Hello dancers!
I thought I'd share a little bit about my research that was conducted for my MSc in Dance Science in London, UK. I was extremely interested in looking at dance technique classes. There's so much that happens in a dance class that affects mental health. I was intrigued by perfectionism and perceived self-efficacy during class. However, in the presence of COVID-19, the context of dance technique classes changed entirely to online classes; a whole new world to navigate by dancers, teachers, and parents.
Perfectionism is a concept that is highly prevalent in the dance world. Self-efficacy is something that is not as well-studied, yet it became crucial to understand more about how dancers were dealing with the transition to online learning. Self-efficacy refers to the confidence that one has to complete a task (Yazuzalp & Bahcivan, 2020). My research was conducted to investigate the relationships between the two concepts. We used an online questionnaire to gather data from dancers from 6 different countries.
Read the abstract of my research below to learn a bit more about the project as a whole:
"Due to COVID-19, many dancers found themselves dancing at home and learning in an online environment. Therefore, the aim of this research study was to evaluate the relationships between perceived self-efficacy for online learning and multidimensional perfectionism in 73 (N=73, Mage= 22.38, SD=4.55) higher education dance students in online dance classes. Students from 29 higher education institutions in six countries participated in an online survey assessing various psychological factors including perfectionism and online learning self-efficacy. Each component consisted of three dimensions: multidimensional perfectionism (striving for perfection, negative reactions to imperfection, and perceived pressure) and online learning self-efficacy (learning in an online environment, time management, and technology use). A Spearman’s correlation test indicated that the only significant correlation existed between the subscales, time management and striving for perfection (rs=0.266, p= 0.023). Therefore, dancers who strived for perfection exhibited greater time management skills to feel confident in completing a task in their online classes. All other correlations among the variables emerged to be insignificant. However, the biggest takeaway is confirmation that there are existing correlations found amongst perfectionism and online learning self-efficacy, for online learning is a context that has not been entirely explored in relation to dance students. The findings of this study suggest that further analysis could provide better understanding of the correlations in conjunction with outside psychological factors that were not acknowledged in this research study." (Baab, 2020).
I can't wait to share more research with dancers and conduct more investigations of my own!
Keep Kinected,
Kendall
Comments