A Study On The Levels Of Virtue Ethics Of High School Students Who Receive Arts Education Or Not

Abstract

In the survey devoted to understand the nature of the concept “ethics”, It is peculiar to the investigation area of ethics to feel the need to separate the good from bad, the right from the wrong (Dundar, Eksi ve Yildiz, 2008 : 90 ). It is also known that, the relationship between the concepts of “ethics” and “aesthetics” can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers. In this context, studying the effects of arts education,- which happens to be the education of creating the “beautiful one”- on ethical values, will put forth findings that could enlighten the relationship between these two concepts. This study is conducted on the purpose of detecting that if there is a relationship between virtue ethics levels (Helpfulness, showing respect, self control and self assessment) of students who receive arts education or not. This study, which is conducted to put forth the difference between levels of values of the music and visual arts departments’ students of high school of fine arts and sports in a mid-scale city of northern Anatolia, according to their status of receiving art education or not, is suitable for the relational screening model. The population of the study is composed of 6883 students from regular high schools and 180 students from the high school of fine arts and sports in their school year of (2011-2012). The study group is composed of 94 students (59 female, 35 male) from the High School of Fine Arts and 272 (157 female, 115 male) regular high school students, hence 366 students in total. The data were collected from the 94 students who received an intensive arts education and from the 272 students who didn’t receive any education in arts and as a data collecting tool to measure the value levels of students (Helpfulness, showing respect, self control and self assessment) the Scale of Values In Action which was developed by Jennifer Chandra Swaim and later adapted to Turkish by Selma Dundar, Halil Eksi and Ali Yildiz, was used. For data analysis, to compare the independent sample’s scores related to the dependent variable, one of the non parametric texts, KRUSKALL- WALLIS was used. At the end of the study , no significant difference was found between the levels of virtue ethics of the students according to the school type. In addition to this, significant differences were detected connected to the class variable in two school types.