Future Time Orientations and The Hopelessness Levels of Preservice Music Teachers

Abstract

Since individuals’ time perception plays a role in their future plans, goals, and motivation, it has a substantial impact on influencing one’s behaviour. Therefore, it is important to determine the levels of future time orientations, as well as the levels of hopelessness’ in the students towards increasing the levels of reaching the educational goals. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the preservice music teacher’s future time orientations in terms of their genders, grades, and universities attended. As a part of the study, the students’ levels of hopelessness were also analyzed. This included investigating the hopelessness levels of the participants with regards to their universities. The relationship between preservice music teachers’ future time orientations and their levels of hopelessness were also analyzed. A total of 210 music education students participated in this descriptive study. Future Time Orientation Scale which was developed by Gjesme (1979) and Hopelessness Scale which was developed by Beck et al. (1974) were used as data collection tools. According to the results of the study, it was found that preservice music teachers have a mild level of hopelessness which means the participants are not particularly pessimistic. There were significant differences between the preservice music teachers’ future time orientations and their genders, grades and universities. Likewise, there was a significant difference between the participants’ levels of hopelessness and their universities. Also, correlations have been found between the participants’ future time orientations and their levels of hopelessness. The results were discussed in the light of the literature.