This study aims at understanding the perception of elementary teachers about the five school days a week system and the actual status of elementary physical leisure education in the way of cultural description. For the purpose of the study, the resear...
This study aims at understanding the perception of elementary teachers about the five school days a week system and the actual status of elementary physical leisure education in the way of cultural description. For the purpose of the study, the researcher applied a case study among qualitative methodologies and collected data using diverse methods(in-depth interview, review of the related literature, and videotaping). The collected data were analysed using a inductive category analysis, and the validity of the data was confirmed by inter-constituents review, peer consultation, and triangulation. The results of analysing the perception of elementary teachers about the five school days a week system(teachers' perception, the actual status of class), and the elementary leisure education(perception, facilities, programs and instructors of leisure) separately, are as the following.
In the perception of the teachers about the five school days a week system, the teachers did not exactly know about the system, so they were processing the jobs according to administrative conventions. Especially as problems of the five days a week class, it was distinctive that the need of the teachers' perception change was indicated most importantly. Moreover, it was indicated that the class quality under the five school days a week system was low because of lack of the teachers' enthusiasm. In addition, it was also indicated as the problems that there were indifference of school managers and lack of basic perception of the managers about the system. As solutions for these problems, the teachers believed that one should convert teachers' perception through giving continuous training to teachers, and the realities where teachers spent more time doing the others jobs than teaching, should be changed, through simplifying paper working.
About the actual status of class under the five school days a week system, the teachers thought that they focused on the outcome of class rather than pursued the quality of contents and diversity of class, so that the class became a class without substance but good appearance. Therefore, they said that because they were focused on the outcome, they were too busy in keeping the products of classes to have time to even read the contents of class. In addition, because of the urban-oriented curriculum without considering the unequal educational condition between the city and country, the circumstance in the country was proper for managing the five school days a week system. Therefore in case of the rural schools, there was no special program for the system. Even if there were various programs for the system, because of both the pursue of convenience and lack of the perception of the teachers, the system was known as a system which one did not go to school during weekends, and most schools in D region, they were only giving one kind of class program for the system.
In the perception of leisure, not only there was no basic perception about leisure education but also there was lack of facilities for the leisure education. In addition, the after school program which can be said to be leisure education of schools, was operated in a crippled way. There were few items related to physical education, most existing items were ones related to dancing. In addition, as reasons for being lack of the basic perception, overloaded amount of work and lack of training opportunity for teachers were indicated, finally internal atmosphere among the teachers where there was teachers' indolence and the teachers saw other teachers who worked hard for weekends' leisure programs with unsatisfied eyes.
In the aspect of facilities, they thought that local social sports facilities were not enough, and in case of the urban schools, they were unsatisfied with their facilities much. In addition, about the perception of persons concerned in education offices of the city ․ province and schoolmasters, they thought that those persons had no positive perception about building leisure facilities.
In case of the instructors for leisure education, the problems about qualifying, supplying and demanding the instructors were indicated most.
Most schools were leaving their selection to the schoolmasters' discretion because there were no given-criteria from the educational office for selecting the instructors. For this reason, if there was no specific knowledge about certain area or lack of interest, the management about the instructers was being operated carelessly. Therefore also in supply and demand of the instructors, there was no systematic measure, the instructors with low quality were flowing into schools continuously.
In leisure education programs, the diversification of programs related with physical training was not enough, in addition, in case of programs related with physical training, their structure was not proper for attracting students' participation positively. That there was no program related with physical training means that physical leisure education in schools was not operated properly.
There was a tendency that they thought the reason why there were rarely after school physical leisure programs to be because of the absence of the programs themselves, and the reason why these programs was absence was because it was disregarded by parents who perceived that physical training was not included the main subjects of the schools. It shows that parents' perception was not sufficient.
In addition, the major problem was that leisure education was regarded as not education with concept of leisure but another learning hour of a school, that is, class which was extension of main subjects education. As only regarding this result, in after school programs, many physical training programs were not included.
Finally, there were also opinions that the education quality became low because the education programs were operated with low costs. For the solutions for these problems, they suggested that one could complement the facilities and supply and demand the necessary instructors without difficulty, and secure the qualified instructors through receiving support from social facility institutions.