The effect of constructivist approach in choir education on attitude, self-sufficiency perception and academic success

The purpose of this study is to determine to what extent constructivist approach as a theory of learning is effective in attitude, self-sufficiency perception and academic success for ?Choir? lesson taken by students of the Music Education Program for seven midterms. In the research, control grouped pretest-posttest experimental research model is applied. Accordingly, study group of the research covers the Spring Term of 2010-2011 Academic Year, Sophomore (n=30) students of Music Education Program within the body of the Department of Fine Arts Education at the Faculty of Education of the İnönü University.In the research, Attitude, Self-sufficiency Perception, Academic Success Scale and Expert Opinion Form have been used as data collection tools. Accordingly, students have been separated into equivalence groups through matching according to their academic success grades in ?Choir II? delivered in the Spring Term of 2010-2011 Academic Year, and experiment and control groups have been formed. During eight weeks and four course hours per week, constructivist (student centered) choir education has been delivered to the experiment group (n=15) and traditional (teacher centered) choir education has been delivered to the control group (n=15). For the analysis of research data, nonparametric tests have been performed; statistical analyses of these tests have been carried out by means of SPSS.17 package program. In line with the findings obtained from the research, the followings have been found;(a) There is no differentiation between post-test points of Academic Success Scale and Attitude Scale (p>.05), but there is a differentiation in favor of experiment group, between the post-test points of Self-sufficiency Perception Scale of the control group which received traditional choir education and the experiment group which received constructivist choir education at the p<.05 level of significance.(b) There is no significant differentiation between the pretest-posttest points of Academic Success Scale, but there is a differentiation in favor of the post-test experiment group, between the pretest- posttest points of Attitude and Self-sufficiency Perception Scale of the experiment group which received constructivist choir education.(c) There is no significant differentiation between the pretest-posttest points of Attitude, Self-sufficiency Perception and Academic Success of the control group which received traditional choir education,Key words: choir, choir education, constructivist approach, attitude, self-sufficiency perception, academic success