Physical self-efficacy and self-perception: the body as a pedagogical device for change through the choreutic workshop

In an era characterized by a profound social and cultural crisis, triggered and spread by the technological revolution, the confinement of the body to a position of marginality compared to its own existence, is observed. When the body is not used in its mere exteriority, one almost may forget to have one. Because of the tendency to ‘lose the body’, promoting its true meaning in the context of human existence becomes an urgent need and the school, appearing as an ‘operator’ of such a complex scenario, has the task of questioning which teaching strategies and techniques are most effective in promoting the pursuit of educational success and bio-psycho-social well-being for students. The present study, which is preliminary and exploratory, was conducted on a convenience sample of 100 children between the ages of 8 and 10 selected by non-probabilistic sampling in the school year 2023/2024. The purpose is to test the difference in the levels of perceived physical self-efficacy between children who often practice choreutic activities (n=50) and children who are sedentary or who practice other motor-sport activities (n=50). The questionnaire contains six questions (personal strength, speed and coordination skills) and each point on the response scale is assigned a label to help children grasp the meaning of the items. For each item, children are asked to identify one of four definitions that describe their perception of themselves. The results show statistically significant differences in the self-efficacy scale (p<0.01): specifically, students who practice choreutic activities got a higher score, demonstrating a high perception of themselves and their physical abilities, as well as the acquisition of specific skills that regulate motivation, awareness and determination; instead, students who do not practice choreutic activities got a lower score, confirming a lower level of self-perception. It’s evident that those who are engaged in choreutic activities, act not only with the body, but are oriented towards identity and socio-cultural directions that are more or less explicit, bringing out, from their motor skills, the abilities and competences of their own progressive and contextualized evolution into their environment, generating a circular process of motivation-learning-self-efficacy that is self-powered by the meaningfulness of the experiences performed. Therefore, it would be desirable that in all training contexts, body expression practices could express an educational role in order to improve the level of self-efficacy and self-perception. Through the introduction of the Choreutic Workshop, a discipline currently present in the Music and Dance High School, a conscious enhancement of the person’s subjectivity and complexity of aptitudes is nurtured. A physical-motor training that promotes a structural and dynamic balance by improving self-awareness in a holis