Attitudes of Pre-service Music Teachers Studying in Undergraduate Programs in Turkey Towards Piano Courses

Abstract

Attitude, which is one of the important topics of social psychology, is defined in the literature as a psychological element that can direct the behavior of individuals (Özmenteş and Özmenteş, 2009). According to Tolan, the attitude “in its broadest sense is the way in which the individual is standing up against the objects or subjects that contain a psychological value” (Gömleksiz, 2003). It has been proved by many research findings that attitudes developed as a natural result of interaction, greatly affect the success of the individual (Canakay, 2006). The effects starting from childhood, the experiences gained in later years and the fields related to the interests, desires and aims of the personality play the most decisive and effective role in the formation of attitudes. These features, which are valid in music education, are also very important in the piano education of the student. From all these definitions, it can be concluded that students' attitudes to the piano have important effects on their education and their use of the piano in the future (Bakıoğlu, 2012).

The main purpose of this research is to reveal the attitudes of pre-service teachers who take Piano courses in Music Education Departments of Faculty of Education. In this study, whether the scores obtained from the Piano lesson attitude scale showed significant difference according to some variables is also examined. The research was conducted on the students of Marmara University, Ataturk Faculty of Education, Music Education Department (N = 30) in 2017-2018 academic year. The data of the study was collected by using the “Personal Information Form” prepared by the researcher and “Piano Lesson Attitude Scale” which was prepared to learn the pre-service teachers' thoughts about Piano Lesson. As a result of the study, it was found that there were statistically significant differences between the attitude levels of students and some variables (p <.05).