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The Importance Of Dance And Drama In Education

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Dance and Drama are often considered subjects that offer little value to a student’s education.

Dance and Drama are both considered to offer little value but these are subjects that offer great importance to a student’s education. These allow the students to access their creative abilities and help build their understanding of the topics they are learning in the classroom. Many students use drama to be able to extend their understanding of the topic they are learning in each of the Key Learning Areas, but also allows students to develop into quick thinking, problem solving, and persevering members of society.

Drama has been continuously left behind in students education for many reasons. These include the fact many teachers feel that it is of little or no value to students. They also feel as though it has no place in the classroom setting of order, tidiness and structure. Some teachers find that they can not make the time for drama as they need more time for literacy and numeracy where there are tests such as NAPLAN which take precedence and receive government funding. However is stated in Creative Arts Teaching and Practice, drama can and should be used to “develop fine motor skills; assist in the development of social skills; develop student confidence; and enrich learning throughout the curriculum as cross-curricular programming.” (Alter, F., Hays, T., and O'Hara, R. 2009). Consequently teachers need to incorporate the arts into all areas of learning to ensure that students are given the skills to develop their academic, social and physical being.

Another reason teachers are failing to make time for the creative arts is due to a lack of certainty in their ability to teach and an absence of understanding to the broad curriculum. What teachers do not realise is that drama builds on a student's understanding to be able to develop stronger comprehensive knowledge and use their minds in different ways to creatively address their work in the tested subjects. If teachers incorporate drama into all KLAs, as well as specific teaching drama, the students will become motivated. This is supported by Eric Oddleifson “the arts are cognitive domains that trigger multiple forms of learning.” (1994). In saying this it

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