Early childhood preservice teachers' perceptions about art activities: A cross-cultural study

Abstract

This study aims at identifying American and Turkish early childhood preservice teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of art activities in early childhood education and the relationships between rankings of the participants made through a self-reported importance order survey. A total of 270 preservice teachers studying at the University of North Texas and Kilis 7 Aralık University participated in the study. “Art activities evaluation sheet” was used to collect data. The data were analyzed using median values, Man Whitney U Test, and Kruskal-Wallis H test. The obtained results showed that there are both some similarities and differences in the American and Turkish preservice teachers’ perceptions of the purpose of art activities. Both American and Turkish early childhood preservice teachers gave the highest priority to the same item “Art activities improve creativity”. However, some items were valued differently by American and Turkish preservice teachers. No gender-related differences were observed in the rank orders of both American and Turkish preservice teachers.