A study on developing a measurement tool for determining mental imagery capacity of art education students

The purpose of this study is to develop a multi-dimensional, valid, and reliable measurement tool that will determine the mental imagery capacities of students studying at the undergraduate programs of art education institutions (education faculties' fine arts education departments and fine arts faculties' painting, graphics, and sculpture departments). The sample of the study consisted of 720 students from the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year students studying at five different universities' art education undergraduate programs. The data collection tool consists of a test battery. Mental Imagery Capacity Test Battery (MICY), the scale consists of three components, one of which is a scale: The Power of Mental Imaging Scale (PMIS); two of which are tests: Power of Metaphorical Thinking Test (PMT) and Test of Creative Imagery Abilities (TCIA). In the research findings, the psychometric properties of both the MICY battery and the measurement tool which constitute the test battery were examined. It is important that the three-component structure of the MICY battery is structurally supported by exploratory factor analysis and confirmed by confirmatory factor analysis. In addition, it was also found that MICY battery and the data collection tools included in the test battery have an adequate level of validity; concurrent and internal consistency reliability, and the interjudge reliability was found to be high. In addition, through the data obtained from the study, art education students' power and ability levels in the data collection tools constituting the test battery were examined. According to the findings, while the students' mental imaging power is high, metaphoric thinking power and creative imagery ability level is low. However, when the descriptive values of these two tests were examined, it was concluded that the power and ability levels of the metaphoric thinking power and vividness subscale of the creative imagery test were almost mid-level in approximately half of the students. Finally, the index score for the MICY battery was obtained, the results showed that there was a statistically significant difference in MICY battery index scores in terms of university and class level of the students of art education; however, there was no significant difference in terms of faculty they were studying. Considering these results, it has been experimentally proved that imagery competence needed in artistic skill can be measured by MICY battery. Suggestions have been offered that the MICY battery can be applied to the identification processes of talented individuals and in the student selection procedures of such programs.