Dance can be examined by many research methods in many disciplines, such as psychology, pedagogy, ethnography, and cultural anthropology. In most cases, the target group of those studies is adolescent professionals or pupils in K-12 education. Therefore, recent research focuses especially on dance research in higher education. We hypothesized that besides the description of best practices and qualitative studies, quantitative empirical studies could also be found in tertiary education because of the research activities of higher education.

There is a lack of empirical research in tertiary dance education, especially in Europe. Studies from countries whose first language is English are overrepresented. The advantage of the present research is that the actual state of the multidisciplinary dance research in higher education is mapped regarding (1) the most frequently examined dance types in dance research; (2) the countries most typically represented in dance research in higher education contexts, and the local characteristics of dance research in the given context; (3) the tendencies in research design; (4) the types of research instruments; (5) the most highlighted research topics in dance research in the last ten years.

According to P21’s skills map on arts (Dean et al., 2010) and Scheff et al.’s Dance and 21st Century Skills Poster (2014), the skill set to date involves identical components such as critical thinking and problem solving, communication, collaboration, creativity, innovation, information literacy, ICT literacy, flexibility and adaptability, initiative and self-direction, social and cross-cultural skills, productivity, accountability, leadership and responsibility, as well as interdisciplinary themes. The question arises, to what extent the latest research in the field of dance in higher education contexts covers the range of desirable 21st century knowledge domain, and where there may be gaps.

In the research related to dance, there are mostly case studies and action research with the reflection of the trainer about good practices in dance classes (Baran, 2020; Petsilas et al., 2019; Rimmer, 2017; Roe, 2017; Stevens et al., 2020), and the empirical studies following a quantitative research paradigm seem to be underrepresented. These research are Motion Notation studies (Dilek & Muhsin, 2017) or related to dancers’ health state (DiPasquale et al, 2021). 

With the present literature review, we intend to provide an overview of the current knowledge about research in dance education with the aim of finding out what is already known from previous research. Nevertheless – according to Newman & Gough (2020) –, this research method could not only be used to answer questions about what we know but also for what we do not know about the chosen phenomenon. In our systematic review, we use the common set of processes described in Systematic Reviews in Educational Research. Methodology, Perspectives and Application (Zawacki-Richter et al., 2019). 

According to that, our research questions were:

• Is there a dance type that is better represented by empirical research?

• Are there geographical patterns in dance research? 

• Which research design is more frequently utilized in dance research – quantitative or qualitative?

• Are there any validated instruments for research in dance, or rather measuring instruments of other disciplines are used in dance-related research as well?

• What are the main topics of recent dance research?

Objective: 

The present study aims to explore, through a systematic literature review, what research has targeted dance students in tertiary dance education in the last 10 years and what kind of emerging research methods and instruments are used and developed in this area and where the possible gaps are. 

The research method of recent research was a systematic literature review. We conducted a comprehensive review protocol and synthesized research data from the last ten years focusing on our key questions of tertiary dance education. In our research, we used purposive sampling. We searched relevant papers in the EBSCO, ERIC, DOAJ, and Scopus databases with the keywords “dance”, “higher education”, and “research”. The examined sources were selected by the following criteria: the paper must have been peer-reviewed, written in English, and has been published in the last 10 years (2013 - 2023). In EBSCO, ten results could be found based on our search terms and only three of them were relevant. In ERIC, there were 71 results but only 58 of them proved to be relevant. ResearchGate database did not prove to be appropriate for machine search as filtering of peer-reviewed papers was not possible. After the duplicate screening, four papers were removed from the sample because they did not connect to dance or dance research or the research was not conducted in a higher education environment. The rest of the sources were prioritized after the weight of the evidence. At the end of the selection process, the sample of our systematic review consisted of 69 research papers.

In the systematic review, we examined 69 articles focusing on dance research in higher education. The results showed that more than 50% of the research was carried out in the United States and the United Kingdom. 10 research was conducted in Australia and Asia, and only 9 in European countries. Our hypothesis was only partially confirmed. We indeed found a few studies with mixed and quantitative methodologies, but most of the research on dance in higher education is mainly related to the qualitative paradigm. 67% of the research used thematic analysis of participants' narratives about educational dance experiences. Of these studies, 12 were action research, in which a trainer facilitated a training improvement and observed the process. Data for the thematic analysis was based on the researchers' experiences and the experiences of the interviewed participants. In these studies, interviews and surveys with open-ended questions were involved as research instruments. Only seven studies followed the quantitative methodology and validated measurement tests could only be found in 3 studies about dance students’ mental and physical well-being. Most research thematized traditional local and folk dances, classical ballet and contemporary dance, and also marginal dance styles, such as several street dance forms, like hip-hop are examined in two papers. In the focus of recent dance research are topics like dance method-centered experimental and reflective action studies, intercultural inclusivity in dance classes, (auto)ethnographic roots of different dance styles, dancers’ life and health management skills, and the use of dance in physical education, but not the topic of 21st Century Skills.

Baran, A. I. (2020). Sneaking Meditation. Journal of Dance Education, 22(1), 23–31. https://doi.org/10.1080/15290824.2020.1765248 Dean, C. H., Ebert, C. M. L., McGreevy-Nichols, S., Quinn, B., Sabol, F., Schmid, D., Shauck, R. B., & Shuler, S. (2010). 21st Century Skills Map: The Arts. Partnership for 21st Century Skills. Dilek, C. E., & Muhsin, H. (2017b). Comparison of movement notation (Laban) and traditional methodological learning success in teaching folk dances. Educational Research and Reviews, 12(7), 425–431. https://doi.org/10.5897/err2016.3118 DiPasquale, S., Wood, M. C., & Edmonds, R. (2021). Heart rate variability in a collegiate dance environment: insights on overtraining for dance educators. Research in Dance Education, 22(1), 108–125. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2021.1884673 Partnershipfor21st CenturySkills(2009). P21 Framework Definitions. http://www.21stcenturyskills.org. Petsilas, P., Leigh, J., Brown, N., & Blackburn, C. (2019). Creative and embodied methods to teach reflections and support students’ learning. Research in Dance Education, 20(1), 19–35. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2019.1572733 Rimmer, R. (2017). Negotiating the rules of engagement: exploring perceptions of dance technique learning through Bourdieu’s concept of ‘doxa.’ Research in Dance Education, 18(3), 221–236. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2017.1354836 Roe, S. (2017). Chasing ambiguity: critical reflections on working with dance graduates. Research in Dance Education, 18(2), 205–216. https://doi.org/10.1080/14647893.2017.1354842 Scheff, H., Sprague, M., & McGreevy-Nichols, S. (2014, October 10). Dance and 21st Century Skills Poster. Stevens, K., Pedro, R. A., & Hanrahan, S. J. (2019). Building an authentic cultural curriculum through tertiary cultural dance. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education, 19(3), 264–284. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022219833648 Zawacki-Richter, O., Kerres, M., Bedenlier, S., Bond, M., & Buntins, K. (2019). Systematic Reviews in Educational Research: Methodology, Perspectives and Application. Springer Publishing.