learning performance and social anxiety in music ...

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL of ACADEMIC RESEARCH

Vol. 6. No. 5. September, 2014

E. Talsik. Learning performance and social anxiety in music education. International Journal of Academic Research Part B; 2014; 6(5), 67-72. DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2014/6-5/B.10 Library of Congress Classification: L7-991

LEARNING PERFORMANCE AND SOCIAL ANXIETY IN MUSIC EDUCATION Dr. Erkan Talsik Gazi University, Faculty of Gazi Education, Ankara (TURKEY) [email protected] DOI: 10.7813/2075-4124.2014/6-5/B.10 Received: 04 Jun, 2014 Accepted: 18 Sept, 2014

ABSTRACT In this research, it was aimed to find out the connection between students’ social anxiety, self-efficacy related to music and perception of success in music instructions. 203 primary school students took part in the research and their perceptions about these concepts were measured by using a self-report scale. According to obtained results, it has been observed that social anxiety negatively influenced students’ perception of success in music instructions especially about singing skills. In addition to that, it can be said, the students who has high level social anxiety try to resolve their inadequacy of practical learning with conceptual learnings. Key words: Music Education, Music Instruction, Social Anxiety, Self-Efficacy, Perception of Learning 1. INTRODUCTION Learning means increase of the knowledges and skills of learner. The concept of learning in this research is expressed as occuring of targeted skills, observable behaviors and performance learning. To bring out a skill, it is necessary to have knowledge and sub-skills. There are different kinds of knowledge about learned concept; declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and conditional knowledge. Declarative knowledge is the status or level of the learner about the mentioned concept or task. Procedural knowledge is the knowledge of how to perform some work or task. Conditional knowledge is the knowledge of in what condition or when to perform some work or task. It is necessary for learner to have sub-skills which required for main-skill while improving a targeted skill (Angelo, 1991; Lord, 2001; Schraw, 2006; Schraw & Moshman, 1995; ). This process is shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Components of a musical skill For instance, in the skill of playing a song with flute, having knowledge about the songs’ note is declarative knowledge, about how to play is procedural knowledge, about where and when to perform the terms about sonority and tempo is conditional knowledge. Even if some student has all these knowledges, it is also possible to fail in converting skill to performance. One of the reasons of this (when there is a performance in the group) is social anxiety. Objectives in education programs of music instructions in primary and secondary schools in Turkey contain all kinds of knowledge (declarative, procedural and conditional knowledge) which are shown in Figure 1 and mostly intended for skills. In these instructions, psycomotor skills (playing instruments, singing and so on) are more than cognitive skills (according to Bloom taxonomy knowledge, understanding, practising, analysing, evaluation, designing and so on). Whether any student has these behavioral skills or not is generally can be determined in the classroom environment and with the performance that performed among the other students. There is no problem for successful performance in this kind of performance evaluations. But, it is moot point that if the reason of students’ poor perfromance is lack of skill components which are shown in Figure 1 or external factors like social anxiety (Kenny, Davis, & Oates, 2004; Oxford, 1999).

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The purposes of this study are to determine social anxiety level of the students and to research the connection between social anxiety levels, academic successes and their self-efficacy in music insructions. 2. SOCIAL ANXIETY AND MUSIC EDUCATION Learning is realized in social environments as it is expressed in socio-culturel learning theory. Students configure knowledge by benefiting from social interaction. At the point of music insructions, while students are configuring connected knowledge and skills by using these social interaction, at the same time evaluations of skills in music instructions (performance evaluation) are realized in this social environment. Most important risk for this kind of learnings and evaluations is social anxiety. Social anxiety (social phobia) is an anxiety disorder that can be determined as fear of confusion, humiliation, negative evaluations of the others and avoidance tendency from feared situations (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). Accoding to Morris (2002), social anxiety correspond to excessive and inappropriate fears, anxieties related to social status or performing among other people and excesive anxiety of speaking to some community occures as the most common format of social anxiety. According to Beck (2011), social anxiety is the fear of being the center of attention and is the fear of negative evaluations of others or to be considered worthless by the other/others. Possibility of evaluation by the others is also influential as well as the format of evaluation and perception of the other people in occuring social anxiety. In other words, the thing which makes social anxiety different than others; if there is interpersonel evaluation or its’ possibility in imaginary or real environments. That’s why social anxiety can be refered to “evaluation anxiety” (Beck and Emery, 2005). Main point in understanding social anxiety is the fear of negative evaluation of the other people. The most significant behavioral symptom of this stuation is staying away from social environment (Leary and Kowalski, 1995). According to this, the person who has social anxiety distresses and stays away from social environments because of his/her fear that other people can evaulate negatively. The reason of this situation is the possibility of rejection (Teachman and Allen, 2007). There are three main and three related symptoms of social anxiety. Main symptoms; fear of exposure to the views of the others, fear of ciriticism and evaluation of the others and fear of shame in interpersonel relationships. Related symptoms; anxiety about seen by the others that he/she is worried, negative effect of anxiety to the performance, standing of anxiety despite there is no any specific situation (Ramaiah, 2007). Among the other anxiety disorders most debilitating one is social anxiety. It directly affects communication with people unlike other phobias (Gruber and Heimberg, 2007). Kelley (2011) represents social anxiety as “performance anxiety”. Especially in music field, he comprehensively studied on the people who have no confidence about their voices and have anxiety about singing performance. Results of this study are published on his book named The Psychology of Music Performance Anxiety. Kelly (2011) found out in this study that children have more anxiety than adults in music field. On the other side, it is specified that women have general performance anxiety 2-3 times more than men (American Psychiatric Association, 1994; Lewinsohn, Gotlib, Lewinsohn, Seeley & Allen, 1998) and also women have more anxiety than men about music performance (Wehr-Flowers, 2006); Huston, 2001; Osborne & Franklin, 2002; Sinden, 1999). Performance anxiety can be explained as failure anxiety that occured before presentation of any skill to any group of people or occured during the performance. This is acceptable for all ages. In the field of music learning, as it is expressed in some theories like socio-culturel learning (Vygotsky, 1978) or constructivist learning (Jaffurs, 2004; Piaget, 1970); while learners construct knowledge or skill, there are interactions in social environments. Therewithal, for the evaluation of learnings, learner must show his/her performance to other learners and teacher. As it is shown in Figure 1, determining social anxiety level/situation of the students who have related skills but can’t convert to performance is important for categorizing students and for accuracy of the evaluations. The purpose of this research is to study the connection between students’ social anxiety, perceived successes and their self-efficacy in music insructions. 3. METHOD This research is a correlational study that intended for determining relations between social anxiety, selfefficacy and the perception about music learning success. To this research, 203 students from 3rd and 4rth classes who study at Ulku Ulusoy Primary School have participated. 97 of the students are female, 106 of are male. 4. DATA AND ANALIZING Items pool has been composed by researching literature to determine self-efficacy, social anxiety and perceived success levels/situations of students for music instructions. To measure self-efficacy level of learners 4 of the items, to measure social anxiety situation of learners 9 of the items which located in the items pool took part in the scale according to opinions of experts. These items are constructed with five ratings from “disagree” to “totally agree” pursuant to Likert Scale. 5 rated 3 items have been used to determine students’ perception about learning success. Ratings here are arranged sequantially from 1(low) to 5(perfect). These 3 items are textured in order of knowledge-based learning, learning for singing skills and learning for playing skills. The items of this scale and descriptive statistics (average and standart deviation) obtained from scale are shown in Table 1.

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Table 1. Items in scale and its descriptive statistics Items in Scale Self-efficacy (SE) I have self-confidence in music skills (singing, playing instrument) I have self-confidence in solo singing among friends in music insruction I’ll be anxious to teachers’ asking me to sing and so on. (*). I have self-confidence in singing in music instruction. Socail Anxiety (SA) I don’t sing among the other people I get excited when it is asked me to play instrument in music insructions My pulse gets faster when it is asked me to sing in music insructions I concern that my classmates or teacher may mock me in music insructions I prefer to sing in choir rather than solo singing I wish music to be the insruction that can be learned from the books While I can play an instrument alone I can’t do among others I believe that I sing better in the place where I am alone I concern that I may unintentionally be in a ridiculous situation in music insructions Perception of Learning(PL) My knowledge about music My succsess on singing a song My succsess on playing an instrument

Means

St. Dv.

3,10 2,48 2,49 2,98

1,46 1,56 1,49 1,54

2,75 3,15 3,01 2,63 3,31 2,04 2,17 3,54 3,06

1,44 1,58 1,60 1,57 1,66 1,54 1,46 1,55 1,62

3,66 3,55 3,56

1,33 1,39 1,46

Findings about trustworthiness and construct validity are studied in the scale given in Table 1 and used in this research. Whether scale measures the situation that intended to measure or not were examined by using the technics of convergent validity and discriminant validity (some version of divergent validity). On the other side, trustworthiness about internal coherence of obtained data from scale has been checked with construct trustworthiness and Cronbach Alpha coefficient. Obtained data about this are shown in Table 2. Table 2. Reliability, AVE and correlation of sub-constructs in scale Reliability AVE Socail Anxiety Self-Efficacy Perception of Learning 0.76 Socail Anxiety 0.73 0.58 0.75 Self-Efficacy 0.71 0.56 -0.42 0.73 Perception of Learning 0.79 0.54 -0.07 0.73 Correlation matrix between sub-constructs is shown in the right side of the Table. Diagonal elements of correlation matrix show square root of AVE (dark ones) and off-diagonal elements show correlation evaluations between constructs.

For provided data from related scale alpha trustworthiness is obtained. Each trustworthiness level for each dimension higher than 0,70 and therefore it can be said that measurement results are trustworthiness (Nunnully and Bernstein, 1994). For convergent validity it has been examined whether averaged variance (AVE) evaluations are higher than 0.50 or not. As shown in Table 2, if AVE are higher than 0,50 for each construct, it can be shown as the proof of convergent validity (Fornel and Larcker, 1981; Peterson, 2000; Yurdugul, H., & Sarikaya, 2013). By reference to this, it is shown that averaged variance evaluations for each of three sub-dimensions located in the scale are between 0,54 and 0,58 and each of structural trustworthiness evaluations are higher than AVE. This situation can be expressed as the proof of convergent validity. As shown in Table 2, square root of AVE obtained from each construct in the scale is higher than correlation (shared variance) evaluations of the others. For instance, square root of AVE of anxiety related to music insruction is 0.76 and this is higher than correlation of the other constructs (0.76 >-0.42 and 0.76 >-0.07). According to these results scale has distinctive validity. 5. RESULTS In this research, connections between social anxiety, self-efficacy and students’ perceptions of learning related to music instructions have been examined by using structural equation model. Model-data coherence obtained by analizing of structural equation model (that constructed on measurement results of 203 students) has beem examined with the evaluations of 2/df, GFI, CFI, NNFI and RMSEA. After analysis, 2/df=2.67 (Criterion: 2/df0.90), CFI=0.92 (Criterion: CFI>0.90), NNFI=0.92 (Criterion: NNFI>0.90) and RMSEA=0.078 (Criterion: RMSEA>0.80) coherence evaluations have been found adequate (Yurdugul, H., & Sarikaya, 2013). According to these evaluations, it can be expressed that model-data evaluations are coherence. Standardized parameter keys are shown in Figure 2.




Fig. 2. The correlations of hypothesized constructs in the scale As shown in Figure 2, the correlation -0.42 (t value: -5,12, P≤0.05) between social anxiety (SA) and selfefficacy (SE) of learners related to music insructions are found negative and statistically significant. By reference to that, while learners’ self-efficacy scale up, social anxiety scale down in music insructions. Self-efficacy is the perception of capability about fulfilling some task. Learners’ belief about fulfilling some skill scales down while social anxiety scales up. On the other hand, the correlation between learners’ perception of capability (selfefficacy) and perceived success have been found out 0.73 (t values:13,19, P≤0.05). According to this, learners’ perception about capability of cognitive or practical performance in music insructions boost his/her learning perception in parallel. Lastly, it has been emerged a low (-0.07) and statisticaly nonsignificant connection (t values:-0,78, P>0.05) between social anxiety and perceived learning in music insruction. This result presents that scaling up of social anxiety level doesn’t scale down perceived learning level. This result is surprising. Because, it is expected that while social anxiety scales up, perceived success of learning scales down. Nevertheless, as shown in Table 1, perceived learning here includes different sub-learning fields; conceptual learnings and behavioral learnings (singing and playing skills). That’s why perceived success of learning in analyzed model has been seperated to subcomponents and new model has been analyzed one more time. Obtained results are shown in Figure 3 and Table 3.

Fig. 3. The effects of social anxiety and self-efficacy on perception of learning achievement in music course According to results shown in Figure 3, learners’ self-efficacy in music instruction positively affects perception of success in conceptual learning (Kno), singing skill (Sing) and instrument playing skill (Instrume). However, while social anxiety level in music instruction affects perception of conceptual success positively and significantly, doesn’t affect skill of playing instrument. The important point here, social anxiety negatively affects singing skill in the classroom (among teacher and the other students). This situation shows that while learners’ concern about singing or concern of failure scales up, success of singing scales down.


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According to these results; it has been observed on students that, if level of social anxiety is high, level of conceptual learning is also high and if level of social anxiety is low, level of conceptual lerning is also low. In addition to this, if students’ social anxiety level is high, perception of success at singing is low. Table 3. The effect of social anxiety and self-efficacy on perception of learning achievement Depended Variables Perception Learning (Knowledge of Music) Perception Learning (Singing Skill a song) Perception Learning (Playing skills of Instrument) Perception Learning (Knowledge of Music) Perception Learning (Singing Skill a song) Perception Learning (Playing skills of Instrument)

Predictive Variables Self Efficacy Self Efficacy Self Efficacy Social Anxiety Social Anxiety Social Anxiety

Coefficients ** 1.31 ** 1.36 ** 1.30 ** 0.69 ** -0.39 0.03

t Values 11.20 11.50 10.09 5.43 4.34 0.46

Numerical values of analyzes shown in Figure 1 are presented in Table 3. Values named as coefficient refer to standardized regression coefficients. Notation of (**) related to coeeficients shows that related coefficient (P≤0.05) is statistically significant. According to another interesting result shown in Table 3, the students who have high level social anxiety try to solve their learning problems through conceptual learnings (regression coefficient=0.69; P≤0.05). 6. CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION Boucher and Ryan (2011) expressed that performance anxiety is a common anxiety for all musicians. This anxiety may affect performance psychologically, physiologically and behaviourally (Dews & Williams, 1989; Fishbein, Middlestadt, Ottati, Straus, & Ellis, 1988; Kendrick, Craig, Lawson, & Davidson, 1982; Lockwood, 1989; Ryan & Andrews, 2009; van Kemenade, van Son, & van Heesch, 1995; Wesner, Noyes, & Davis, 1990). Yet, psychological disorder/discomfort specified as performance anxiety is about professional musical performance. Whereas, social anxiety in music insructions fulfilled according to music education program in primary and secondary schools is a different kind of anxiety. Mentioned anxiety is a situation that music teachers meet frequently. In the evaluation of musical performance, when it is asked to sing a song from any student, some of the students can’t perform their singing skills and even their face color change, voices trill and demonstrate behaivours like these. However, this situation doesn’t mean that those students have no singing skills, but means that they can’t show musical performance among the other people. The most important results found out in this research are; students’ social anxiety increases his/her conceptual learnings in music insructions and on the other side negatively affects learnings in singing skills. In addition to that, social anxiety doesn’t affect playing skills, but affects singing skills. At the same time, it is seen that, self efficacy related to learning tasks has significant effects on the increase of learning success. Parallel to this, another result of the research is, while self efficacy scales up, social anxiety scales down. It may be seen as one of the conclusion of this research that increase of self-efficacy intended to music insruction is necessary to increase perception of success and while perception of success incrase, social anxiety must be eliminated. In this regard, Oxford (1999) expressed that encouraging students in music instructions decreases social anxiety. This research has been fulfilled with 9 and 10 years old children who are studying in 3rd and 4th classes of primary school and reveals that reserving more place to objectives related to self efficacy is necessary. REFERENCES 1. Abril C.R. (2007). I have a voice but I just can't sing: a narrative investigation of singing and social anxiety. Music Education Research, 9(1), 1-15. 2. American Psychiatric Association. (1994). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Associa-tion. 3. Angelo T.A. (1991). Ten easy pieces: Assessing higher learning in four dimensions. New directions for teaching and learning, 1991(46), 17-31. 4. Beck J.S. (2011). Cognitive behavior therapy: Basics and beyond. Guilford Press. 5. Beck A.T., & Emery G. (2005). Anxiety disorders and phobias: A cognitive perspective. 15th annual edition. New York: Basic Books. 6. Boucher H. & Ryan C.A. (2011). Performance stress and the very young musician. Journal of Research in Music Education, 58(4), 329-345. 7. Brotons M. (1994). Effects of performing conditions on music performance anxiety and performance quality. Journal of music therapy, 31, 63-63. 8. Cronbach L.J. (1951). Coefficient alpha and the internal structure of tests. Psychometrika, 16, 297-334. 9. Dews C.B. & Williams M.S. (1989). Student musicians’ personality styles, stresses, and coping patterns. Psychology of Music, 17, 37–47. 10. Fishbein M., Middlestadt S.E., Ottati V., Straus S. & Ellis A. (1988). Medical problems among ICSOM musicians: Overview of a national survey. Medical Problems of Performing Artists, 3(1), 1–8. 11. Fornell C. & Larcker D.F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of marketing research, 39-50. 12. Gruber K. & Heimberg R.G. (1997). A cognitive- behavioral treatment package for social anxiety. In W.T. Roth & I.D. Yalom (Eds.), Treating anxiety disorders. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.




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