ATTITUDES OF 5TH, 6TH, 7TH, 8TH GRADES IN SCIENCE AND ART CENTERS TOWARDS MUSIC LESSONS

Abstract

There have been on going studies in Turkey to enhance the quality and effectiveness of music education. Music education provided in Science and Art Centers (SAC) of Ministry of Education in Turkey supports these efforts. This thesis aims to determine the attitudes of students in these centers towards music education. The sample of this study includes 154 female (45%) and 188 male students (55%) totaling 342 from 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders receiving education in SAC located in 7 different provinces (Kırşehir, Bursa, Antalya, İzmir, Ordu, Malatya, Urfa) selected from 7 different regions of Turkey.
Ten sub-aims were specified to determine the attitudes of students towards music lessons in SAC. Conducted by using descriptive analysis method, music attitude scale consisted of 20 items in a 5 point likert-type ( Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient of: 86) developed by Çizmeci (2006) was used for data collection. Cronbach Alpha reliability coefficient of this scale was calculated as .97 in this study. SPSS 17.00 ( Stastical Package for Social Sciences) was used for the analysis of data.
In the study, frequency(f), percentage (%), mean ( X ) and standard deviation (SD) were calculated. However, in comparisons
between multiple variables (gender, class, mother education level education level, father education level, mother’s occupation,
father's occupation, status of playing a musical instrument , status of mother’s playing a musical instrument and status of
father’s playing a musical instrument), to check whether the data has a normal distribution, Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality
test was conducted. In comparisons for bivariate analsysis Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal-Wallis H for three or more
variables were used since the data represents no normal distribution. Attitude level was analyzed with one sample t-test. When
significant differences were found with Kruskal-Wallis H-test, the source of significancy was tested with Tukey HSD test. In
the light of the findings, attitudes of students towards music lessons in SAC were found as highly positive. Moreover, the most
important findings of our study were that the attitude levels of female students are higher than that of males, that attitude levels
of students decrease as the grades increase and that attitude levels of students playing a musical instrument are higher than
those of students who do not play a musical instrument. The sdudy was completed with suggestions in line with the findings.