Attitudes of students and teachers about distance music teaching in the Republic of Croatia

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, distance learning is becoming essential for continuing education. As part of this work, research was conducted during the 2021/22 school year in the Republic of Croatia, the aim of which was to determine possible differences in the attitudes of students and music teachers regarding remote music lessons during the COVID-19 pandemic. The data was collected through an online survey of 583 research participants, of whom 503 were students in the seventh and eighth grades of elementary general education schools, and 83 were teachers of Music Culture who teach music in elementary schools. The results showed that, to a greater extent, teachers believe that teaching music at a distance requires a lot of effort and creates stress. Also, to a much lesser extent, teachers believe that during remote music lessons, students acquire the same knowledge as in lessons at school and that grades in distance learning are not a reflection of students' actual knowledge. At the same time, to a greater extent, teachers consider that they are more lenient when evaluating distance learning than in-school teaching. Given the fact that distance learning has become an integral part of modern educational reality, not only due to pandemic conditions, it deserves more and more attention from teachers, educational authorities, and the entire community.