There is a significant difference between the reality of our education and the idealized one. Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, describes a number of approaches to idealized teaching and learnin...
There is a significant difference between the reality of our education and the idealized one. Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, describes a number of approaches to idealized teaching and learning other than mainstream or traditional education. These schools, which offer a more flexible program of study than a traditional school, were popularized recently to overcome the difference and compensate for the problems caused in the traditional schools. Practical courses are some of the main courses of alternative schools, which involve a wide range of areas, including the development of creativity by teaching the movement of hands, building up one's character with living things like plants and animals, environmental education, and teaching the necessities of life such as clothing, food, and housing.
Thus, the aim of this study is to suggest how we should improve the quality of practical courses based on the results extracted by comparing and analyzing the practical courses taught both in the traditional and alternative schools.
The following are the results of this study.
First, the aim of practical courses in alternative schools is focused on the process of one's life and its results in the long run, while the aim of traditional education tends to be focused on the knowledge, skills, abilities and attitudes, most of which can be attained and measured in a short time. These aims are overall aims that should be followed by the results. That's why contents, courses and the lesson development are limited and tests are inevitable in traditional schools. These can be overcome by diverse and remarkable changes in the curriculum, development of teaching and learning methods and active reorganization of the contents.
Secondly, while the contents of the practical courses taught in the traditional schools are selected by their usability, practical use and effectiveness, the ones taught in the alternative schools are focused on the training and practice, in which students can eagerly participate. In that students' interest and motivation play an important role in learning, there should be a great deal of changes in the curriculum by selecting content according to the students' interest or at least reorganizing the contents in the current practical courses in the traditional schools. For example, considering that with the increased threats to the permanence of human being caused by environmental destruction, an environmental education is a mandatory course in alternative schools. It is necessary to shift towards more concrete and interesting environmental education.
Thirdly, teaching and learning methods of practical courses in the alternative schools begin with the idea that the teaching method itself should be preferred to suggesting a certain teaching model. Even though practical and cooperative learning strategies are emphasized in both the traditional and alternative schools, there is a difference. Alternative schools don't take a serious view of theories and systems. Instead they consider them are flexible according to the learners' situations. Traditional schools, which inevitably have a large class size, should make full use of the advantage of alternative schools, the teaching method of which values the learners' situations. They should actively take advantage of the 'motivation to learn voluntarily' attitude adopted in the alternative schools.
But still, traditional schools have taken a conservative line, opting against completely changing the current system mainly because they are one of the axises in Korean social order. The limits of the paradigm in the traditional schools should be recognized . Thus, the new attempts made in alternative schools need to be acknowledged and should be adopted as a major catalyst to accelerate an educational shift.