Creative dance as experiential learning in state primary education: The Potential Benefits for Children

© The Author(s) 2020. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Background: Taking the UK National Curriculum as an example, creative dance is part of physical education classified as a foundation subject rather than an important core subject. Purpose: The article’s primary aim is to examine a range of literature exploring any potential benefits of the role of creative dance for children aged 3-11 years in mainstream state education to evaluate whether creative dance can be categorised as experiential learning. Methodology/Approach: The search included key words in several data bases. The analysis arrived at some potential benefits which can be framed within experiential learning. Findings /Conclusion: This section identifies some benefits of creative dance in socio-emotional, arts-based, transferable, embodied, physical, and cognitive learning. It concludes that conceptualising creative dance as experiential learning could support the consideration of it filling a more central role in the curriculum. Implications: This article breaks new ground in experiential learning re-contextualising the role of creative dance in children’s learning through reviewing some related literature. There is a claim to be made for creative dance to play a more central role in the curriculum when the benefits and its process are framed as experiential learning.Peer reviewe