The aim of this research is to provide a cooking program, based on the ‘Teaching for Understanding’ which is an evaluation guide and an open teaching course for multiple intelligences. So, it could help to develop science process skills and logica...
The aim of this research is to provide a cooking program, based on the ‘Teaching for Understanding’ which is an evaluation guide and an open teaching course for multiple intelligences. So, it could help to develop science process skills and logical . mathematical intelligence of multiple intelligences by providing the cooking program. Also, we will provide well structured learning experience to infants controlling their ability to understand by using various senses.
The research was conducted from 21st May 2007 to 9th July 2007 to four-year-old children. Each children participated in the research for 14 times, twice a week for 8 weeks. To increase the accuracy, we used concurrent mixed method design which is one of the Mixed Methods of A. Tashakkori and C. Teddlie (2002). The concurrent mixed method design collects quantitative and qualitative data then analyzing the data using complementary methods. We conducted science process skill test of Martin (1997) from MIDAS-MYC before and after the program. And for the qualitative method, we used narrative research methods by adopting participant observation, in-depth interview and video analysis.
The results of this study were summarized as follows.
First, the program was organized after having discussions with the analysts, teachers and childhood education experts. We developed the cooking program based on the model of ‘Teaching for Understanding’ and it contains 14 detailed programs in introduction level, development level and deepening level which represents three generative topics. While conducting the detailed programs, we continuously reviewed the data such as unofficial review, peer evaluation, various graphs review and portfolio evaluation. When we compared the before and after scores of science process skills of the two groups, the experiment group showed more statistical significance in estimation, observation, classification, measurements and discussion than comparing group. And the before and after scores from MIDAS-MYC also showed that the experiment group was statistically significant while the comparing group was not statistically significant.
Second, the children who were going through the cooking program which were based on the ‘Teaching for Understanding’ showed increases in their science process skills and positive attitude changes. The detailed programs, which were organized by three generative topics, were divided by the factors which showed its characteristic roles in science process skills and then analyzed how they were changed in introduction level, development level and deepening level. And we described each cases using narrative research method. The children estimated the ingredients of matters and changes of matters from similar experiences they had from the previous detailed cooking activities. The observation changed from observing rice with five senses to observing cooking process of rice by heat. We could also find changes in classification. In the initial stage, they classified matters simply using its looks. But during the program, they could classify matters to what they liked and what they disliked. Furthermore, they could classify matters to matters which were similar/different to what the teacher set up. Also, the measurement methods were diversified by using tools. For the positive attitude changes, through the continuous evaluation process, the children started to understand and evaluate what they had made and showed positive attitude to cooking.
Third, we described the changes which the teachers showed using narrative method. Through the children cooking program which applied ‘Teaching for Understanding’, the teachers acknowledged the aim of the education, planned contents and methods, and used proper teaching methods to deliver this plans in fast and effective ways. The role of teachers changed from traditional teachers who used traditional teaching method and activities to active teachers who respect interests and opinions of children. They also helped children to have divergent thinking through open questions.
In this research, we could find that the science process skills and logical . mathematical intelligence of multiple intelligences of children increased and find positive changes in emotional point after applying children cooking program to children which were based on ‘Teaching for Understanding’. This suggests that Teaching - Learning model can be very good resources for effective and useful activities in kindergarten.