This research was carried out to find out how students are affected if they acquire knowledge about various vocations and participate in cooperative education programs by visiting job sites and actually doing the work. The following questions were pos...
This research was carried out to find out how students are affected if they acquire knowledge about various vocations and participate in cooperative education programs by visiting job sites and actually doing the work. The following questions were posed to accomplish this research's objectives:
First, how do middle school students think about their future jobs?
Second, does the information about their chosen vocations affect positively how the students think about their potential future jobs?
75 boys and girls were selected for this research. They were in the 3rd grade of middle school in Gwang-ju city, Gyonggi province. The survey and research were carried out to find out what they thought about their potential future jobs. The students who had obtained the information about their potential future vocations had to answer the many kinds of questions on the worksheets by themselves within 20- or 30-minute time span each class. The lesson plans for cooperative education were set, and students obtained the knowledge about the jobs through doing homework, surfing the internet, reading books at libraries, and through cooperative education. The program on this research was made, and was applied to the students. To find out how this program affected the students, the same test was administered before and after this research. The test was prepared at the Educational Research Institute in Gangwon province. M and SD were made with the program 'SAS 6-12 for Windows' and X^(2) was tested to find out the similarities between the two groups. The following results were noted after the program was implemented:
First, even though there are some differences in the average score between the two groups, no significant difference was obtained. It showed that the experimental group and control group were similar.
Second, the results of the tests were compared. The students who had obtained the information about the various vocations got higher grades than the students who hadn't. The survey showed that the experimental group's participants had improved their understanding of their future potential jobs.