CROATIAN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL STUDENTS' ATTITUDES TOWARDS MUSIC LESSONS.

This paper has explored the Croatian elementary school students' attitudes towards Music Culture course with regard to age, gender, family background and additional music lessons and the influence of gender and age on preferring different activities of music teaching practice. As a part of the research, a questionnaire of sociodemographic data and a questionnaire of students' attitudes toward the subject were distributed to 225 students attending the second, the third, the seventh and the eighth grade. The results confirm that music is an important component of the students' life in general, especially for girls. The authors observed a connection between certain aspects of attitudes towards the Music Culture course with family background, additional music lessons and the preference of classical music. Age and gender also proved to be significant predictors of students' attitudes towards the Music Culture course. Thus, younger students and girls have more positive attitudes towards music lessons, compared to older students and boys. Additionally, younger students show greater preferences for singing, while older students tend to be more inclined to listening to music. The authors suggest the possibility of conducting similar research with the high school population with a view of comparing the obtained results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]