Engagement in the arts and self-efficacy of adolescent women

Increasingly, engagement in the arts is believed to have the ability to address the challenges faced during adolescence and effect change beyond the scope of developing technical skills or aesthetic understanding. The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the benefits of arts engagement and self-efficacy: specifically its relation to the experiences of adolescent females. We will begin by providing a rationale for the focus on adolescent females by reviewing the role of self-efficacy in the developmental needs of adolescent women. Following this will be a review of the literature on youth engagement in the arts focusing on the potential positive outcomes on the affective domain. We argue that self-efficacy is fundamental for the positive development of young women and that within the context of arts education research further investigation into the relationship between arts engagement and self-efficacy is needed.