Student experiences and attitudes towards the school subject Visual Arts

In modern school, students become active subjects in their education. The aim of this research was to determine the status of the school subject of Visual Arts in the eyes of students, therefore we studied student opinion, perception and experience related to Visual Arts classes. A total of 192 students participated in the research, including 78 fourth-grade students (40.6%) and 114 eighth-grade students (59.4%). The research was conducted in several Croatian villages and smaller towns in Split-Dalmatia County and Šibenik-Knin County. We used a survey questionnaire containing six hypotheses and research questions: results processing was done by the use of percentages, arithmetic mean, and standard deviation, as well as a t-test for independent samples. The research results show that more than half of the surveyed students would like to have the weekly number of lessons of Visual Arts increased. Although they love to participate in classes, unfortunately as many as 70% of them never visit museums and exhibitions to communicate with the contents of Visual Arts, and when they do go to cultural institutions, they are mostly taken there by their parents. The research proved that fourth-grade students of primary school perceive the subject better than eighth-grade students and assess different aspects of Visual Arts classes with higher grades. No gender differences were observed in the perception of the subject of Visual Arts. Finally, we notice that most students consider Visual Arts an important and useful subject in their education, and most students are happy to attend Visual Arts classes as this makes them feel relaxed.