The purpose of this study is to provide basic information useful for the effective learning of studies of technology and home economics at the middle school under the 7th National Educational Curriculum and for the exploration of contents to be contai...
The purpose of this study is to provide basic information useful for the effective learning of studies of technology and home economics at the middle school under the 7th National Educational Curriculum and for the exploration of contents to be contained in the studies under the 8th National Educational Curriculum by investigating and analyzing perceptions by teachers and students about existing contents of the two subjects provided to middle school boys and girls under the former curriculum of education.
For the purpose, this researcher made a questionnaire survey of 108 teachers of technology and home economics and 320 third-grade students who learned the two studies throughout their middle school days from middle schools located in Busan. Data from the survey were analyzed using SPSS/PC+ 10.0 Statistical Program. Frequency, percentage, mean(M) and standard deviation(SD) values were obtained to know general perceptions by teachers and students about the two studies. T-test were carried out to determine differences in the perceptions in accordance with participants’ personal characteristics.
Results of the study can be described as below.
1. Teachers responded that it was specially more needed to contain “sex and acquaintance with others of the opposite sex”, “relations between me and family” and “characters of adolescents” in contents of the two studies under the 7th national educational curriculum. This suggests the necessity of sex education that helps students newly recognize and rightly understand sex, raise their ability of making subjective decisions related to sex and solve and overcome sex-related conflicts by themselves.
2. When teachers’ perceptions about contents of studies of technology and home economics in accordance with their speciality, its was found that those whose specialty was home economics showed a high perception in the necessity of containing “characters of adolescents” and “adolescents’ meals” which were also provided under the 6th national educational curriculum and that those whose speciality was technology showed such perception in ‘mechanical elements’ and ‘making electronic products’ under the same curriculum.
3. When middle school students’ perceived contents of studies of technology and home economics were investigated in accordance with their gender, it was found that girl studies showed a higher perception in the necessity of containing “sex and acquaintance with others of the opposite sex” and “planning getting dresses and purchasing them” than boy ones and that boy students showed such perception in the need of containing “adolescents’ nutrition” and “mechanical elements” that girl ones. Girls showed more interest in “characters of adolescents” and “making and recycling dresses” than boys while, the latter students were more interested in “how to express objects” and “making moving objects” than the former ones.
4. Students showed a higher perception that almost all contents of technological and home economics-related studies, proposed here, should were necessary than teachers, only except “information production”, “storage and distribution” and ‘Internet utilization”. Few teachers perceived that computer needed to be instructed under the two studies. This is probably because most middle schools are providing computer education as a selective course, so it is not needed to be re-provided through studies of technology and home economics. This suggests that under the 8th national educational curriculum, the two studies should have computer-related sections reorganized.