This study aims to provide data that can improve teachers' quality of life and ultimately improve the quality of early childhood education by focusing on public kindergarten teachers' difficulties in implementing 2019 Nuri curriculum. To achieve the p...
This study aims to provide data that can improve teachers' quality of life and ultimately improve the quality of early childhood education by focusing on public kindergarten teachers' difficulties in implementing 2019 Nuri curriculum. To achieve the purpose of this study, the research questions are as follow.
1. What are the difficulties in terms of teaching activities in implementing the revised Nuri curriculum?
2. What are the difficulties in terms of interpersonal relationships in implementing the revised Nuri curriculum?
3. What are the difficulties in the environmental and institutional aspects of implementing the revised Nuri curriculum?
For research purposes I selected 100 teachers from public kindergartens in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province and conducted interviews through questionnaires and phone calls, respectively. The questionnaire interview was held for about two weeks from August 23 to September 5, 2020, and based on the answers to the questionnaire, additional questions and insufficient questions were added and supplemented by telephone interviews. The study participants understood the purpose and process of the study and voluntarily agreed to participate in the study, and answered the questionnaire's subjective questions in a descriptive format. The premeditated interview was about "difficulties arising from the implementation of the revised Nuri curriculum", focusing on public kindergarten teachers. Questionnaire interviews and telephone interviews with study participants were organized and categorized over four times.
The analyzed results of this study are summarized according to the research problem as follows.
The difficulties of public kindergarten teachers in teaching activities that appear in the process of implementing the revised Nuri curriculum are as follows. First, public kindergarten teachers had problems and difficulties as teachers about the value and concept of play. They recognized the anxiety about open routines and the ambiguity of play and non-play as difficulties. Second, teachers at public kindergartens were finding it difficult to manage a play-oriented curriculum. They recognized the confusion resulting from differences in previous curriculum, ambiguous understanding of teacher roles during play, difficulties in infant-teacher interactions to support play, anxiety over the autonomy of observation records, and anxiety about safety accidents.
The difficulties of public kindergarten teachers in terms of interpersonal relationships in the process of implementing the revised Nuri curriculum are as follows. First, public kindergarten teachers had difficulties in their relationships with managers. They felt it difficult to having differences about understand and document of implementing the revised Nuri curriculum with managers. Second, public kindergarten teachers had difficulties in their relationships with parents. They were experiencing difficulties due to parents who care more about the outcome of play than the play process, and parents who require cognitive education. Third, public kindergarten teachers had difficulties in relationships with faculty members. They had difficulty with fellow teachers who demanded the same play environment and play records, and education officials with differences in understanding of play.
The difficulties in the environmental and institutional aspects of public kindergarten teachers in implementing the revised Nuri course are as follows. First, public kindergarten teachers had difficulties due to environmental causes. They were aware of difficulties in implementing play due to the Corona-19 situation, constraints in support of time and space, and lack of outside play time due to the weather, such as fine dust. Second, public kindergarten teachers had difficulties due to institutional causes. They were aware of the difficulties in providing immediate play support according to budget processing procedures, heavy administrative work that was far from operating play-oriented curriculum, and teacher training that focused on play cases.
In this study, it was possible to confirm specific experiences and perceptions on the difficulties encountered in the implementation process of the revised Nuri curriculum, focusing on public kindergarten teachers. The difficulties that public kindergarten teachers face in the process of implementing the revised Nuri program will affect the quality of early childhood education at public kindergartens, and the stable application of the Nuri curriculum requires various aspects of efforts to resolve the difficulties. The results of this study wll be able to provide an opportunity to gain insight into the difficulties that public kindergarten teachers perceive internally about the play-oriented curriculum, and provide basic data for on-site support that teachers need for the play-oriented in revised Nuri curriculum.