The preferences of prospective music teachers with respect to artistic-spiritual upbringing

The integration of artistic and spiritual contents in arts and the pedagogy of artistic subjects does not cause any doubt. The aim of internalizing this content into the students' inner world implies an educological need to investigate artistic-spiritual upbringings a specific component of education and as an important aspect in the formation of personal maturity. This problem is new and relevant. It is also not yet researched thoroughly, with only some aspects of spiritual upbringing being touched in the works of M. Barkauskaitė (2006, 2004), J. Kievišas, A. Kievišas (2004), A. Piličiausko (2004), Z. Rinkevičius (2004), R.Vitkauskas (2003, 2004). Artistic-spiritual education is the process of artistic-cultural and honoring upbringing, where the spread of the beauty of artistic masterpieces and ethical values spiritualize one's inner world. This is a process of internalizing the reality of artistic, spiritual and social relationships via means of living, perceiving, interpreting and thinking about the works of art. This way, the subject of teaching music is elevated into a higher qualitative level artistic-spiritual upbringing. Survey results show that the majority of prospective music teachers (current students) give priority to the future pupils' artistic-spiritual education. More than 50 % of the participating students, particularly juniors and seniors, have a vision how to educate their future pupils in artistic-spiritual ways. This means that premises are strong to intensify the students' artistic-spiritual maturity already during their studies; in the long run, this will come out an important factor when spiritualizing the subject of teaching music in schools. However, almost half of the respondents never or very rarely have artistic-spiritual experiences in academic studies. They gain such experiences while listening to the music and in concertsKlaipėdos universitetasVytauto Didžiojo universitetasŠvietimo akademij