Relation between Shyness and Music Academic Engagement: The Mediation of Achievement Goals—A Cross-Sectional Survey Study

Abstract

Music discipline that emphasizes expression, performance and collaboration may cause difficulties for shy students who are prone to anxiety about social interaction, which might cause low music academic engagement and achievement. According to Models of Personality and Affect regarding the role of psychological constructs in educational contexts, shyness and academic engagement are the first and third-level variables, respectively. We hypothesized that achievement goals might be the second-level variable between shyness and academic engagement. Two hypotheses were proposed in the study: (1) shyness is negatively related to music academic engagement; (2) the music achievement goals mediate shyness and music academic engagement. The research was conducted in May 2022. A total of 515 college students who major in music were randomly recruited from a public university in Shanxi province, China. A 20 min self-report questionnaire was conducted as the data collection method. The research results revealed the following: (1) shyness was negatively associated with musical academic engagement; (2) the music mastery goals and the music performance avoidance goals (excluding the performance approach goal) partially mediated the association between shyness and music academic engagement in music learning. These findings have implications for the research and practice of music academic engagement of shyness.