Examination of pre-service teachers' academic perfectionism and research anxiety

Academic perfectionism and research anxiety

Abstract

Perfectionism is defined as the tendency to have high goals and standards for one’s self (Flett et al., 1989). Setting high and even unrealistic goals in education can be a negative aspect for students as this can cause anxiety, procrastination, and low self-efficacy. The present study aims to determine the relationship between academic perfectionism and research anxiety levels of preservice teachers and compare these with variables such as gender, grade, department, order of department preference, and career plan to exhibit the links between these variables. The participants are 469 undergraduate students who gather education from Aydın Adnan Menderes University Faculty of Education. Academic Perfectionism Scale (Odacı et al., 2017), Research Anxiety Scale (Büyüköztürk, 1997), and a Personal Information Form were used as data collecting tools. The results have shown that female participants have significantly higher idealization scores than male participants. Early childhood education and art education students have significantly higher comparison scores than music education students. Fourth graders have significantly higher scores on research anxiety than first graders. Participants whose primary department preferences were not their present departments have significantly higher research anxiety scores than the participants whose first choice was the department they gather education from. Participants who want to be academicians in their career have significantly higher idealization scores than the participants who want to do some other job than their department’s expertise. Participants who want to be academicians have significantly lower research anxiety scores than those who want to be branch teachers and those who want to do any other job than their departments’ expertise. Also, there is a significant medium relationship between the participants’ self-doubt subscale scores and their research anxieties. Also, there is a significant but weak relationship between participants’ comparison subscale scores, academic perfectionism total scores, and their research anxieties.  The results were discussed in the light of the literature.

Keywords: Academic Perfectionism, Perfectionism, Research Anxiety, Preservice Teachers.