Dance for wellness

This Dance for Wellness Program aims to increase the mental and physical health of students.  This will be achieved by enabling students to:

• Know oneself; increase: sense of identity and place in the world, self-confidence, self-esteem, self-motivated

•             Connecting with others; social skills

•             Physically active for life

•             Can contribute to society

 

This is in line with Meeting educational goals:  The Melbourne Declaration on educational goals for young Australians (Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs, MCEETYA, 2008) has a focus on fostering creative individuals, it states that all students explore and build on their gifts and talents (p.7) and use innovation and creativity to solve problems and make sense of the world (p.8).  This Dance for Wellness Program fosters this creativity and innovation.

 

In particular the following groups have been highlighted as at risk of poor mental health; this resource therefore has been designed to be implemented with these groups:

 

Reduce high risk mental health problems in Adolescents in Rural Victorian towns; The Loddon Murray town of Swan Hill in focus:  In August 2012 there was considerable media attention given to youth self-harm and mental illness in Swan Hill.  In a report on the mental health of young people in Swan Hill, Johansen stated that there has been an increase in the number of young people (aged 12-25) presenting to hospital with mental health issues at the Swan Hill District Hospital (SHDH)  from 2004-2012 (2013, p.10).  The Commonwealth of Australia 2008 states that one of the problems facing remote locations is the lack of entertainment.  The Dance for wellness program can encourage young people to get involved in dance as a form of recreation and entertainment.  A drop in dance centre would be great for Swan Hill though it is beyond the scope of this resource to include any plans for one.

 

Encourage girls to be active:  In Johansen’s study he also found that the percentage of girls presenting to hospital with mental health issues at the Swan Hill District Hospital (SHDH) from 2004-2012 was higher for females than males, in 2012 females presenting doubled that of males (2013, p.11).  Dance interests both genders but it is particularly useful to encourage girls to be active.  Meldrum discusses how there is a trend that girls involvement in physical activity decreases as they get older and an implication for teachers is that they should be providing lifestyle recreation (2012), dance is a form of lifestyle recreation.   The NSW Department of Education and Communities (DEC), 1999 – 2011, discuss that a lot of girls drop out of physical sport when they reach their teenage years, they say that girls (and some boys) want to participate in physical activity but they become disinterested for various reasons such as sports are boring, repetitive, too completive and they lack the skills to perform.  DEC state that there needs to be greater efforts directed toward the needs and interests of girls and young women, to keep them engaged in physical activity throughout their school and adult life.  Dance can provide a fun, interesting and non-competitive alternative to staying active (Brehm & McNett).  Dance also builds foundation movement skills; this is explained in the pedagogies as knowing Body, Effort, Relationship and Space (Gallahue and Donnelly, 2003), these skills can also be transferred to sports.

 

Wellness of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders:  The town of Swan Hill has 4.2 percentage of Aboriginal’s living in the community (State of Victoria, Department of Health, 2012) compared to  .7 precent in Victoria (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014).  Johansen found that there has been a significant rise in presentations of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander young people to SHDH in 2012 (2013, p.16).   This Dance for Wellness Program aims at increasing the mental health of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islanders through the many benefits of dance on all individuals and through engagement with their culture; strengthening self-pride and connectedness with place.  Also studying different cultures through the arts, such as creative dance, strengthens the wellness of these minority groups as other students learn to empathise, learn tolerance, accept differences and challenge stereo-types (Russell-Bowie (1997, p.227), Emery (1998, p.2), Knan Academy, (2014)).

 

Children with special needs:  Although benefiting all students young and old, kinaesthetic learning, such as through dance, is particularly useful for students who have displayed Bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, which is recognized as one of our multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1999), this includes children who are restless and hyperactive.  In a study of the benefits of educating through kinaesthetic learning Geršak found “important positive effects in all fields of child development: the socio-emotional, cognitive, and psycho-motor fields, as well as on children with special needs (especially with restless and hyperactive children)” (2012, p. 9).

 

Benefits of Dance: Dance is very effective in developing the whole child; affective and physical capabilities in students.   Dance has the benefit of increasing wellness through the means of physical education; “movement education” and the benefit of “affective education” through the creative approach aspects of dance. Physical Health and Education Canada (PHEC) (2014a) state that “Dance educates the entire self and provides an ideal vehicle for students to learn physically, intellectually, emotionally, and socially”.

The following is a list of some of the benefits of dance; the list can be attributed to a number of authors and educators: Geršak (2012), Brehm & McNett, PHEC (2014), Gardner (1999), Rathunde (2009), Tregenza (2008) Dinham (2014), Griss (1998), Sansom (2001), Smith-Autard (2002) and Zakkai (1997) (please see 'elaboration on benefits of dance' for detailed description including quotes):

• Dance provides lifelong involvement in physical activity, health and wellbeing:

• Providing an outlet to express:

• Accessing multiple intelligences; kinaesthetic learning:

• Has a positive effect on a child's self-esteem:

• Developing spacial awareness:

• Focus and engage in learning:

• “Develop and refine their higher-level thinking skills”:   (Zakkai: source Geršak,  2012, p.3)

• Increase social skills:

• “Develops healthy bodies: in a non-competitive atmosphere”: Brehm & McNett

• “Enrich life”: Brehm & McNett

• Through Dance students can make a Spiritual connection:

• “Appreciate their dance heritage, as well as the role of movement in understanding other people and cultures.

• Appreciate their dance heritage, as well as the role of movement in understanding other people and cultures.” Morin (source: PHEC, 2014)

• As an added bonus dance education uses music so the benefits to wellness that music brings are also gained.

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This resource is designed with lower primary students in mind though it is important to stress that Dance is extremely beneficial to the development of upper primary and secondary school students as well as being beneficial for them to take dance with them throughout their life journey.  This resource is targeted at lower primary school to capitalize on the natural ability and desire young children have to dance, Geršak suggests that “physical learning, including kinaesthetic activities, creative movement, and dance, are natural to most children” (2012, p. 1).  This resource can be altered to meet the curriculum mapping of older children.