| Summary: | 碩士 === 台南應用科技大學 === 生活服務產業系生活應用科學碩士班 === 104 === With rapidly increasing aging population in Taiwan, aging education is an urgent issue to be addressed. Based on the Ministry of Education’s suggestion that problems of ageism should be tackled through implementation of aging education, this study posits that timely and proper aging education in the junior high school phase would foster students’ outlook on life and cultivate them to have respect for the elderly. With a view to exploring and enhancing aging education in junior high schools, this study takes junior high school teachers in Tainan as subjects of research and investigates how their knowledge in aging, attitudes toward the elderly, and behavioral intentions to incorporate aging education in teaching affect their implementation of aging education.
In this study, questionnaires were the main instrument for date collection. A total of 639 junior high school teachers in Tainan were sampled with 606 questionnaires returned. Among the 584 effective samples, 91.4% of which were valid, and most participants were married female teachers without relevant studies or workshop experiences on gerontology. After statistics analysis by means of Independent T-Test, Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient, and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA), the study found that subjects had a moderate level of knowledge of gerontology with an average score of 51.2. Additionally, the result showed a positive correlation between teachers’ knowledge in aging,attitudes toward the elderly. The more familiar teachers were with gerontology or the more positive attitudes they had toward elders, the fewer barriers they would face when implementing aging education. The study also discovered that the acquisition of gerontology knowledge and teachers’ subject professions were prominent factors to their behavioral intentions to implement aging education. Besides, teachers’ gender and their attitudes towards elders coincided with whether they would encounter difficulties when implementing aging education.
Based on the findings, the study suggests that authorities should emphasize the importance of aging education and offer teachers pre- and in-service trainings in gerontology catering to different needs and objectives of various subject matters in school. Equipped with knowledge in gerontology, teachers should also adopt positive attitudes toward aging and develop their abilities to incorporate aging education in their teaching. Hopefully, with problems of insufficient teaching skills in gerontology addressed, teachers are more willing to implement aging education and therefore students are likely to hold more positive views on elders and aging.
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