실업계 고등학교 과학교육의 실태분석과 개선방안

A Status Survey and Improvement Plan for the Science Education in Vocational High Schools

The educational policy of a nation should be based on the results of nation-wide studies and their analyses. This study is the third one in a series of research on "development of improvement plan and monitoring system for secondary school science", focusing on the three major areas, such as students' achievements, science instruction and conditions for science education in vocational high schools. In general, the results showed that science achievements in vocational high schools were significantly lower than those of general high schools. While the achievement level in physics was lower by one percent, the achievement levels in chemistry and biology were significantly lower by more than 5 percents. In the case of scientific inquiry, the results showed much lower scores compared to those of general high schools. Concerning the inquiry abilities, most of the students did not possess the formal operational thinking skills such as controlling variables and combinatorial thinking. The ability of experimental skills seemed to be closely related to the students' majors. Students in industrial arts schools could measure electric resistance very well, while students in agricultural high school students failed completely. In the area of students' attitude toward science, the greater part of the students had the experiences of using scientific equipments (68.6 %), experimentation (54.3 %), and extracurricular science activities (56.9 %). They also showed positive attitude towards the nature of science (59.8%). The results of the survey on science instruction and school conditions for science education showed the needs for improvement In general, the priority of science education in vocational high schools was very low compared to their major subjects. The teachers as well as students thought science text books nor to be difficult These responses and the low achievement levels seemed to be contradictory to each other. The facilities for science experiments were better equipped and installed to general high schools. However. the lack of budget was a major problem for performing experiments uning the facilities. Therefore. science education in vocational high school have many things to be improved For the improvement of science education in vocational high schools, financial support as well as the intention for the improvement must be the essential factors.