As women’s social involvement has been increasing and a variety of cultural and recreational activities becomes more available, consumer desire for beauty has been also increasing. To meet the demand, the beauty industry has been rapidly expanding. ...
As women’s social involvement has been increasing and a variety of cultural and recreational activities becomes more available, consumer desire for beauty has been also increasing. To meet the demand, the beauty industry has been rapidly expanding. During this expansion, the need for beauty specialists was emphasized. Thus, educational institutions have diversified and quantitatively expanded including offering master's courses and doctoral courses in graduate schools as well as beauty high schools.
The beauty departments of 2-year colleges and 4-year universities include a Beauty Arts Department, Hair Design Department, Beauty Design Department, Skin Beauty Department, Cosmetics and Beauty Department and Beauty Coordination Department. Hair and skin care areas are taught as independent majors and systematic and professional education programs are also provided. However, nail art as yet lacks systematic and professional education programs.
Accordingly, this paper investigated and analyzed a nail curriculum with students of beauty departments in 2-year colleges and 4-year universities and compared their satisfaction with their majors. Next, approaches to improve the nail curriculum were examined with nail specialists in the industry after graduating from 2-year colleges or 4-year universities. Finally, this paper aims to present desirable development directions for nail curriculum in the future.
Methodology involved both theoretical and empirical research. The theoretical research was executed by a literature review based on existing research regarding beauty departments and nail curriculum. In particular, the subjects of the nail curriculum were analyzed through a complete survey of 2-year colleges and 4-year universities having nail art subjects. In accordance with the analysis, one college or university per region that 3 nail art specialists have determined to be the most systematic were selected and analyzed. Moreover, nail art education systems in the USA were investigated to identify approaches for improving the nail art curriculum in Korea based on nail art education systems in advanced countries.
To analyze satisfaction with nail curriculums and approaches for improvement, a questionnaire survey was executed as empirical research. To this end, a convenient sampling was executed with three groups of nail specialists working in the industry after graduating from beauty departments and students in beauty departments in 2-year colleges and 4-year universities. After a preliminary survey from April 15 to 20, 2013, questions with errors or low validity were corrected. Following this, the main survey was executed with 324 subjects from April 25 to May 3, 2013.
To verify the validity and reliability of the scale, a factor analysis was implemented and Cronbch's coefficient was identified. Data were analyzed using SPSS v.19.0. Cross analysis, an independent t-test and One-way ANOVA were implemented. A post-hoc comparison was done using the Duncan test.
The following are the analysis results.
First, in accordance with the analysis on satisfaction with nail art curriculum on the part of students in beauty departments in 2-year colleges and 4-year universities, a significant difference was identified in the difficulty level of nail curriculum (p<.01), the percentage of theory classes (p<.01), the percentage of practical classes (p<.01), the ratio of students to teacher (p<.01), the separation of practical training classrooms (p<.001), the cleanliness of practical training classrooms (p<.001), the appliances of practical training classes (p<.05), the need for curriculum related to nail art certification (p<.01) and the latest information on nail art (p<.01).
The contents of practical training classes (p<.001) by major, the percentage of practical classes (p<.05), the ratio of students to teacher (p<.01), the separation of practical training classrooms (p<.001), the appliances of practical training classes (p<.05), the contents of subjects (p<.01), and the latest information on nail art (p<.001) also showed significance.
In accordance with the analysis on the approach to improve curriculums with graduates from beauty departments in 2-year colleges and 4-year universities, significant results were observed in the segmentation of nail subjects (p<.05), the field applicability of theory (p<.01), and difference of nail curriculums between 2-year colleges and 4-year universities. For the field applicability of practical training, graduates both from 2-year colleges and 4-year universities responded that it was not practical. The desire to separate nail majors (p<.001), time for separation (p<.001) and supplementation of practical training (p<.001) showed significant results by educational backgrounds of graduates. All subjects from 2-year colleges and 4-year universities agreed with the segmentation of theory subjects.
The results above indicated that the satisfaction with nail curriculum was statistically significant depending on the majors of students and approaches to improving nail curriculum depended on educational background of graduates.
In addition, while the nail curriculum in 2-year colleges and 4-year universities has been gradually specialized and segmented, it is not sufficient to meet the desires of nail majors and, particularly, the practicality of on-site nail curriculum was not sufficient.
This study concluded that nail curriculums need to be specialized and segmented by collecting opinions from nail specialists in the industry and so separating nail curriculums from other beauty department as an approach to improve the curriculum. On the basis of the analysis results, the teaching environment needs to be improved and the curriculum shall be organized in accordance with the desires of nail majors. Such approaches will increase the satisfaction of students and improve practicality in the field.