Dance Engagement in an Urban School District: The SanArts Conservatory

Through a research partnership with the Santa Ana Unified School District in Southern California, I designed and implemented a mixed-methods longitudinal research study to document the school attendance rates, academic achievement, and motivational factors linked to adolescents engagement in the district’s sequentially designed dance programs. The study assessed dance participation across multiple school sites in the district, including the districts’ pre-professional SanArts Dance Conservatory.

The quantitative and qualitative data sources for the three-year project included: six years of student demographic and academic achievement data (20,000+ students); a survey to assess dancers’ motivation and self-concept of ability; structured and semi-structured interviews with dance students and arts educators; observations of the dance classroom; and historical archival documents. I conducted descriptive statistics and covariate-adjusted regression analyses with school-level fixed effects to analyze the quantitative data. Qualitative data were analyzed using deductive methods guided by the Scanlan Collaborative Interview Method and the Eccles Expectancy-Value Theory of Motivation.

Study findings provided dance program leadership with students’ school attendance rates, academic achievement outcomes, and the expectancies and values students attributed to their short-and- long-term dance engagement. Research findings supported the continuous improvement and strategic planning for the districts’ dance education programs.