The purpose of this study is to develop Teacher-Parent Project Learning Community Program(TPPLC) which serves as a basis for parents and children to adapt to project approach, and to examine its effects on parents' and children's abilities of understa...
The purpose of this study is to develop Teacher-Parent Project Learning Community Program(TPPLC) which serves as a basis for parents and children to adapt to project approach, and to examine its effects on parents' and children's abilities of understanding and implementing of project approach.
This study was conducted in the following three steps.
First, to develop the program for teacher-parent project learning community(TPPLC), teacher and parents' perception and demand for the program using survey and interviewing were examined.
Second, the TPPLC program was developed based on the result of pre-study survey and interviewing.
Third, the developed program implemented to examine the effectiveness of TPPLC program.
The subjects of this study consisted of 40 parents and 40 children with 20 experimental group and 20 control group for each. The experimental group parents were involved in the TPPLC Program. Also, the 20 children whose parents were involved in the TPPLC program were included in the experimental group. The research proceeding had done 30 hours during 10 weeks. The evaluation of the experiment was carried out in the order of the pre-test, the mid-test, and the post test. The data were analyzed with repeated measure ANOVA.
The results of the study are as follows:
Firstly, there existed strong demand from both groups of teacher and parent for the TPPLC program. Secondly, the developed program of TPPLC consisted of four phases in terms of purpose, content, teacher-learning methods, and evaluation. The content category is specifically composed of enhancing the understanding of project approach, the learning community composition, and project learning through learning community. Thirdly, there existed significant differences in mothers’ project approach support ability between the experimental group and control group. Also, the program had great effect on children's ability to conduct project approach.
In conclusion, the TPPLC program could be useful to implement the project approach more efficiently in early childhood setting in terms of improving parents' ability of supporting project approach and children's ability of conducting project approach. In addition, the TPPLC program can be a foundational model for reorganizing more desirable programs of project learning community.