The effect of school songs on the acquisition of effective citizenship values of secondary school students

This research aimed to reveal the impact of school songs covering effective citizenship values on the 6th-grade students' effective citizenship values. In line with this objective, sub-dimensions containing values of love, respect, altruism, fairness, honesty, and responsibility within effective citizenship values were also examined. An experimental design with pre-test-post-test control group was employed to determine the differences between the experimental group, where the experimental variable of school songs containing values was applied, and the control group, where it was not applied. The study group of the research consists of 50 students, 25 in the experimental group and 25 in the control group, randomly selected from the 6th grades of Turgut İçgören Middle School, which continues education in the 2022-2023 academic year in the Tarsus district of Mersin province. In collecting data for the study, the "Effective Citizenship Value Scale," developed by Çalışkan and Yıldırım (2020) to determine the levels of effective citizenship values of middle school students, was utilized. For the analysis of the collected data in the research, various analyses such as reliability analysis in the first stage using the SPSS 25.0 package program, Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test, and Mann Whitney U tests were employed. In the research results, no significant differences were observed within the control group in terms of effective citizenship values and sub-dimensions between pre-test and post-test scores. Similarly, within the experimental group, no significant differences were observed in pre-test-post-test scores in terms of effective citizenship values and sub-dimensions. While no significant differences were found in intra-group comparisons of pre-test scores, meaningful differences were detected in post-test scores in favor of the experimental group in effective citizenship values and all values except the sub-dimensions of love and fairness. Thus, it was determined that school songs have an impact on the acquisition of effective citizenship values of middle school students. The use of middle school songs is recommended for the acquisition of these values.