The purpose of this study was to investigate child care teachers' interest, application and barriers of「the Nuri curriculum for ages 3 to 5」. The research questions were as follows: first, what is child care teachers' interest in the Nuri curricul...
The purpose of this study was to investigate child care teachers' interest, application and barriers of「the Nuri curriculum for ages 3 to 5」. The research questions were as follows: first, what is child care teachers' interest in the Nuri curriculum? Second, what is the extent of child care teachers' application of the curriculum? Third, what are the barriers of running the curriculum perceived by child care teachers? Finally, what is the relationship between child care teachers' interest and the extent of applying the curriculum?
A survey of 155 teachers in charge of ages 3 to 5 in day-care centers in Jinju and Sacheon was conducted. To analyze the data, frequency and percentage, mean (M), standard deviation (SD), ANOVA Analysis, Pearson's correlation were performed and for the statistical analysis of data, SPSS 15.0 for Windows was used.
The results of this study are as follows:
First, child care teachers' interest in「the Nuri curriculum for ages 3 to 5」was relatively high. According to the result of examining the degree of interest depending on teachers' personal background variables, teachers above the age of 40 were interested in ‘I want to collaborate with other teachers’ and teachers above the age of 30, ‘I want to run by modifying teaching methods’. Teachers with more than 10 years of experience showed high interest in ‘I want to run by modifying the teaching methods’ and ‘I would like to know what is better than the national standardized child care curriculum’ There was a difference in the ability to operate the curriculum between teachers with more than 10 years of experience and with less than 2-5 years of experience. In terms of the types of day care facilities, teachers of corporate nursery schools showed high interest in ‘I am doing classroom activities different from Nuri curriculum’ ‘I would like to know what is better than the national standardized child care curriculum’‘I want to assess what effect it had on infants’. Teachers in charge of age 5 showed high interest in ‘I want to collaborate with other teachers’, ‘I want to assess what the effect was on infants’ while teachers in charge of mixed-age classes showed high interest in ‘I want to run by modifying teaching methods’. Teachers who participated in the training showed high interest in ‘I am doing classroom activities different from Nuri curriculum’ and ‘I want to assess what effect it had on infants’, while teachers who did not wanted to know what is better than the national standardized child care curriculum.
Second, in regard to the extent of the application of child care teachers, content, methods, rationale and nature, objectives, materials, ratings were high in the order named. According to the result of examining the extent of application depending on teachers' personal background variables, teachers above the age of 40, with more than 10 years of experience showed higher level of application in all the areas of rationale and nature, objectives, contents, methods, materials, and assessment. In the rationale and nature, the application of teachers in charge of age 5 was high, and in content and methods, mixed-age child care teachers, and in materials, teachers in charge of age 5 and mixed-age child care teachers respectively.
Third, in regard to the barriers of running the curriculum perceived by child care teachers, the teachers had a hard time running the curriculum on an exceptional scale, and the biggest challenge was many events including special activities. According to personal background variables, teachers above the age of 40 had difficulty in ‘the
challenges of selection and reconstruction of appropriate learning content’, corporate child care center teachers in the congestion of policies and guidelines, teachers in charge of age 4 in ‘the lack of available human resources’, teachers who participated in the training in ‘congestion of policies and guidelines’, and there was a statistically significant difference, too. However, there was not a significant difference in careers, educational background and majors.
Fourth, according to the result of the Pearson's correlation analysis to determine the correlation between child care teachers' interest and the extent of applying the curriculum, the degree of interest was in significant correlation with the degree of application.