparse. We use an RCT to evaluate the effectiveness of Big Word Club (BWC), a classroom program that uses music and dance videos for 3-5 minutes per day to increase vocabulary. We conducted a field experiment with…

In world music ensembles such as African and African Caribbean percussion ensembles, the Gamelan ensemble, and the Latin marimba ensemble, members may sing a song, play instruments, and dance simultaneously. This practice is known as music multitasking. For musicians in Western art music traditions, music multitasking can be a challenge. This…

Students with complex communication needs (CCN) do not have the same access to social opportunities as their typical peers (Chung et al., 2012; Raghavendra et al., 2012; Schoger, 2006). Without such opportunities, students with CCN fall behind their classmates in building friendships and obtaining peer acceptance (Bossaert et al., 2015;…

This article describes dance/STEAM-based educational workshops for 3rd and 4th graders at a local science museum led by the artistic director and members of a professional dance company and supported by a large university research community. The overarching pedagogical goal was to use dance to learn about science and science to learn about dance.…

Dancers in India come from a background that focuses on performance and are trained to teach the way they were taught. When such dancers join a K-12 space as dance educators, they need to find new ways of teaching dance and movement. The teaching strategies employed in a dance studio, institute, or under a guru vary immensely from the strategies…

Background: Physical activity (PA) is associated with positive health outcomes. However, children's access to physical activities they enjoy may be limited. Purpose: To evaluate second-grader's PA against the U.S. DHHS goals to see if a before-school, play-based dance program contributed to these goals. Operational feasibility was evaluated using…

This article builds on an arts-based pedagogical development project where a kindergarten educator and a somatic dance teacher have created and conducted dance-workshops for kindergarten teachers, aiming at developing bodily professional knowledge through dance. The research is carried out from a post-human perspective (Barad, Karen, "Meeting…

This study aims to define Early Formal Education teacher competence in the learning of dance art in kindergarten in Malang. This study uses a descriptive design with quantitative and qualitative approaches. The population is kindergarten teachers in Malang. The sample uses a proportional random sampling technique that amounted to 15 kindergarten…

This paper explores dance as literacy. Specifically, it examines qualitative case study research findings and student examples from a dance artist-in-residence that explored curricular content using dance as its primary mode of enquiry and expression. Throughout the residency, students constructed meaning through their dance experiences in dynamic…

The goals of the present study were (a) to explore different aspects of children's participation in structured performing arts activities (e.g., dance and music); and (b) to examine links between participation in performing arts and indices of socioemotional functioning. Participants were N = 166 children (75 boys and 91 girls) in Grade 1 (n = 70,…

Increased emphasis on standardization in primary grades can stifle spontaneous literacy play. The authors argue that allowing playful, collaborative, multimodal literacies into primary classrooms and specifically in writers' workshop can expand and enliven the way we see students' literacy strengths. The authors look closely at the unique…

Although past literature regarding the use of dance and creative movement to teach content has been supportive, it has been primarily anecdotal in nature. This study provided a systematic approach to evaluating the relationship between the use of dance and creative movement to teach character-trait vocabulary and students' understanding of those…

This study examined the use of poetry as a multimodal communicative text to encourage reading engagement in selected African-American learners with mild intellectual disabilities. Framed by critical discourse theory, genre theory, and Gardner's theory of multiple intelligences, this investigation presented poetry as an alternative text…

Literate practice in the arts encompasses both aesthetics and creativity. It is also multimodal in nature and often collaborative. This article presents data collected from a small multi-age school, with children from Prep to Year 7, during their preparation for an end-of-year show. The children had studied the topics of conservation and…

Dance education has not played a significant role in Hong Kong schools. Teacher education may be at a crossroads in determining its future directions in relation to dance as art rather than physical activity. Taking Marcel Mauss's characterizations of the techniques of the body as the ways in which, from society to society, people learn how to use…