The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of thematic integrated learning on the self-directed learning characteristics and academic achievement of elementary students. The research question was whether or not thematic integrated learning ba...
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of thematic integrated learning on the self-directed learning characteristics and academic achievement of elementary students. The research question was whether or not thematic integrated learning based on integrated curriculum would be more effective for self-directed learning characteristics and academic achievement traditional method.
To address this question, two hypotheses were formulated.
First. thematic integrated learning might have more effective to self-directed learning characteristics than traditional one.
Second, thematic integrated learning might have a higher academic achievement than traditional one.
Two Sixth-grade classes(70 students) were sampled from Y elementary school in Busan.
The experimental group was taught with thematic integrated learning method based on integrated curriculum. for 39 units(84 hours) and the control group was taught by traditional teaching method.
Self-directed leaning characteristics inventory which was invented by Gulielmino(1997) and lee Dong-jo(1999). and achievement test which was invened by Korea Institute of Curriculum & Evaluation(2002)'s were used to got the data.
The t-test was used to test hypothesis.
The major findings of this study were as follows:
First the thematic integrated learning brought a significant change to self-directed learning characteristics. Second, the thematic integrated learning brought a significant change to academic achievement as well.
In conclusion. the thematic integrated learning served to provide motivation to the children, expedite their class participation and eventually improve their self-directed learning capabilities. In addition. this type of instruction made it possible to diversify teaching/learning methods and contributed to escalating their academic achievement. But future research efforts need to focus on thematic integrated learning that could cover every area in every subject matter, and how the current separated curriculum could successfully be replaced with multiple integrated one should discreetly be studied on a long-term basis.