The thesis defines the theoretical and methodological principles of the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture development. The essence of the concepts "the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture", "the students' of pedagogical universities in the process of arts and crafts activities"; the features of the students' of pedagogical universities arts and crafts activities have been revealed; the theoretical substantiation of contextual and technological support components of the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture development (directions, meaningfulness, methods and forms of work); the criteria (cognitive, emotional and motivational, value, creative and activity) and the relevant indicators of the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture have been substantiated. The thesis substantiates the criteria and determines the indicators of how the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture has been developed: cognitive (cognitive interest, erudition, cultural worldview); emotional and motivational (aesthetic taste, a desire to get involved in cultural achievements, a culture of feelings); value (value attitude to cultural heritage, acceptance of cultural values as personal ones, readiness to preserve and disseminate artistic and aesthetic values); creative and activity (artistic and aesthetic interpretation, the embodiment of artistic and aesthetic images into practical professional activity, the ability to create an artistic and aesthetic activity product). It was found that the levels on which the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture has been developed (adaptive, reproductive, constructive and creative) and their informative characteristic is presented. As a result of the application of a number of diagnostic methods and techniques the predominantly adaptive and reproductive levels of the students' artistic and aesthetic culture indicators development were found: the artistic and aesthetic culture indicators of almost half of the students (44.83% in CG and 45.59% in EG), are developed at the reproductive level, of large number of students -at the adaptation level (32.33% in CG and 32.35% in EG). The contextual support is defined as a set of contextual content of this process. The following directions have become the contextual components: artistic and aesthetic knowledge development, artistic and aesthetic values development, emotional orientation and motivation for artistic and aesthetic activities, forming the cultural behaviour practices. The technological support is defined as a set of forms and methods in relation to the students' of pedagogical universities artistic and aesthetic culture development. In the technological support structure, the complex of forms (classroom work - lectures, video lectures, master classes, cultural studies, museum hours, academic testing; extra-curricular work - creative workshops, fairs, forms of environmental design of educational space, exhibitions, additional courses) and methods of work (methods of consciousness development, organization of activity, stimulation of the students' activity, self-education, methods of folk pedagogy, information retrieval method, method of creating artistic context, interactive methods) is defined. It has been found out that both the experimental group students and the control group students are interested in reducing the share of the adaptation level. This index is - -14.6% for the control groups and - -25.75% for the experimental ones. However, in experimental groups, the negative dynamics were also observed at the reproductive level, being - -14.71%. This confirms that in general the vast majority of the experimental groups students experienced positive changes, that is, the level of indicators of artistic and aesthetic culture formation had increased as a result of their participation in experimental work. The highest aggregate positive dynamics in experimental groups (for the creative and constructive levels) is determined in the indicators of cognitive (+ 52%) and creative activity (+ 50%) criteria.
