ABSTRACT
The purpose of the present study is to examine fine arts students’ attitudes towards art education based on some variables. The data were collected through the “Attitude Scale towards Art Education” developed by Ayaydın and Kurtuldu and “Personal Information Form” developed by the researcher. Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of the 32-item-scale is .90. The research consists of 234 students in the Art Teaching and Music Education Department, Faculty of Education, Fine Arts Education, Adnan Menderes University in 2017-2018 academic year. In the study, a descriptive screening model was used. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Version 21. Since the data were not normally distributed, differences between the groups were analyzed with the Mann-Whitney U test for comparison of 2 groups and the Kruskal-Wallis test for comparison of more than 2 groups. It was found that participants’ attitude scores significantly varied with their gender, grade level, department, mothers’ educational level, parents’ income level and their frequency of attending art events. On the other hand, their attitude towards art education did not significantly vary based on the type of high school they graduated from, fathers’ educational level, long-time neighborhood, employment status and whether or not receiving scholarship
Key words: Art education, attitude, art teaching, music education.
Art is a phenomenon from which people perceive the world aesthetically. Art can be recognized in every moment of a human life. Humans can see it in a morning breakfast plate or in their clothes (Brommer and Horn, 1985; as cited in: Mercin and AlakuÅŸ, 2007). Since the evolution of mankind, art has been defined in various ways. It would be useful to touch some definitions of art to elicit further understanding of this discourse. Schiller defines art as a “path to freedom and self-actuality”. For Read, art “provides a governing mechanism for life; without art, all living creatures lose their balance. They are faced with social and spiritual confusion” (as cited in Artut, 2001: 19). Art helps individuals to balance and organize their emotional world. On the whole, many people officially attend art classes in their first years at school.
Art education has many functions: “(a) helps individuals understand their history, country and express their beliefs, (b) raises awareness of senses such as seeing, hearing and tasting, (c)teaches moral values to individuals, (d) raises individuals who respect freedom of speech (e) helps individuals develop set of values
(Mercin and AlakuÅŸ, 2007). In other words, art is an effective language which allows individuals to learn their history by means of an aesthetic eye or a language and to construct their own perspective. Because primary function of art is to help people understand who they are and what they believe in (Anderson, 2003), a high quality art education can be realized through understanding the importance of art education, contemporary curriculum, qualified teacher, adequate course hours and suitable environment (Buyurgan and Buyurgan, 2012).
In Turkey, art education programs are offered by conservatories, fine arts high school and universities. The current study dwells on art education in universities. Fine art departments of universities delivering vocational education have two majors: art teaching and music education. Both majors receive students through a special talent examination and offer courses on art and initial teacher training program in a four-year program. In this sense, pre-service art teachers' attitudes towards art education are crucially important.
The concept of attitude is a core topic in social psychology. Allport (1935) puts forward that attitude is the most distinctive and indispensable concept in contemporary American social psychology. The concept of attitude is overwhelmingly more popular than other concepts inherent in theoretical and practical psychology. The concept of attitude cannot be associated with any kind of psychological theory. Since humans possess instincts and habits to a certain degree, the concept of attitude cannot be evaluated without discussing genetic and environmental factors. To put it simply, the term is blindly neither tied to environmentalism nor instinct theory. Attitude can also be used for individuals and wider segments of the culture. The word ‘attitude’ is defined in the Turkish Language (TDK, 2018) as “the path to follow, manner”. For Ajzen (1989), attitude is a learned predisposition to respond in a consistently favorable manner with respect to a given object, personality, institution or a human life. Attitude has three components which tend to be internally consistent with each other, commonly referred to as the cognitive component, affective component and behavioral component. Cognitive component involves a person’s knowledge/ belief about an attitude object, affective component is a person’s positive feelings about the attitude object and how a person acts or behaves about the attitude object is named as behavioral component (Ä°nceoÄŸlu, 1993; as cited in TavÅŸancıl, 2002).
Attitude has been one of the favorite topics of social psychology and, in the recent years, it has become one of the variables employed in educational studies. As highlighted in the definition of attitude, the attitude or tendency of a person to objects (training material), persons (teacher), and institution (school) has an impact on his or her academic achievement. As a person’s attitude towards his education increases, his academic achievement will increase as well. It is thus not surprising that there are plenty of researches examining the relationship between attitude and academic achievement in educational studies (Akandere et al., 2010; Özder et al., 2010; Yılmazer and Demir, 2014; Özgenel et al., 2018).
Art education distinguishes itself from other branches of education since art centers on aesthetic. On the other hand, aesthetic is like a vast sea. In other words, there is always a better and more beautiful work of art. In this respect, art teachers’ attitude towards art is highly important. They should both know the importance of art in daily life and internalize it. Furthermore, art should have a vital role in their life personally. The quality of education will be poor if art teachers are not enthusiastic about art, work meticulously and enjoy it. Art inherently requires individual endeavor for long periods of time. To put it more explicitly, a pre-service teacher studying in any branches of education can achieve higher academic scores even if there is a short period to prepare for an examination. Yet, a pre-service art teacher cannot achieve higher scores under these circumstances since he or she needs to study for a longer period of time and more systematically in order to be equipped with technical and aesthetic knowledge. Therefore, art students should allocate more time for their work of art; in short, they should devote themselves to their art.
Considering the reasons mentioned before, fine arts students’ attitudes towards art play a crucial role in this respect. An art teacher who does not love art, work enough and, in other words, does not devote himself or herself, cannot have a successful career. The present study intended to measure art teachers’ attitudes towards art. Also, it attempted to seek how their attitudes are differentiated by their demographic features. Since it is thought that income level of pre-service music or art teachers plays a critical role in terms of accessing necessary equipment and material, demographic factors were identified with respect to the following variables : access to art (participation in art events) and personal income level (parents’ income level, working condition and whether or not receiving scholarship). In the light of these, the current study seeks to identify whether fine art education students’ attitudes towards art and their sub-dimension scores significantly vary by the following variables: gender, grade level, department, high school graduated from, mothers’ educational level, fathers’ educational level, parents’ income level, long-time neighborhood, employment status and whether or not receiving scholarship and their frequency of attending art events.
Research model
In the study, a descriptive screening model was utilized in the research. The relational survey models are “research models which aim to describe a past or present situation, as it exists. In the screening model, the person or the object, which is the research subject, is examined in his/her/its own conditions” (Karasar, 2004: 77). To put it another way, descriptive research “seeks to explain the interactions between the situations considering the relations of present situations with previous events and conditions” (Kaptan, 1998: p.61).
Study group
The research consists of students in the Art Teaching and Music Education Department, Faculty of Education, Fine Arts Education at Adnan Menderes University. 234 students (133 females and 101 males) participated in the study, 105 of whom are enrolled in the music education department, and 129 of whom are enrolled in the art teaching department.
Data collection tools
The data were collected through the “Attitude Scale towards Art Education” developed by Ayaydın and Kurtuldu (2010) and the “Personal Information Form” developed by the researcher. “The Attitude Scale towards Art Education” is composed of 32 items and four factors. The four factors were named as follows: “The importance and Necessity of Art Education”, “The reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life”, “Personal Opinions on Art Education”, “During and After Art Education Process” and “Socialization Process in Art Education”.Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of the scale is .90. The first factor includes the following items numbered 27, 20, 19, 32, 28, 23, 26, 16, 17, 29 and 9; the second factor includes the following items numbered 1, 13, 7, 3, 2, 4, 8, 25 and 6; the third factor includes the following items numbered 31, 18, 15, 30, 5, 24 and 21 and four factor includes the following items numbered 11,22,12,10 and 4. We can set the following examples for each factor respectively: “I believe art education highly influences personal developments among individuals.”, “I believe art education helps me gain selectivity in art.”, and “I believe every piece of art deserves respect.” I believe group work in art education is very useful.”
Data collection tools
Data collection process took place in the Faculty of Education, Fine Arts Education at Adnan Menderes University. The researcher obtained permission from the faculty, head of department and university instructors whose lectures were scheduled in the same day and hour that the data were collected.
Data analysis
Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS Version 21. Before proceeding to further analysis, the missing values and outliers were processed. As a result, no missing values were found in the dataset. 10 participants with outliers were excluded from the study.
The dataset was separately divided into subgroups to determine which technique will be employed for the differences between variables, and correspondingly subgroups were tested to find out whether they were normally distributed. According to the variables of gender, department, type of high school graduated from, long-term neighborhood, employment status, frequency of attendance at art events and whether or not receiving scholarship, Kolmogorov Smirnov tests revealed that there is at least one group that is non-normal (p<0.05). In the same vein, Kolmogorov Smirnov and Shapiro Wilk tests also indicated that that there is at least one group that is non-normal (p<0.05) with respect to the variables of grade, mothers’ educational level, fathers’ educational level and parents’ income level. Considering the findings of the study, Kruskal–Wallis and Mann—Whitney nonparametric tests was employed to analyze data.
FINGINGS AND INTERPRETATION
Mann-Whitney U test was performed to identify whether the scores of attitude scale towards art education and the scores for the subdimensions “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (1) “During and after Art Education Process” (2) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (3) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (4) yielded statistically significant differences by gender variable. Correspondingly, the results are presented in Table 1.
From Table 1, it can be seen that the scores of attitude towards art education (U=5399.5, p<0.05) and the scores in the subdimensions, namely, the importance and necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life (U=5474.5, p<0.05), during and after art education process (U=5597, p<0.05) show statistically significant differences by gender variable. Female students’ scores of attitude towards art education and the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Daily Life,” and “During and After Art Education Process were found higher than those of males.
Furthermore, no statistically significant differences were detected in the scores of two subdimensions, namely, “Personal Opinions on Art Education” (U=5919, p>0.05) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (U=5915, p>0.05) in terms of the gender variable.
Kruskal Wallis H test was used to determine whether the scores of the scale and the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (1) “During and after Art Education Process” (2) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (3) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (4) yielded statistically significant differences by grade level variable. The results are tabulated in Table 2.
Mann-Whitney U test was employed to determine whether the scores of Attitude towards art education and the scores for the subdimensions “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (1) “During and after Art Education Process” (2) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (3) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (4) showed statistically significant differences by the type of high school graduation. The data are shown in Table 4.
As detailed in Table 4, the score of “Attitude towards Art Education” (U=5232, p>0.05), the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (U=5154, p>0.05), “Personal Opinions on Art Education” (U=5176.5, p>0.05), “During and After Art Education Process” (U=5073.5, p>0.05) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (U=5288.5, p>0.05) indicate statistically significant differences with respect to the type of high school graduated from.
Kruskal Wallis H test was used to identify whether the scores of “Attitude towards Art Education” and the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (1) “During and after Art Education Process” (2) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (3) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (4) demonstrated statistically significant differences by the variable of mothers’ educational level. The results are tabulated in Table 5.
As detailed in Table 6, the scores of “Attitude towards Art Education” (=5.968, p>0.05), the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life ” (=1.637, p>0.05) , “Personal Opinions on Art Education” (=7.412, p>0.05), “During and after Art Education Process” (=4.608, p>0.05) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” do not show statistically significant differences in terms of fathers’ educational level.
Kruskal Wallis H test was performed to analyze whether the scores of “Attitude towards Art Education” and the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (1), “Personal Opinions on Art Education” (2) “During and after Art Education Process” (3) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (4) yielded statistically significant differences with respect to the variable of parents’ income level. The results are presented in Table 7.
Education” (U=5737, p>0.05), “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection of Art Education to Everyday Life” (U=5855, p>0.05), “Personal Opinions on Art Education” (U=5699.5, p>0.05) and “During and after Art Education Process” (U=5758, According to the analysis of Table 9, it is observed that the scores for subdimensions, “Attitude towards Art p>0.05) and “Socialization Process in Art Education” (U=5610, p>0.05) do not yield statistically significant differences in terms of employment status.
In an attempt to identify whether the scores of “Attitude towards Art Education” and the scores for the subdimensions, “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection it into Daily Live,”(1) “Personal Opinions on Art Education” (2), “During and after Art Education Process”(3) “ Socialization Process in Art Education” (4) demonstrate statistically significant differences in terms of receiving scholarship, Mann-Whitney U test was performed and correspondingly, the results are detailed in Table 10.
From Table 10, it is understood that the scores of attitude towards art education (U=6735, p>0.05), the importance and necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life (U=6690, p>0.05), personal opinions on art education (U=6772.5, p>0.05), during and after art education (U=6581.5, p>0.05) and socialization in art education (U=6631, p>0.05) do not show statistically significantly differences according to whether or not receiving scholarship.
Mann-Whitney U test was used to test whether the scores of “Attitude towards Art Education” and the scores for the subdimensions, “Attitude towards Art Education” (1), “The Importance and Necessity of Art Education and Reflection it into Daily Live (2)”, “Personal Opinions on Art Education (3) ”, “During and after Art Education Process (4)” and “ Socialization Process in Art Education (4)” show statistically significant differences according to the frequency of attendance at art events. The results are tabulated in Table 11.
Further analysis of Table 11, the scores of attitude towards art (U=3558, p<0.05), the importance and necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday Life (U=3024, p<0.05), personal opinions onart education (U=3215.5, p<0.05) and during and after art education process (U=3137, p<0.05) demonstrate statistically significant differences in terms of frequency of attendance at art events. According to total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of the importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday live, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, students who attend art events once a week have higher scores than those who never attend art events.
The scores in the subdimension of “Socialization in Art Education” (U=3902.5, p>0.05) do not show statistically significant differences according to frequency of attending art events.
The following results were obtained regarding the first sub-problem of the research, namely, the students’ attitudes towards art education according to their gender: Total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of the importance, necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life along with during and after art education process statistically varied in favor of females. However, other subdimensions (personal opinions on art education and socialization process in art education) did not statistically vary.
The following results were collected regarding the second sub-problem of the research, the students’ attitudes towards art education according to their grade: total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of during and after art education process and socialization process in art education statistically varied. The total scores of first grade students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of during and after art education process were found significantly higher compared to the third and fourth grade students,
Similarly, first grade students also had statistically significantly higher scores in the subdimension of socialization process in art education compared to fourth grade students No statistically significant difference was found in the other subdimensions according to the grade variable.
According to the department variable, total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education are as follows: the scores in the subdimensions of personal opinions on art education significantly varied in favor of students studying in the department of art teaching, whereas the scores in the subdimensions of socialization process in art education significantly varied in favor of students studying in the department of music education. No statistically significant difference was found in the other subdimensions of the attitude scale.
It was found out that total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions (the importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life personal
opinions on art education, during and after art education process, socialization process in art education) did not statistically vary according to the type of high school graduated from.
Total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process statistically and significantly varied with their mothers’ educational level. Correspondingly, students whose mother graduated from primary school showed statistically significant differences in the subdimensions of importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process when compared to students whose mother graduated from university where the differences were in favor of student whose mothers graduated from primary school. In that vein, in comparison to students whose mother graduated from secondary school, statistically significant differences were obtained in the subdimensions of the importance, necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process where the differences were in favor of students whose mothers graduated from primary school. Additionally, there are significant differences between the total scores of students in the subdimension of during and after art education process whose mothers graduated high school and those whose mother graduated from primary school where the differences were in favor of students whose mothers graduated from primary school graduate.
Total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions (the Importance, necessity of art education and its reflection into daily life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, socialization process in art education) do not statistically differentiate according to their fathers’ educational level.
According to parents’ income level, statistically significant differences were found regarding the total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of Importance, necessity of art education and its reflection into daily life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, socialization process in art education. According to the subdimension of importance, necessity of art education and its reflection into daily life and socialization process in art education, statistically significant differences were detected between the scores of students with household monthly income less than 1500 TRY and students with household monthly income 1500 -3000 TRY where the differences were in favor of students with household monthly income less than 1500 TRY.
Total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions (the Importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, socialization process in art education) do not significantly differ according to their long-time neighborhood.
Total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions (the importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, socialization process in art education) did not statistically vary with their employment status.
The results of the study revealed that total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores for the subdimensions (the importance, necessity of art education and reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, socialization process in art education) did not statistically vary with whether or not receiving scholarship.
The total scores of attitude scales and the scores in the subdimension of Importance, necessity of art education and its reflection in daily life, personal opinions about art education, during and after art education process, during and after art education process and socialization process in art education statistically significantly varied by the frequency of attendance at art events. According to total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of the importance, necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, students who attend art events once a week had higher scores than those who never attend art events.
According to the findings obtained, total scores of participants’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of the importance, necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life along with during and after art education process statistically varied in favor of females. However, it is seen that other subdimensions, namely, personal opinions on art education and socialization process in art education did not statistically and significantly vary. The fact that female participants’ attitudes towards art education are higher than males might be because women are inherently much more emotional than men. While men tend to live in a more realistic world, women are emotional because of their fertility. As emotions are intertwined with each other by means of art and art is a creative outlet for emotions, women’s’ attitude towards art education might be higher than males. Compared to men, women can more easily reflect their emotions because of their nature. When they reflect their emotions in their art more comfortably and freely, their attitudes towards art can increase. As far as we know, no previous research has investigated the concept of attitude in art education. Considering the concept of general attitude in the literature, we see a number of studies that are consistent with the present study’s findings (Pogonowski, 1985; Mizener (1993), Kadijevich, 2000; Shahriza and Hasan, 2007; SaÄŸlam, 2008; Bulut, 2011; Dalkıran and Yıldız, 2016; Kaya, 2016; Ünal, 2017). Furthermore, some research shows that gender had no significant effect on students’ attitudes towards art education (Küçük, 2012; Çevik, 2015; Bulut and Tan, 2017; Cengiz and Lehimler, 2018). With respect to the gender variable, results might vary across studies because of men and women’s roles and traditions in society. The other reason might be the city structure, long-time neighborhood differences among participants. For example, people who grew up in a metropolitan city perceive women living in cities and villages in a different way. Briefly speaking, different types of women may have been taken as a role model in the sample groups.
Given the participants’ results on grade variable were analyzed, we see that the total scores of attitude towards art education and the scores in many sub-dimensions are in favor of first grade students. Since first grade students have just graduated from high school, they might crave for art education. Student interested in an art branch since their childhood and want to pursue a fine-art career may not be able to devote enough time to it until their higher education because of being over-burdened with academic and homework assignments. Also, they may have lived in a place where art activities were extremely rare. They may not have gone their desired concerts and biennials. This might explain the reason why freshmen achieved higher attitude scores towards art. In sum, they might crave for art education when they begin university. On the contrary, third and fourth grade students may exhibit lower attitude towards art education because they embark on a new chapter in their lives and their vocational training will end too soon. They are on the verge of saying goodbye to student days and enter their professional life. In the meantime, they have to pass Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS) required to become a teacher. This may have imposed heavy burden on students and they had to leave little time for their field, and as a result they may have changed their priorities. The results of attitude researches on grade variable are consistent with the researchers conducted by Pogonowski (1985) and SaÄŸlam (2008)’s research findings. However, there are some other studies suggesting no significant differences in terms of the grade level variable (Graham et al., 2007; Çevik, 2015; Dalkıran and Yıldız 2016; Ünal, 2017; Bulut and Tan, 2017). On the other hand, various results were obtained with respect to the grade level variable in the literature. This may arise because other schools surveyed carry out different training programs and policies. Besides, if this study had been conducted in a fine arts high school, the participants who aimed to attend vocational training immediately after they graduated from high school would have yielded higher attitude towards art during their senior year. Therefore, the underlying reason could be because different sample groups were used in other studies.
Considering the research findings on the department variable, the scores of personal opinions on art education, one of the subdimensions of the art education attitude scale, are in favor of art teaching department. This might be because the art teaching requires more individual endeavors. The department of art teaching offers approximately 8-h- workshop in a day. Although students attend the class in group, they mostly perform their works individually. A student who works with a piece of art alone have to think by his/her own to move forward. Although the student consults with an instructor periodically and then turns back to his or her work, compared to music students, art students are more alone whilst working. Taken all together, it may not be surprising that art students scored higher than music students in the subdimension of personal opinions on art education. Another finding on the department variable is related to socialization in art education, one of the subdimensions of the scale. Accordingly, the scores of music students were found higher than art students. These results, in fact, confirm the previous finding above. Because music education is conducted with groups of 2, 3 people and more and there are many different ways of working environment regarding the art forms inherent in national and international polyphonic music education, duet, trio, quartet, playing accompaniment, choral and orchestral trainings might have made music students more socialized compared with art students. No significant difference was detected in the total scores of the scale in terms of the department variable. Considering the researches on attitude, some researches revealed significant differences according to the department variable (Terzi and Tezci, 2007; Åžahin et al., 2010), whereas the department variable had no significant effect on attitude in some other researches (DemirtaÅŸ et al., 2011; Ünal, 2017).
According to another variable in the scale, mothers’ educational level, total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of the importance , necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process statistically and significantly varied in favor of students whose mothers graduated from primary school compared with those whose mothers graduated from university. In such a world where professionalism is overwhelmingly promoted, it is much more difficult to survive without having a profession compared to previous years. Living in such a fast pace age where the need for human labor has decreased and technology has made many things easier eventually brings the need for professionalism. As well as having a profession, personal development, tech skills and language skills also provide a great privilege for individuals who look for job opportunities and therefore they can have high-paying job easily and fast. We can contend that having a job is essential in terms of economic and social reasons. Parents (the participants whose mothers are primary school graduates) who suffered such a distress would very much like their children to attend university and wholeheartedly encourage their children. As a result, the participants whose mothers are primary school graduates yielded higher attitude scores than others. The research findings are consistent with the study carried out by Çeçen and Deniz (2015). In addition to it, students whose mothers graduated from secondary school have higher attitude scores and are more prone to attend a university when compared to students whose mother graduated from primary school, high school and university. The literature on attitude includes a bunch of studies that suggest mothers’ educational level has no significant effect on students’ attitudes (Erden, 1995; Baykara, 2008; DoÄŸan and Çoban, 2009; TaÅŸdemir, 2014).
According to the total scores and the scores in two subdimensions (the importance, necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life and socialization process in art education) in terms of parents’ income level, it is seen that students with household monthly income less than 1500 TRY yield significantly higher scores than students with household monthly income between 1500 TRY and 3000 TRY. The participants with household monthly income less than 1500 TRY may have suffered economic hardship before and during their education. Especially art and music students have to spend more money for their equipment and tools and this may have been a challenge for them. For this reason, they might have wanted to improve their living conditions and reach financial independence earlier. In this respect, the participants with household monthly income less than 1500 TRY exhibited higher scores towards art. After analysis of the relevant literature, it is seen that there are some previous researches stating that parents’ monthly income level had no significant effect on students’ attitude towards art education (Gökçe et al., 2007; Kozcu et al., 2007; Kaya, 2016). We thus can contend that unique findings emerged from the current study, and as a result, the study will make a significant contribution to the literature. One possible reason why previous studies on attitude in the literature with respect to the monthly income variable did not yield significant differences is that participants are from different departments. To illustrate, monthly expenses of a pre-service mathematics teacher and art teacher are different from each other. For this reason, participants studying in departments which demand high education costs and those who face hard financial times may want to graduate from the university as soon as possible and thereby reach financial independence earlier.
The last variable that has a significant effect on students’ attitudes towards art education is frequency of attendance at art education. According to total scores of students’ attitudes towards art education and the scores in the subdimensions of the importance, necessity of art education and the reflection of art education to everyday life, personal opinions on art education, during and after art education process, it was found that students who attend art events once a week scored higher than those who never attend art events. The study statistically proved that participants who frequently attend art events had higher attitudes towards art education compared to those who do not frequently attend art event.
One of the most striking findings of the present study is that participants from lower socioeconomic status backgrounds have higher attitude scores towards art. Research results indicate that students whose mothers graduated from primary school have statistically significantly higher scores than others. In addition to that, participants with household monthly income less than 1500 TRY have higher attitude scores towards art. These results highlight that people living in poor conditions demonstrate higher attitudes towards education. Given that socio-economic conditions do not decrease participants’ attitudes towards art, these findings, in fact, are promising for educators and education world. In conclusion, the present study proves that students’ attitudes towards art do not depend on socio-economic conditions.
In the present study, male students’ attitude scores were found lower than female students in terms of the gender variable. It is therefore suggested to organize face-to face discussions with doyens who have dedicated their lives to different art branches, thus, male students, in particular, and other students can improve their attitudes towards art. Guest artists can share their opinions on benefits and importance of art for human life with students in a warm and friendly environment.
Besides, their own instructors, others instructors may help students improve their attitudes and thereby help them have a broader perspective about art education, mostly based on master-apprentice relationship. Supplying equipment and material and providing suitable working environment will also improve students’ attitudes towards their departments.
The present study was limited to Fine Arts Education Department, Education Faculty of Adnan Menderes University. It is a quantitative research. The data were interpreted via figures. More comprehensive studies can be conducted or qualitative studies can shed further light on further studies to be conducted by researchers, instructors and students.
The data obtained in the present study demonstrate that senior students have lower scores in terms of their attitudes towards art. Facilitating (defray the costs such as transportation, accommodation and participation fee and etc.) students’ participation in activities (exhibition, workshop, concerts, discussions) by their departments can allow students to see more products in their field of arts and accordingly, they can exhibit higher attitude towards art education. On the other hand, Public Personnel Selection Examination (KPSS), which is a compulsory placement test for pre-service teachers in Turkey, negatively influences attitudes of pre-service teachers especially studying in applied departments such as art and music. If there is intention to conduct a selection exam for pre-service art and music teachers, selection must be based on performance. Thus, students will show higher attitudes towards art education.
The author has not declared any conflict of interests.
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