Perceptions towards Folk Dancing of College Students in the University of Eastern Philippines

This study focused on determining the perception toward folk dancing of college students in the University of Eastern Philippines. Specifically, it sought to find out the profile of the students-respondents in terms of their age, sex, college, place of birth and religion. It also looked into the attitudes of the respondents towards folk dancing, evaluate the extent of competencies learned from folk dancing as perceived by the students, identify the most effective teaching techniques applied in folk dancing as perceived by the students, determine the factors affecting the students learning competencies, find out to what extent do the factors affect the learning competencies in terms of personal factors, instructional factors, participation in school organizations/extra and co-curricular activities and religions, and determine if there is a significant relationship of the profile and the perception of students towards folk dancing. Randomly selected as respondents were college students presently enrolled in Physical Education 121 (Rhythmic Activities) during the second semester of school year 2010-2011. A set of questionnaire was the primary data gathering tool. The collected data were collated, tabulated, and analyze using frequency counts, percentages, means, weight means, ranking and chi-square test. The findings revealed that a majority of the respondents belonged to age bracket of 15-17, were dominated by females from the College of Science, were born in Visayas and a majority were Roman Catholics. The attitude of respondents towards folk dancing was found positive. Along the competencies learned, the students rated good their understanding on folk dance, fundamental skills, skills in performing simple folk dance, mastery of folk dancing, develop ones self through dancing and performing dances based on their cultural tradition. On teaching techniques employed by their teachers in folk dancing, the students believed that the teachers utilized effective teaching techniques. The students perceived different factors affecting their learning competencies in folk dancing such as personal factors, instructional factors, participation in school organizations/ extra and co-curricular activities and region. These factors were perceived as moderately serious. The test of relationship between perceptions of students towards folk dancing and age and sex were found significantly related while college, place of birth and religion were found to be not significantly related to perception.