6c - Literature Reviews

Here are three pieces of literature that I have come across and have found useful in planning my inquiry. I have added some sources of interest on our Linkedin SIG groups 'arts in education' and 'Dance within secondary education'. Looking forward to seeing what others in the group have come up with too!

1. Partnering Dance and Education: Intelligent moves for changing times
    Judith Lynne Hanna 2000

2. Einstein on Creative Thinking: Music and the Intuitive Art of scientific Imagination
    Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein in Imagine That!

3. Does dance and education help academic achievement?
    Judith Lynne Hanna in Dance Magazine 2001

Review

1. In this book, Hanna explores the ways in which dance can actually be beneficial to learning in other areas such as citizenship, business creativity, social skills and personal development. She examines ways in which children learn and goes on to suggest reasons why dance should be taught within secondary educatoin. Hanna is the senior research schloar in the Department of Dance at the University of Maryland. She provides research evidence in her book and looks in to how history has shown us the potential of dance education. I have found this book to be invaluable throughout my research as Hanna provides much of the evidence I require for my inquiry, having actually undergone certain studies.

2. Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein are lecturers and authors. I found their literature on their website 'Psychology Today'. Robert studies scientific creativity and although his article is aimed at scientists, it was actually very relevent to me, looking in to the importance of the arts in education. Root-Bernstein speaks about Albert Einstein and how he, someone who is so famously known as a physicist, frequently praised his scientific attributes wholey on his creative abilities. Einstein played the piano and violin and insisted that 'personal creativity provided the kind of recreation that enables professional innovation' (Root- Bernstein, 2010). I think this article will help me to put my point across well. Einstein is well respected and for him to insist that one needs creativity in ones life in order to excell in other fields, I think others will find my arguement more credible.

3. This is an article that I came across during my research in to Judith Lynne Hanna. It provides statistical data relating to 'teaching and learning in the arts and measures of academic achievement ' (Hanna, 2001) Hanna is a believer that the two are linked and therefore it is important to teach the arts in schools. Hanna does explain that this topic is relatively new and much more research is required. She puts forward questions that have been beneficial to my own inquiry, such as 'what are the mental skills in creating and perceiving dance that students acquire through a well designed dance education programme? How can these skills transfer to reading and maths?'