MOTIVATION OF FOURTH GRADE STUDENTS IN LEARNING THE SUBJECT OF FIGURATIVE ART

Prof. Asst. Albana Sadiku PhD (c)1
Prof. Asst. Saranda Kika2

Authors country of origin: Kosovo1/2
Institutional affiliation: 1/2Assistant Professor at the University of Mitrovica ‘Isa Boletini’.
Email address: albana.sadiku@umib.net, saranda.kika@umib.net

ABSTRACT

Students’ motivation is the foundation for successful and free learning. The teacher has professional and moral responsibilities on the motivation of students in every subject, including the subject of figurative arts. The role of the teacher is to motivate students to learn every possible skill in the field of figurative arts, using a motivation to improve students’ perceptual skills on artistic elements and artistic evaluation. The teacher has full autonomy over the realization of the lesson of figurative art through various forms of artistic expression; he can understand the emotional, cognitive state of the students he works with.

This is longitudinal and qualitative research. Experiment and observation are used for data collection. The reason for using the experimental model has to do with the possibility that this model offers, namely we as researchers had the opportunity to intervene in the moments when we considered it necessary for that kind of intervention to be done as a form of external motivation, which intervention will send us to measurable changes. This research lasted three and a half months and the students had only 1 hour per week of figurative arts. The purpose of this research is to understand the importance of motivating and integrating students in all activities that are involved within the subject of figurative art, to improve students’ perceptual skills on figurative elements and aesthetic evaluation of a specific composition.

During September we only have observed the working methods that the teacher realized with her students, so then we could get acquainted with the children and the working methods of the teacher. Due to covid-19, the class was divided into two groups and worked in two different schedules; therefore, we defined the first group as the control group, while the second group was defined as the experimental group. Of course, we were present, as observers in the control group, too. The way of experimenting was that during the realization of the figurative art class we observed by not directly intervening in the work of any of the students, then after completing the task, we started discussing that task to encourage the expression of all students about that composition, we explained and emphasizing the figurative elements and principles within that composition, we discussed the tasks of each student one by one, in order students to understand at what points they need to be improved. At the same time is requested from students to perceive those figurative elements by discussing them and in this way, all the group of students was involved and in a very natural way have improved the perception of the figurative elements and to acquire the artistic appreciation. While students were observing each other’s tasks, they also were able to learn from each other and identify figurative elements more easily.

Our research sample is fourth-grade students, respectively age group 9-10 years. The class had 25 students, 15 girls, and 10 boys, and the overall success in all subjects of the complete class was about 4.16% out of 5%. This research is built based on two research questions: Can students’ artistic skills are improved through motivation? Can be improved students’ skills on the artistic evaluation of composition through group discussion? Both research questions were validated at the end of the experiment, which means when there is proper motivation from the teacher, proper evaluation of their work by the teacher, discussion of students ‘work until they understand their strengths and weaknesses in art; all of these effect on the improvement of student’s personal artistic skills and artistic appreciation.

Keywords: Social science, motivation, figurative art, fourth grade, perception, artistic evaluation and skills.

Volume 4.No.1(2021): April (Humanities Session)

ISSN 2661-2666 (Online) International Scientific Journal Monte (ISJM)
ISSN 2661-264X (Print)

DOI : 10.33807/monte.20211829

DOI URL: https://doi.org/10.33807/monte.20211829

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This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)