The 7th educational curriculum, which lays weights on considering student's interests, concern, ability and aptitude, can be the adequate one demanded by modern society if it is properly applied to its purpose. The curriculum in the school field, howe...
The 7th educational curriculum, which lays weights on considering student's interests, concern, ability and aptitude, can be the adequate one demanded by modern society if it is properly applied to its purpose. The curriculum in the school field, however, has many problems as originally intended curriculum is not carried out properly due to the crippled operation connected with the Korea Scholastic Aptitude Test (hereafter "KSAT") in real application. Although the 8th national curriculum will be enacted in 2010, the purpose of this study is to discuss the ways of improvement of the problems by making close examination on the problems of the school field in practice of the 7th curriculum. Especially the problems will be examined into 3 parts : Theory, School field, and Curriculum.
For this study, documents research and online interview of active teachers and students were used as a method.
In this paper, the history of curriculum of social studies are viewed in the 1st part of chapter 1. The needs and the present situation of subject education and also the concept and the character of general social studies are considered in the 2nd part. In the chapter 3, articles of mass media, and teachers and students' opinion on KSAT in each aspects are analysed followed by presenting the problems and improvements of 7th curriculum of social studies. This shows that 7th curriculum of social studies is closely related to KSAT, leading students to choose the subject for a higher score in KSAT than for acquiring academic knowledge as their school year is ascended. The last 4th chapter is made up of two parts. The first part is about textbook centered cramming education which can not hold individual differences for it puts provider in importance. The second part mentions that even if the 7th curriculum, compared to others, considers highly the choice of a student who is a user in the university entrance exam centered education, it is still changed by various social atmosphere and educational policy. Despite the fact, directions to enhance the national curriculum are shown in this part.
The summary of the conclusion is as in the following.
Too many elective courses(11 courses) of social studies of KSAT under the 7th national curriculum make teachers and students confused in the school field. The present way of KSAT bring about 3 problems in the school field. Firstly, students prefer courses which can give them relatively higher score and too many elective subjects make teachers hard to teach. Secondly, each schools has many variations in selecting courses. Thirdly, teachers and students tend to neglect the social studies of grade 10 for it is not included in KSAT. In order for improvements, curriculum should have enough time to introduce the in-depth elective courses of social studies applied to both grade 11 and 12, as a result, it will widen student's choice and change their minds on course selection. Moreover, it is required to keep the balance of demand and supply of teachers and have institutes to build up the expertise. Also, students will get more new knowledge if enough aids are prepared in the classroom. Not only this but reedit of textbook that contains real situation centered content is needed for students to be educated. In addition, the policy on KSAT should be stable and consistent. Recent researches show that too many changes of national curriculum make teachers and students confused. 11 courses of social studies are thought to be excessively split up. As subjects such as politics and economy, law and society, and society and culture have some overlapping contents, it can be a good way to unify these subjects. It is also necessary that in case of a government designated textbook, the various kinds of textbook should be published in order to meet diverse view and materials not being biased.
In conclusion, the problems of the 7th national curriculum must be fixed for the 8th national curriculum which is being raised an issue.