The purpose of this study was to examine the elementary school students' attitude by measuring the level of attitude toward Practical Arts subject. The specific objectives of this study were
1. To set up specific attitudinal objectives of Practical...
The purpose of this study was to examine the elementary school students' attitude by measuring the level of attitude toward Practical Arts subject. The specific objectives of this study were
1. To set up specific attitudinal objectives of Practical Arts subject in elementary school education.
2. To assess elementary school students' attitude and the level of attitude toward Practical Arts subject.
The population of this study consists of the teachers and the 5th and 6th graders of elementary schools in Taegu. A total of 900 people including 400 teachers and 500 students were sampled for this study. As for the data collection instruments, the questionnaire for teachers' attitudinal objectives of Practical Arts subject and the rating scales for students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject, all of which were developed by the researcher, were respectively employed. Also the questionnaire for students was composed of five sub-categories including curiosity, cooperativeness, accuracy, criticalness, and spontaneity. The collected data, by using SPSS WIN 7.5 version, were analyzed through descriptive statistics, reliability tests, correlational analysis, and t-tests.
The findings of this study were
1. Total of 35 attitudinal objectives of Practical Arts subject was established, which were classified into five categories including curiosity, cooperativeness, spontaneity, criticalness, and accuracy. Appropriateness and validity of attitudinal objectives of Practical Arts subject showed a significant difference.
2. In terms of students' score on the attitude toward Practical Arts subject, accuracy was highest and followed by cooperativeness, curiosity, criticalness, and spontaneity. On the whole, students showed positive attitudes in the categories of accuracy, cooperativeness, and curiosity. But in the category of spontaneity, students showed somewhat negative attitude. Elementary school students' score on the attitude toward Practical Arts subject showed an insignificant difference according to students' gender and grade.
3. Elementary school students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject showed a statistically significant difference according to gender. Female students' score on the attitude toward Practical Arts subject was significantly higher than male students'.
4. Elementary school students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject showed no significant difference in terms of statistics.
The conclusions drawn from the results of this study were
1. The attitudinal objectives of Practical Arts subject require a very explicit statement in behavioral terms so that the learning objectives can be easily attained by students.
2. The level of elementary school students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject was, as a whole, over the mean score, but it cannot be said that all the categories of attitudinal objectives were equally achieved.
3. Female students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject was more positive than male students'. Especially, the level of female students' cooperativeness, spontaneity, and accuracy was higher than that of male students' equivalents. This indicates that students' gender gives a dominant variable to the achievement of attitude toward Practical Arts subject.
4. Grade showed no difference in elementary school students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject. This represents students' grade has no influence on the achievement of attitude toward Practical Arts subject.
The recommendations for succeeding studies are as follows :
1. As the attitudinal objectives of Practical Arts subject are concerned with attitude in the affective domain, the continuous studies on students' achievement should be conducted through establishing and assessing objectives in the affective domain.
2. In this study, the attitude rating scale for students developed by the researcher was solely used so that students could understand how much they achieved the attitude toward Practical Arts subject. Thus more various achievement standards should be developed to compensate the limitations of this study.
3. When the attitudinal objectives and the attitude rating scales used in this study are applied in educational fields, evaluation will be possible on balance of cognitive, psycho-motor and affective domains .
4. It is required that the level of elementary school students' attitude toward Practical Arts subject should be understood by employing the attitudinal objectives and the attitude rating scales developed in this research. Furthermore, the development of instructional materials and methods should be considered to promote students' positive attitude toward Practical Arts subject.