Browsing by Author "Latomäki, Krista"

In 2010 The Finnish National Board of Education made a follow-up assessment of the learning outcomes in arts education. The data of the research was collected during the assessment and it is nationally representative. In my Master's Thesis I examined the attitudes of the pupils towards crafts in school. The main purpose of the Thesis was to research a connection between the attitudes and the cognitive and skilled learning outcomes among the 9th grade pupils of the Finnish comprehensive school. The theoretical context of the Thesis was based on the National Core Curriculum for basic Education 2004 and crafts in it. Other relevant contents are crafts in the school, holistic craft, attitude and assessment. A total of 4792 pupils participated in the assessment at the first stage. At the second stage the number of participants was 1548 and at the third stage there were 661 participants. In this Thesis I have especially concentrated on the items of measuring the attitudes and the learning outcomes. At the first stage there were 18 claims concerning the attitudes and 10 questions were measuring the learning outcomes. At the second stage there were 15 claims concerning attitudes and 24 questions were measuring learning outcomes. At the third stage the pupils performed the production assignment of the crafts. The data of the Thesis was analysed with SPPS program using the Cluster analysis, the cross tabulation and the Analysis of Variance. As a result of the Cluster analysis three groups came out: those who had the most positive attitude, those who had a quite positive attitude and those who had the least positive attitude towards crafts. At the 1st stage 43,95 % of pupils had a most positive attitude, 39,96 % had quite positive attitude and 15,32 % had least positive attitude towards crafts. At the 2nd stage the results were 35,04 %, 44,62 %, 20,34 %. Generally it can be said that the pupils attitude towards craft is good. The results of the Thesis prove that there is a statistically high and a significant connection between attitudes and learning outcomes. The conclusion of the Thesis is that the attitudes towards crafts has a strong connection to learning outcomes in crafts. Connection between attitudes and learning outcomes has been searched in the long-term period in other school subjects. Research concerning the learning outcomes in art education (music, visual arts and crafts) has never been done either in Finland than internationally. The data, which has been used at this Thesis is therefore unique.