Examination of music teacher candidates' musical awareness and attitudes towards music teaching profession: The case of the Black Sea Region

This study aims to examine the musical awareness of prospective music teachers and their attitudes toward the teaching profession. The research was conducted with 326 undergraduate students studying in the Music Education Department of the Fine Arts Education Division in the Black Sea Region. The study employed a quantitative research method, with data collected through a survey form. To obtain the research data, demographic questions, the Musical Awareness Scale, and the Attitude Scale toward the Music Teaching Profession were used. Correlation analysis was conducted to examine the relationships between musical awareness and attitude dimensions to test the research hypotheses. All analyses were performed using SPSS 24 software. The findings indicate that tonal-formal and performance-based awareness, musical expression and performance-based awareness, spiritual and sound-oriented awareness, and awareness of the general structure of music are positively associated with the love and dedication dimension of attitudes toward the music teaching profession. On the other hand, no statistically significant relationship was found between the spiritual and sound-oriented musical awareness dimension and the value dimension of the attitude scale toward the music teaching profession.