Dance classes may boost kids’ problem-solving skills, study suggests
A new international study has found that structured dance lessons could help young children develop important thinking skills often used in computer coding and problem-solving.
The research, published by the Association for Computing Machinery Transactions on Computing Education, and carried out by Fiona Fairlie and Jim Paterson from Glasgow Caledonian University, and Katrin Kunz from the University of Tübingen, examined whether taking part in Scottish Country Dance (SCD) workshops could improve “computational thinking.” This term refers to skills such as spotting patterns, breaking problems into smaller steps, and designing simple instructions − all key abilities for learning programming.
The team worked with 50 children aged 6 to 9 from Scotland and Germany. The children completed a computational thinking test before and after a series of structured dance sessions. Some groups also took part in short follow-up activities that linked the dance movements to basic coding ideas.
Children who were taught by experienced SCD instructors in familiar classroom settings showed significant improvements in their test scores after the dance sessions. Those who also did the related coding activities improved even more.
However, a third group − split into a dance group and a non-dance control group − did not show the same gains. The researchers believe this may indicate that certain conditions matter, such as the teacher’s dance background and experience level, the learning environment itself and whether children already know anything about the dance style.
Despite the mixed results, the study found that children in all groups were enthusiastic and engaged throughout the activities.
Fiona, based in Glasgow Caledonian’s School of Science and Engineering, said: “Our findings open the door to further investigation into how physical activities like dance can support thinking skills linked to coding and problem-solving. Pairing dance with simple coding exercises may strengthen the effect.
“Dance is fun and engaging for children and it may offer a creative way to help them develop skills that are becoming increasingly important in today’s digital world.”