Pupils’ attitudes towards art teaching in primary school: an evaluation tool

Perceived ability

T-tests for independent samples were carried out for the subscales of enjoyment,
usefulness and support needed in order to localise the effect of this constructed variable
‘perceived ability’. The tests revealed that high confidence pupils had significantly (p< .
001) more positive attitudes towards art in all subscales (see table 3). High confidence
pupils enjoyed art more, valued art activities more and believed more strongly that their
teacher was supportive. The results suggest the concept of perceived ability appears to
represent the key idea that most individuals will not be interested in and value a task, in
this case art activities, when they believed that they are not good at it and thus they
expect to fail.

Table 3

Perceived ability and gender

The statistical technique used for identifying the interaction between the variables
teachers’ background and gender was the General Linear Model (GLM). The GLM test
showed that there was a significant interaction between the variables perceived ability
and gender for the subscales of enjoyment (p<. 01) and usefulness (p< .05). Line graphs
were used to study and clarify the patterns of the means of the groups. These showed that
high confidence girls and high confidence boys had similar attitudes towards art, which
were much more positive than low confidence girls and boys’ attitudes. But, low
confidence girls enjoyed art and valued art significantly more than low confidence boys.

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