초등학교 학생의 기초 학습 기능 연구 = An Empirical Study on the Basic Learning Skills of Students in Elemetary Schools

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purposes of this research are twofold: first, to develop a standardized test tool for the Basic Learning Skills(BLS) of the third grade students in elementary school, and second, to compare the Basic Learnig Skills of the third and those of the sixth graders using this tool. The test tool, which was developed under the operational definition of the `Basic Learning Skills`, covers three fields reading, writing and arithmetic. Test items were tentatively designed at first by referring to The Fifth Educational Curricula and with the advice of some experts ; and then, after a pilot test of the parallel forms(A and B form), they were finally selected. The pilot test was applied to 117 students in their first semester of the fourth grade both in urban and in rural areas in July 1994. And the final test was applied to 463 third and 466 sixth grade students(both in their second semester) for about 15 days from December 5 to December 20 in 1994. As research techniques, the analyses of discriptive statistics, reliablity(the standard error of measurements, Cronbach α), validity and discriminant, standardized scores(T-score), and fieldwise distributions were adopted. For the comparative analyses of the BLS of the third and the sixth grade students, the investigation of discriptive statistics and the ANOVA technique were used. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: First, average scores in BLS tests of the third grade students were 60, 59, 72, and 63 in reading, writing, arithmetic, and total respectively. Those of the sixth grade students were 71, 77, 86, and 80 in respective fields(same order below). Second, when the criterion for `the skilled in BLS` was set as `more than 90 scores`, 95.2%, 79%, 95.2% and 99.4% of the third grade students were appeared as the unskilled in the same respective fields. When the criterion for the skilled was lowered to `more than 80 scores`, the ratios of the unskilled in the same respective fields came down to 86.2%, 70.4%, 87.0%, and 87.7%. But for the sixth grade students, the former(90-or-more) criterion made 89.3%, 68.2%, 45.5% and 85.8% the unskilled ; and the latter(80-or-more) criterion made 67.0%, 40.6%, 23.2% and 35.0 % the unskilled. Third, the fieldwise and itemwise ANOVA analyses (to see the relative performance of urban and rural third grade students) showed that urban students performs better in every field than rural students at the significant level of 0.1. For the sixth grades, the urban students were found to obtain higher scores better than the rural ones in all fields but reading. The same ANOVA analyses (to see the relative performance of the third grade male and female students) showed that the female students performs better than the male ones in writing at the significant level of 0.1. In other fields, there were no significant differences between total scores of the male and the female, despite some differences between itemwise scores of two sexes. In addtion to these results, some points needs further discussions and in-depth studies: First, scores in BLS tests were generally lower than expected, regardless of grades, sexes, regions. This fact suggests problems in our elementary schools. This needs further studies. Second, as shown in the analyses of criterion-for-the-skilled, the ratios of the skilled in the third grade students were very much low, and in arithmetic, only the half of the sixth grade students were the skilled. This fact implies that what have not been taught to the unskilled till the third grade have remained untaught even till the sixth grade. And this shows our educational practices that ignores the possible gaps between what school teaches and what students really learn. Third, significant gaps in regionwise and sexwise scores, as shown our study, need also further study on whys and hows and suggest that there should be more active countermeasures in education policy.