A Study on Curriculum Development in the Dental Technology Department of a Vocational Junior College

전문대학 치기공과 교육과정 개발에 관한 연구

The educational purpose of a junior college is believed to be to effectively train and produce professional workers equipped with the knowledge and skills required in various technical fields of modern society. Since dental technology takes its share of an important role through the enhancement of people's health and the construction of a whlfare society, the prosthodontia department is imposed with a great responsibility to train highly skilled, responsible dental technicians who will meet the social demands. To attain this goal, those who are in charge of the training and education should place emphasis on the development of better educational programs. In other words, the present curriculum which is lacking in many comprehensive aspects, is not satisfactory to provide the students with the required know-how and qualities. As is known, a currculum is the detailed guidance to the efficient operation of an educational program, and that of dental technology is not an exception. In addition, dental technology requires very detailed programs in training, because it requires both diversified and comprehensive application of serveral different fields. The following are the main points to be taken into consideration in developing an effective curriculum for this department. 1. The curriculum should be gradually expanded so that the fundamental subjects will contain principal theories which can be directly applied to the specified majoring subjects. 2. An effective arrangement of time tables should be provided so that basic practice and experiments can be conducted in direct connection with the leatures on the basic theories. 3. For a creative and up-to-date curriculum to help cope with the problems in achieving the aims of technological development and scientific education, intensive and extensive studies should be done on the curricula developed in the advanced countries. 4. The specific majoring subjects should be rearranged to contain new theories which are beneficial to dental technology. As an institution which is spearheaded for ondustrial-educational cooperation, the Junior collegeis role demands that the department should make every possible effect to cultivate highly-skilled technicisns. The following suggestions are made to help work out an ideal curriculum. 1. The basic theory subjects should be selected with consideration toward closely related majoring subjects. 2. The curriculum should be efficiently operated to effectively relate theories with experiments. 3. Subject importance must be rearranged ; It has been found that the ideal proportion of cultural, elective and required subjects is 20%, 20% and 60% respectively. 4. The credit allotments should be reconsidered: The total credits required for completion should preferably be 80; 16 for the cultural and the elective subjects respectively and 48 for the required subject. 5. A Commissioned education system should be formalized for strengthening industrial educational cooperation. 6. Experiments and practice should be intensified with the support of improved laboratory facilities. 7. The training period should be expanded form the present two years to three of four years, in order to produce more highly qualified technicians.