Investigation of Imam Hatip High School Students' Motivation for the Qur'an Course

Abstract

Imam Hatip High Schools, which are affiliated to the General Directorate of Religious Education of the Ministry of National Education, are schools that provide secondary education. In these schools, apart from other secondary education institutions, the Qur'an, Basic Religious Knowledge, Fiqh, Tafsir, Hadith, Professional Arabic, Siyer, Oratory and Professional Practice, Akaid, Kalam, History of Religions, Islamic Culture and Civilization, Ottoman Turkish lessons are taught. Vocational Courses are worth researching as they have a twenty-five percent ratio among all courses taught. This study, on the other hand, aims to examine student motivations for the Qur'an course, which is the most taught weekly course hour among the Vocational Courses. Within the framework of this purpose, a scale was developed/adapted to measure their motivation towards the Qur'an lesson as the first step, and in the second step, student motivations for this lesson were examined. In the developed scale, the students' motivation for the Quran lesson and their differentiation status according to possible factors (gender, class, family, the status of receiving Quran education outside of school) were discussed. In this study, a survey was conducted, one of the quantitative research methods, and a questionnaire consisting of 10 questions was used as a data collection tool and the Motivation Scale for Elective Qur'an Lesson was used. The prepared scale was applied online to 564 (398 girls, 166 boys) students studying at Anatolian Imam Hatip High Schools in the central districts of Antalya in the 2021-2022 academic year. The findings showed that student motivation for this course did not differ according to gender, whether they received education outside of school, academic success, whether families received Qur'an education or not. The lack of motivation compared to academic success can be explained by the high effect of this course on the average in these schools, and the decrease in motivation as the grade level rises can be explained as the increase in occupational anxiety as the final year approaches.