A Study of Curriculum Decision-Making at Department Level on Integrative Activity Learning Area in Junior High Schools

• Main Authors: Miao-Yuan Cheng, 鄭淼元
• Other Authors: Hui-Hsueh Chan
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/27540890711990233382

碩士 === 國立新竹教育大學 === 課程與教學碩士學位在職進修專班 === 102 === A Study of Curriculum Decision-Making at Department Level on Integrative Activity Learning Area in Junior High Schools This study aims to investigate the current circumstances, the influential elements, the difficulties of curriculum decision-making at department level on integrative activity learning area in junior high schools in Taiwan. The researcher used questionnaire survey and randomly took 262 junior high schools in Taiwan as the targets. The data from 203 valid questionnaires were analyzed. The findings of the present study were summarized as follows. 1. Current circumstances 1.1 Most of the integrative activity groups comply with curriculum guidelines. 1.2 There is an unbalanced distribution of the number of professional integrative activity teachers, with non-integrative-activity major teachers of the most proportion. 1.3 Most of the lesson plans are made according to textbooks provided by book companies. 1.4 Teachers have autonomy in assessment making. 1.5 There are significant differences in class arrangement, teaching arrangement, assessment making, and further retraining in terms of the locations of schools. 2. Influential elements 2.1 The teacher is the most influential element. 2.2 Schools with higher proportion of non-integrative-activity major teachers or homeroom teachers tend to agree the influence of the characteristic elements in integrative activity learning area. 3. Difficulties 3.1 The biggest difficulty is the shortages of integrative activity major teachers; schools with higher proportion of integrative activity major teachers who are also homeroom teachers or administrators admit this difficulty. 3.2 Schools with higher proportion of non integrative activity major teachers tend to face the difficulties regarding to insufficiency of integrative activity major teachers and class arrangement. 3.3 Schools of different sizes face different difficulties. Medium-sized schools have difficulty in class arrangement while large-sized schools suffer from the shortage of integrative activity major teachers. 4. Suggestions for improvement 4.1 High proportion of non integrative activity major teachers should be mended. 4.2 The shortage of integrative activity major teachers should be improved. 4.3 The problem of lacking proper equipment and location should be solved. Based on the findings of the research, some suggestions for school administrative organization, junior high schools, integrative activity learning area and future study were proposed. 1. For school administrative organization 1.1 Face the fact that there is a high proportion of non integrative activity major teachers in teaching integrative activities. 1.2 Make draft on how two schools share one integrative activity major teacher. 1.3 Assist schools to improve equipment and locations. 1.4 Combine discussions and suggestions on interdisciplinary-teaching or disciplinary-teaching in integrative activity learning area. 2. For junior high schools 2.1 Provide non integrative activity major teachers who teach integrative activities with professional seminars and training. 2.2 Provide proper and useful equipment. 2.3 Incorporate different topics of integrative activities in various activities. 3. For integrative activity learning area 3.1 Hold a meeting regularly and start a dialogue with team members of a different specialty. 3.2 Elect the leader of integrative activity learning directly. 3.3 Increase the proportion of teacher-designed lessons. 4. For future study 4.1 Similar research can be done in Arts and Humanities learning area. 4.2 Further interviews can be researched. 4.3 Teams of Integrative activity learning area can be probed depending on locations of schools. Keywords: Integrative Activity Learning Area, Department Level, Curriculum Decision-Making