In Korea, the government has introduced and operated the Nutrition Teachers System in order to correct the nutritional imbalance due to the recently growing number of students who skip breakfast and have an unbalanced diet and to provide systematic nu...
In Korea, the government has introduced and operated the Nutrition Teachers System in order to correct the nutritional imbalance due to the recently growing number of students who skip breakfast and have an unbalanced diet and to provide systematic nutrition education to help them with health care and proper eating habits. One can obtain a nutrition teacher certificate by taking the teacher training courses as food and nutrition majors since 2004 or advancing to a graduate school of education as four-year college graduates with a bachelor degree and a dietician certificate but with no credits from the teacher training courses. The graduate schools of education across the nation have opened and run the nutrition education major since 2005.
This study set out to investigate what kind of curriculums were organized and run by graduate schools of education to produce future nutrition teachers, to diagnose the current state and problems of their nutrition education curriculums, and to suggest some plans to supplement them.
After intensively analyzing the syllabuses of 20 of the graduate schools of education with the nutrition education major, the curriculums were examined which had been actually organized and operated since the establishment of the nutrition education major. Data were gathered by consulting the homepages of the graduate schools of education, the administration staff, and the personnel from the major office. The curriculums were divided into common and uncommon subjects and then compared with each other.
The research findings were as follows:
First, the reality was that the nutrition education majors of the graduate schools of education failed to develop and operate differentiated education or specialized programs from the undergraduate curriculums of the food and nutrition major and ran the similar curriculums to the undergraduate ones. Not only should the existing curriculums be organized and operated efficiently, but more efforts should be made to develop new ones so that the graduate schools of education can organize the in-depth courses for what's covered in college or the curriculums that were not covered in college and accordingly be the source of quality future teachers and continuing education instead of that of repetitive undergraduate study.
Second, the problem with the organization of the curriculums was a heavy focus on the subjects included in the teacher appointment exam in their operation. The students placed more priority on acquiring the qualification at the graduate school than on equipping themselves with the required capabilities, which resulted in the dominance of the exam subjects in the curriculums. The graduate schools of education need to organize and run practice-based curriculums so that the students can practice what they learn on the field.
And third, a review of the subjects reveals that the kinds of subjects from subject matter education are in absolute shortage. Covering the aspects of educational methods to supplement the contents in providing nutrition education as a teacher, the field of subject matter education is as much important as the contents of subjects. The curriculums should be organized and operated in the way of considerably supplementing the aspects of subject matter education so that the students can be prepared to provide the nutrition education that fits the situation of Korea after graduation.
Finally, the limited number of subjects in the organization of the curriculums also presents a problem. The major subjects are operated in the combined courses among the students each semester. There are few cases in which courses are reserved only for the students of a semester. Although the selective subjects of the major are diverse, the number of those subjects that are actually provided is limited, which means the students should take all the subjects, which are established one-sidedly, in order to obtain the credits needed to graduate. Even though there are many different subjects established for a semester, the school regulations restrict the credits that a student can fulfill for a semester. After all, the graduate schools of education are run on the system for the students to take the credits to obtain a teacher certificate. In future, they should run a rational student-oriented curriculum.