An analysis of student satisfaction with dance curriculum in universities in Taiwan

The five-day work policy imposed by the government in 2001 following rapid economic development in Taiwan provided an extra day off from work and school every week, and people started looking for leisure and recreation activities for the "long weekend." To meet the needs for leisure and recreation, many investors in Taiwan started to put money into the fitness market to provide various facilities to attract people and help them to maintain their health. These places also introduced programs for Yoga, traditional ethnic dance, and Tai Chi to achieve the purposes of exercise and releasing pressure from work, in addition to physical fitness. Aerobic dance has gained popularity in fitness in the past 10 years. Dance has been considered one of the top choices among diversified leisure and recreational practices. A side benefit to this is that people have started to learn to appreciate dance, as well as other artistic activities and events. Many instructors teaching Yoga, ethnic dance, and aerobic dance do not have a background in dance. Based on the belief that students majoring in dance can provide more professional instruction, the main purpose of this study was to examine the satisfaction level of students majoring in dance as it related to the dance curricula offered in their schools. A secondary purpose of this study was to determine whether or not universities offering disciplines in dance should alter or redesign their curricula to integrate dance into fitness or leisure programs to provide students with more career options.; Descriptive research was conducted in this study. A self-constructed survey questionnaire was developed as an instrument for data collection. The subjects were students majoring in dance at the university level (N = 439) in Taiwan. The effective rate of returned survey questionnaires was over 99%. The Cronbach alpha coefficient was .874, which showed the stability of the internal-consistency reliability. SPSS, version 15.0, for MS Windows was employed to conduct a statistical analysis. An alpha level of p < .05 was used throughout this study.; The results showed that most of the students majoring in dance that responded to the survey were quite satisfied with the dance discipline their university offered regardless of their status and gender. A total of 42% marked the categories of satisfaction and strong satisfaction with academic curricula and nearly 79% marked the categories of satisfaction and strong satisfaction with technological curricula. More than 35% of the students noted the effectiveness of the academic courses and nearly 60% of the students noted the effectiveness of the technological courses to their future career development. The results also revealed that male students were more comfortable than female students.; The survey showed that most of the students sought to develop careers in the field of recreation and sport. More than 32% of the students majoring in dance planned to develop careers in the field of leisure and recreation and more than 83% planned to pursue careers in recreation and sport. The majority of the students (84.5%) saw the necessity of university students developing a second career specialty.