The Application of the Project Approach to the Korean National Kindergarten Curriculum

Myung-Lim Chang
Republic of Korea

The Koran National Kindergarten Curriculum suggests operating guidelines for curriculum organization and implementation of kindergarten including educational goals, contents methods, and evaluation of early childhood education.

The Korean National Kindergarten Curriculum consists of five integrated areas : Physical Health, Social Relationships, Expression, Language and Inquiry. Based on this national curriculum, each kindergarten shall develop and organize its own curriculum and educational environment considering the developmental level of children, parental needs, and the characteristics of local community.

Generally 3-5 year old children learn most effectively when interacting with real objects. Thus educational activities should be play-centered with real topics such as my kindergarten, family and neighborhood, seasons, healthy body and mind, animals, earth and environment, tools and machines, my country and other countries, and special days.

In Korea, recently many kindergartens adopt the 'Project Approach' as a new teaching-learning method. The Project Approach refers to a set of teaching strategies, which enable teachers to guide children through in-depth studies of real world topics.

The goal of a project is to learn more about the topic rather than to seek right answers to questions posed by the teacher. When teachers implement the Project Approach successfully, children can be highly motivated, feel actively involved in their own learning, and produce work of high quality.

Project Approach maintains the balance and integration of both child's initiative activities and systematic instruction by teacher in the curriculum. Furthermore the Project Approach suggests not only re-organizational strategies of the national kindergarten curriculum but also the way of improving a teaching-learning method in early childhood education.

A Project for Research and Developemnt of Learning Management in Municipial Schools (In-Service Teacher Training)
Pissamai Sri-ampai
Thailand

This project purports to create Muang Maha Sarakham municipal school administrators and teachers' awareness of learning reform importance as the educational reform heart; to organize administrator and teacher development activities; to supervise, follow up and assess organizing administrator and teacher development activities; and to enable municipal teachers to discover learning innovations by themselves. The project is to be operated during July 2000 - September 2003.

Three phases of the development process include: Phase 1 - development of 40 administrators and core - leading teachers from all the 7 municipal schools during July - September 2000 by providing training in organizing the learner-centered learning process, assessment in actuality through various approaches, making port folios, and systems and approaches to individual children. Phase 2 - development of 107 municipal school administrators and noncore-leading teachers from October 2000 to March 2001 by providing training in designing learning activities. Assessment in actuality, classroom research, creating learning work projects, and then research staffers supervised and followed up the training. Phase 3 - provision of a learning clinic to give counseling to municipal school administrators and teachers from May 2001 to September 2003.

The results of project development operation during July 2000 - March 2002 were: 1) Municipal teachers had cognition of goals of the National Education Act 1999, perception and development of individual learners, principles and designs of essentials of learner-centered learning, utilization of various learning media and sources, learning assessment in actuality, making port folios, classroom research, creating work projects, and making learning innovations. They had greater cognition after training than before training at the .05 level of statistical significance. Ninety-four percent of them showed cognition at a high to the highest level. 2) Municipal teachers indicated performance after training at a high level. That was, 27.1 percent of them performed regularly, 62.7 percent performed most activities, and 10.2 percent performed sometimes. And 3) All the 147 municipal teachers from all schools developed four learning innovations: 335 plans for organizing learner-centered learning activities, 291 exercises/series of student learning skill drills, 422 approaches/instruments for learning measurement and assessment, and 304 classroom researches for solving learning problems and development.

Three issues leading to discussion are: 1) The in-service municipal teacher training program provided by this project can enhance knowledge of managing the learner-centered learning process, skills, behavioral changes, and positive attitude towards this management for most teachers at a satisfactory level due to development outcomes. About 25 percent of teachers had cognition, regular performance and positive attitude towards learning management. Nearly 60 percent of the teachers had cognition and regular performance but with moderate attitude towards management. Approximately 10 percent had cognition but with performance sometimes in the classroom and with low attitude towards learning management. About 5 percent had inadequate cognition with rare performance in the classroom and with low attitude towards learning management. 2) Teachers learning behavioral changes can affect organizing activities and learners. Students taught by core-leading teachers had highly positive attitude towards studying and learning because such teachers are highly skilful and can teach students to learn happily and have participation. 3) The results of developing the learning management by teachers were different depending on four factors: administrative staff, teachers, organizational culture, and supports from outside. The development by these schools can be categorized into three levels. Dependence level, two schools need continuous development in all aspects. Reliance level, three schools need continual development in some aspects. Independence level, two schools can develop learning networks in their own schools, their own strength and permanence.