The study aims to find how much interest kindergarten teachers have in the national level educational curriculum while carrying out the educational curriculum in their educational fields. The relevant study questions are as following:
1) How much are ...
The study aims to find how much interest kindergarten teachers have in the national level educational curriculum while carrying out the educational curriculum in their educational fields. The relevant study questions are as following:
1) How much are kindergarten teachers interested in the educational curriculum?
2) How do kindergarten teachers make application of the educational curriculum?
Questionnaires were distributed to 400 national·public kindergarten teachers who work in Gyeongsangnam-do and only 200 questionnaires that completely answered without missing any question were selected for the study.
As the method for the data analysis, the independent sample t-test was conducted to examine the variables by the experience of teachers and the One-Way ANOVA was conducted to examine the variables by the education of teachers. Scheffe's statistics was used for post-hoc tests.
The results of the study are as following.
First, the interest of kindergarten teachers in the educational curriculum was relatively high. The degree of interest was not different in the experience and in the education of teachers.
Interest in sub-categories showed that the informational interest was the highest, followed by result interest, cooperation interest, individual interest, alternative interest, in order of the highness. The analysis of the sub-categories by the variables showed that as the experience is lower, the informational interest and cooperation interest were higher; as the education is lower, alternative interest was higher.
Second, the application of the educational curriculum by kindergarten teachers was relatively high.
In the general application, the interest in educational contents was the highest, followed by teaching·learning method, environmental organization, evaluation, educational goals, theoretical basis and characteristics, in order of the highness. The differences were minor, however.
Analysis of application by sub-category showed that there was no difference with different experience of the teachers, but there was a difference with different education. That is, teachers with education higher than the graduate level showed a higher application in theoretical basis and characteristics, educational goals, educational contents, teaching·learning methods, environmental organization, and evaluation.
The limitations of the study and the suggestions for a further study are as following.
First, by limiting the targets of the study to teachers of national·public kindergartens, the study was not carried out with private kindergarten teachers. Thus, in a following study, a systematic analysis is needed including private kindergarten teachers and conducting comparison and analysis by organization.
Second, since the differences of interest and application of the kindergarten educational curriculum only by experience and education were analysed in this study, variables were not much various. To conduct a in-depth study, the following study should include various variables such as the difference in teachers who work in cities and in rural areas, the difference in teachers who work full-time and half-time, the difference in teachers with the level 1 kindergarten teacher's certificate and the level 2 kindergarten teacher's certificate, and so on.
Third, the correlation between interest and application of the educational curriculum could not be analyzed in this study. Because separate questionnaires were used for interest and application, as to the question if teachers with high interest in the educational curriculum would have high application as well could not be investigated. A method to study the correlation by using one type of questionnaire for both interest and application should be developed.