There are many researches going on about competency of teachers, because recently the teacher education is emphasizing the competency. But the preceding researches concentrate more on the elements and developments of competency, so there was a limit t...
There are many researches going on about competency of teachers, because recently the teacher education is emphasizing the competency. But the preceding researches concentrate more on the elements and developments of competency, so there was a limit to find the demanding competencies in University of Education's curriculum, which is the stage teachers take before they become a professional elementary school teacher. Therefore, this research's goal is to observe the competencies in need of elementary school teacher and analyze the priority of teacher required in University of Education's curriculum.
The research problems of this study are set up as following. First, in teacher's point of view, is there a distinction between the importance of competency and current ability? Second, is the University of Education's curriculum contribute to enhance the competency of teacher, as training organization of elementary school teacher? Third, how is the training priority of competency demanded to curriculum of University of Education to improve the competency of elementary school teacher?
This research followed the survey result about observation of elementary school teacher's competency, and the subject of analysis are 198 teachers, currently working and have 1~5 years career, in 76 elementary schools. Descriptive statistic analysis, paired T-test, Borich's Needs Analysis, and The Locus for Focus Model are used to solve the research problems.
Followings are the research results. First, teacher's preception about importance of competency resulted very high level for 33 detail competencies, and the current ability of achievement was comparatively high. Especially, in the importance, the competencies to interacting with students resulted high level, and in the actual ability, values-related competencies resulted high level. However, there were meaningful difference between the importance and possession of competencies, which shows the elementary school teachers are not possessing the competencies needed.
Second, the analysis about contribution rate of University of Education's curriculum to teacher's competency resulted low level of contribution. Categorizing the contributions of curriculum in achieving teacher's duties into four division-liberal arts, pedagogy education, curriculum education, and practical training- the practical training reached most high level of contribution and curriculum education followed after. But the overall contribution level of curriculum wasn't high enough. Also, by analyzing the contributions of education curriculum in improvement of teacher's competency, the result showed that education curriculum didn't contribute to cultivate competency needed for teachers to interact with students, and also the values division had low level of contribution.
Third, by analyzing the training priority of competency demanded to curriculum of University of Education to improve the competency of elementary school teacher, it resulted that education for competency about interaction between teacher and student is wanted. And also, the relationship between teachers and the members of education related-competency is ranked in both top priority and secondary priority, which shows that this competency education is also needed.
By examining elementary school teacher's preception about importance of competency and actual ability level, observing the contribution of University of Education's curriculum, and analyzing the demanding competency training priority to University of Education's curriculum throughout the research, this results have meaning to give a direction to improve the education curriculum about cultivating competency of interaction between teacher-student, and relationship between the members of education in the future. Furthermore, it has a meaning that this research suggests for the future studies about teacher's competencies, besides their works or tasks, to research in perspective of space and time directly connected teacher's life and apply the competency analysis to not only based on works, but also based on the characteristics of outstanding teachers.
However, this research have a limitation. Since the competencies of teachers were evaluated base on self-awareness, so it has a chance of distortion. Also, processing the research about teacher's competency without setting up the vision about the oriented competency of teacher education was a limit. Accordingly, from the research now on, will need consensual conclusion about what competency is needed for elementary school teacher, and what kind of direction and principle should be oriented by elementary school teacher education.