Researching First-Year Students' Lived Experiences in a University Dance Program

Abstract

Since the mid-1970s, researchers in student development theory, research, and practice have examined the experiences of first-year university students with the aim of improving quality of educational life and student motivation to stay in school (Greenfield et al., 2013). First-year students are viewed as vulnerable to attrition as most leavers depart during or immediately following year one (van der Zanden et al., 2018). This is the first doctoral study to explore first-year experience with university Dance majors.The purpose of this study is to illuminate first-year experience in a postsecondary Dance setting through students’ first-person accounts. Research methodology was guided by the applied phenomenology of education scholar and philosopher Max van Manen (1990/2014) and involved my direct participation and observation in two Dance classrooms along with in-depth interviewing of six self-selected students over the entire academic year. Data gathered through these procedures were analyzed for collective and individual meanings. Students’ first-person perspectives are presented in four chapters representing four macro-categories of student experience found in the data: curriculum, faculty, peers, and individual practice. Findings are then discussed in relation to extant literature in student development in higher education, combining sociological, behavioral, and epistemological perspectives from the foundational theories of Vincent Tinto (1975/1993), Alexander Astin (1984/1999), and William G. Perry, Jr. (1968/1999). Students’ first-person experiential accounts extend concepts from these theories, as well as offering insights unique to dance education. From their lived experiences in university Dance, first-year students shared the educational experiences that were significant and meaningful to their learning and growth. These include the affective, cognitive, somatic, and social meanings they made from their experiences of curriculum, faculty, peers, and self. Within a web of academic and social supports, personal self-reflection, and individual meaning-making, first-year students deepened their understandings of their dance practices and of themselves as dance artists and learners.