Primary education 7. degre art education perspective's cooperative learning and traditional education students' success, their attitudes toward the course and on the learning permanency

The purpose of this study is the implementation of perspective with cooperative learning method in a 7th grade Visual Arts course. The aim is to investigate the impact of the implementation on students? success, their attitudes toward the course, and on the learning permanency, as well as to determine the opinions of the students in the experiment group.The study has been conducted with a total of 112 students in 4 equivalent classes, who were enrolled in an elementary school operating under the Ministry of National Education, in the city center of Sivas. The study was conducted during the second semester of the 2010-2011 academic year. Two of these classes have been assigned to be the experimental groups, where the cooperative learning method was used in the Visual Arts course, and the other two classes have been assigned as the control groups, where the Visual Arts course was taught via teacher handbook activities.Both quantitative and qualitative research methods have been employed in this study, and a pre-test post-test design has been used. The data has been collected with an achievement test (pretest & posttest), an attitude test, and a student opinions attitude test that has been administered to experiment group after the implementation. The achievement test and the attitude test have been given to groups as pretest and posttest before and after the intervention respectively. Attitude toward learning with cooperative learning scale has been administered to the experimental group after the intervention and a permanency test has been used after 12 weeks.The quantitative data collected during the study has been investigated statistically with the Statistical Packet for the Social Science (SPSS) and Excel programs. To analyze the quantitative data, means and standard deviations have been calculated and t tests have been used to explore the significance of the differences between group means.By the end of the study, from the comparisons of the experimental group instructed via cooperation-based teaching with the control group instructed via teacher handbook, it has been concluded that; Significant differences between the access,permanency, and attitude scores of the students in experimental groups - where the cooperative learning method was used- and the students in control groups -where thetraditional teaching method was used- have been found in the favor of the experiment groups. Compared to the traditional teaching method, cooperative learning method has been concluded to provide higher student achievement by activating the students. As a result of the interactions of students in cooperative groups in the experimental group; students in experimental groups were found to make better drawings. The students also stated that they liked the films and animations during the intervention and getting prepared for the Visual Arts course with their friends. Students agreed on that they enjoyed during the Visual Arts course by doing different activities and reported that they expect to have the same teaching method in their future Visual Arts courses.Based on the findings of this study, it has been concluded that cooperative learning is a more effective method than traditional teaching. Cooperative learning based activities are recommended to be implemented in teaching and recommendations are made for future studies in this area.Key Words: Cooperative Learning, Visual Arts Course, Perspective, Traditional Teaching