The impact of the usage of educational game as an approach in the education of children choirs on the musical fulfillment of the students

The main purpose of this research is to analyze the impact of usage ofeducational game as an approach at the education of children choirs on the musicalfulfillment of the students. For this purpose, at first educational approaches of the choireducators used in children choirs are analyzed. Then in accordance with the mostly usedapproaches, the musical fulfillment and the views about the process of both the controlgroup of students who receive choir education and the experimental group of studentswho receive choir education developed with an approach by the usage of educationalgame are determined.For the solution of the sub-problems of the research, both qualitative andquantitative research methods are used. Quantitative data is analyzed with SPSS 16.0programme, while the split-plot ANOVA is used for the repeating measures over singlefactor to test the sub-problems aiming to determine if there is any meaningful differencebetween the fulfillment levels. As a qualitative method, half-structured interview form isapplied to the children choir educators (n=18), the approaches and the state of theirusage of educational game are found out. Out of the quantitative methods, the pre-posttest of experimental research model with a control group design is applied to a studygroup composed of 3-A (experimental, n=36) and 3-B (control, n=36) classes ofAnıttepe Primary School.As the pre-test and post-test, ?Musical Hearing Test? developed by Gürgen(2008) and ?Musical Hearing-Repeating-Singing Form? developed by the researchertaking views of the experts are applied to the study group, together with the ?BehaviorviDevelopment Scale in Usage of Singing Voice?. Besides, after the experimental process,?Cognitive Success Test? and ?Student?s Opinion Form? are applied to the students.Experimental process continued for 8 weeks, including the 14 choir class of 40minutes with both of the groups. All process is recorded. The video recordingsbelonging to pre-test and post-test are evaluated by field experts (n=3) with respect tothe measuring tools guidelines.With respect to the findings, it is stated that for the education of children choirs,few choir educators use educational games, a part of educators benefit from improvisedgames, while some educators never use educational games.In accordance with the mostly used approaches, a meaningful difference is foundbetween the ?musical hearing? and the ?usage of singing voice? behaviors and?cognitive success? of the students who received choir education and the students whoreceive choir education with an approach by the usage of educational game, in favor ofexperimental group. Although there is an important increase in the fulfillment levels of?musical hearing-repeating-singing? behaviors of both groups, it is determined that theincrease is in favor of experimental group, but not meaningful.Almost all of the students in both of the groups stated extremely positivethoughts about choir education. But the students in the experimental group found all ofthe activities of the choir education more enjoyable and would like to continue theprocess more.As a result, it is found that the usage of educational game as an approach in theeducation of basic level children choirs, which are composed without any audition, ismore effective in increasing the musical fulfillment levels of the students. Concerningthe research results, to use the approach of educational game and to provide educationto more students through choir music, recommendations are given to the individuals andto the corporations, including choir educators and professional music educationinstitutes.