Method: The participants were 841 teachers of 45 elementary schools located in Seoul metropolitan area and Kyonggi province in Korea. The study sample reflects 1.17% of all elementary school teachers in the sampled areas. The importance of dance education was evaluated by making comparisons with other subjects in the school curriculum by teachers’ gender, age level, and teaching grade of students. MANOVA was used to analyze the data with an alpha level set at .05.
Analysis/Results: : The means of the importance ratings for the 11 elementary school subjects appeared statistically significant difference, F(10, 831) = 172.23, p < .001, ηp2 = .68. The means of the importance ratings for those appeared statistically significant difference between teachers’ gender F(11, 829) = 4.43, p < .001, ηp2 = .06, between age level, F(11, 829) = 2.09, p = .019, ηp2 = .03, and between upper and lower teaching grade of students, F(11, 829) = 2.43, p < .006, ηp2 = .03. Elementary school teachers had positive perception toward dance education, but they generally ranked Korean language, mathematics, and physical education in the top three and English, vocational arts, and dance education in the bottom three. This ranking, however, was very uniform across teachers’ gender, age levels, and teaching grade. Teachers felt that dance education was important to improve and develop the students' physical (86.6%), socio-psychological (31.8%), and intellectual behaviors (94.4%).
Conclusions : The conclusions drawn from the result are 1) elementary school teachers perceive the importance of dance education to be very low compared with other subjects and 2) teachers who have high perceptions regarding the importance of dance education are more than 40 years of aged, female, and those who teach lower grade of students at present.
Keywords: elementary school teacher, perception toward school curriculum, dance education