Dancing program and young children’s social development

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate impact of dancing program on early childhood children’s pro-social skills, aggression and shyness. Treatment group applied eight weeks long dancing program which contained two dance activities for each week. Control group had not applied the dance program. Forty-five children from treatment and 62 children from control group participated the study. Teachers rated their children’s social skills before and after the dancing program. Findings showed that treatment children’s pro-social skills significantly increased from pretest to posttest and aggression and shyness scores significantly decreased from pretest to posttest. Similar findings were not detected for control group. Two groups’ posttest minus pretest differences for three sub dimension compared and comparison revealed significant difference in favor of treatment group. These findings pointed the dancing program which was developed by investigators as a practical intervention tool to promote young children’s social skills.