교육과학기술부 개발 특성화 프로그램 활성화를 위한 기초 연구

Abstract

Due to Korean parents’ enthusiasm for their children’s early education, the play-centered- integrative curriculum of kindergartens has been the subject of great interest and attention. The Korean government has divided the curriculum into a basic and a full-day curricula and established distinctive policies accordingly. To substantiate full-day programs, the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology commissioned the Early Childhood Education and Development Institute to develop programs in the fields of music, arts, physical education, and science in September of 2010 and completed providing training aid to these programs in February of 2011. Within this context, the present study aims to analyze the contents and organization of these specialized full-day programs and to examine how these programs are utilized in reality. Moreover, it aims to suggest ways to further activate these programs by enhancement of the awareness and evaluation of their specific characteristics. This study reviewed the literature related to this issue, employed questionnaires and interviews, and held professional consultative meetings. In the literature review, previous research and government data on specialized full-day kindergarten programs were studied to better understand their concepts, the reality of their management, the related-policies, ultimately leading to an assessment and analysis of the programs themselves. In regard to the interviews, in order to assess perceptions of the programs and prepare measures to better activate them, individual and group interviews were carried out with a total of 44 subjects, including the relevant staff at the Early Childhood Education and Development Institute, directors, teachers, instructors, and parents of kindergartens which have used the programs. Online questionnaires were also distributed to 126 experts in the field of early childhood education, 463 directors of kindergartens, 1,363 teachers, 146 specialized instructors, and 444 parents nationwide to learn of the current perceptions and state of the use of the programs on the ground at kindergartens and to prepare activation measures for these programs. In the consultative meetings, the appropriateness of the activation measures was reviewed. The results of this study suggest a number of directions for both the basic and detailed, efficient implementation of policies. The basic directions are as follows: (1) developing outstanding programs and maintaining continuous quality management; (2) securing instructors for running the specialized, full-day kindergarten programs developed by the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology and maintaining the high quality of instructors; (3) providing financial support in attempts to support kindergartens and to reduce private education expenses for parents; (4) continuously working on raising awareness of and publicizing the existence of specialized full-day programs to parents and to the field staff of kindergartens; (5) providing realistic support for management of substantial programs at kindergartens. In terms of detailed directions, our recommendations are as follows: (1) developing outstanding programs and working to continually supplement them; (2) securing high-quality staff and maintaining their quality; (3) supporting the expenditure of parents to ease the economic burden of childcare; (4) continuously publicizing the programs to enhance the perceptions and understanding of such programs by parents; (5) efficiently managing the programs.