Evaluation of the relationship with respect to various parameters between faculty of education, music education department students' attitudes towars "Turkish music history" course and their academic achievements

This research was conducted in order to analyze the second, third, and fourth year Faculty of Education, Department of Music Education students? attitudes towards the Turkish Music History course with respect to various parameters and in order to determine the factors affecting these negative or positive attitudes along with the students? opinions on how the course was lectured.Descriptive research methods with quantitative and qualitative dimensions have been adopted with an integrated approach. The subjects consist of second, third and fourth year students from Music Education Departments of Faculties of Education from within Turkey. The sample group includes 871 students who are third and fourth year students from Music Education Departments of Faculties from 12 universities in Turkey.Data have been obtained via a Turkish Music History Course Attitude Scale which was developed by the researcher. The scale is composed of three parts: The first part includes personal information on the subject students; the second part includes a total 40 attitude items relating to the sub-dimensions of positive/negative perceptions and the function of the course; and the third part includes the questionnaire.SPSS 19.0 software has been utilized to perform the statistical analyses of the collected quantitative data pertaining to the sub-problems which were formed according to the purpose of the study and the main problem, while content analysis have been utilized to analyze the qualitative data. Statistical results have been interpreted at the level of significance of 0.05. Whether the data is distributed normally or not has been tested using the Kolmogorov-Smirnov Test. Independent Sample t Test has been utilized when comparing two groups, and One Way ANOVA has been used when comparing more than two groups. If variance analysis indicates a statistically significant variation between any two groups, a Multiple Comparison Test, Tukey Test, has been used to determine the groups resulting in the variation. In the tests that are concerned with the comparison of the groups, homogeneity of variance assumption has been tested using the Levene Test, and it has been decided which statistics should be taken into account. Regression Analysis and Correlation Coefficients have been used to determine the relationships and regressions between the dimensions.According to the findings of the research, it has been determined that the attitudes of the students towards the Turkish Music History course is positive. It has also been determined that the students? attitudes depend significantly on the universities, grade levels, gender, personal instruments or instrument groups played, locations of the schools, the students? fathers? education levels, whether or not there exists a family member who is interested in Turkish music, and the degree of relationship to that member. The relationship between the students? academic grades and the sub dimensions of the attitude scale has not been found to be significant and it has been ascertained that the attitude sub-dimensions have no regressive effect on the academic grades. In addition, the factors that influences the positive or negative attitudes of the students? concerning the way the course is lectured have been established and comments have been made in the light of the findings.Key Words: Music Education, Music Teacher, Attitude, Turkish Music History, Student Opinions.