Contribution of the primary education 2nd level project-based learning method to the visual arts lecture

The study on the application of the methods based on project basedlearning in the Visual Arts Class at the 7th grade level of the second levelof primary education and the feasibility of the project method as analternative method in the teaching of visual arts constitutes the subject ofthis study. The creation of the subject of portrait contained in theteaching of Visual Arts lessons is the basic subject of the study. Thestudy was conducted to see if the project based teaching method contributedanything to the Visual Arts Lesson.The fact that the teaching of visual arts is not well acceptedduring the education process that the traditional method does not give theexpected productivity, in respect to the student and the teacher, are thestarting points of this study.It was considered that it would be favorable to the student andthe teaching environment to implement the project based teaching method inthe Visual Arts Classes by taking the learning activities of the student asthe base and to experience the learning process from the different views ofthe teachers, students, school and the environment. This study was conductedin certain 7th grades of primary schools with this thought in mind and theproject based teaching method was evaluated in respect to the learningprocess and the student by applying this method in the Visual Arts classes.This study was conducted during the academic year 2007-2008 in two7th grades of the primary school section of a private school affiliated witha university in Ankara, with a total of 49 students. One of the classeswith 24 students worked with the project based learning method in the VisualArts classes, and the period this method was applied and the changes seen inthe students during this period were examined. The lesson was given in thetraditional method to the other class with 25 students and the works performedby the students were evaluated.In the study the qualitative research approach was used on thestudents who were taught with the project based teaching method in theVisual Arts Classes to monitor their feelings, the changes in theirthoughts, their perception process.In this study a semi structured interview form with open endedquestions were used to collect data to study the teaching process in projectbased teaching method of Visual Arts Classes and to determine thedifferences at the end of the process and were interpreted with thedescriptive analysis method. The evaluation of the students taught withthe classic method was limited to the products made by the students at.Key Words: Visual Arts, Portrait, Project, Project Based Teaching, Traditional Method