Effect of pop music on students attitudes to music lessons

This study aims to identify whether the use of popular music in teaching song creates a significant difference in attitudes of middle school students to music lessons. “Pretest-posttest design” from experimental models was used. The experimental and control groups consists of 8 classes of continuing education from four different middle schools in Burdur province which were selected randomly. The music lesson attitude scale was used for both groups by the researchers before the experiment. The “syncopation/off-beat” topic chosen by the researchers was taught to the experiment and control groups for four weeks. While the song teaching related to the topic was taught traditionally to the control group, examples of songs from Turkish pop music chosen by the researchers were taught to the experimental group using prepared karaoke recordings. After the experiment, the music lesson attitude scale was applied to both groups again by the researchers, and an attempt was made to identify whether there was a significant difference in the attitudes of the students to music lessons. The research concluded that the use of popular music examples in song learning caused a general increase in attitudes of students to music lessons. Additionally, when the differences in mean attitude points for items are examined students had more enjoyment from music lessons where pop music samples were used for song learning. It was identified that their motivation for the lesson and their desire to participate in activities in class and outside of class increased. Key words: Popular music, music attitude, music education.