Analysis of Home Economics Textbooks for Middle School

중학교 가정 교과서 분석 연구(III)

The purposes of the study is to see as to how much of changes has occurred in the newly revised Home Economics Textbooks required by the 6th Curriculum as compared to those by the former the 5th Curriculum, and to seek future policy directions which can be improved even better, if any, for further revision. To implement this proposal, the study employs 8 different textbooks published in 1997 geared for the 6th Curriculum for data base. The components of the contents divides into two major parts. The first part falls into a category of holistic analysis of the textbooks, which gives a general perspective of the changes in the textbook revised. It includes those areas of changes in the total number of pages, cover page, illustrations, table of contents, appendices, unit cover, introductory remarks, summary and evaluation, etc. It also covers the information on authors of textbook. The latter part consists of several specific areas of major changes occurred in the textbooks for the 6th Curriculum. It covers such areas of changes in the composition of category and its weight, laboratory experiences, and illustrations and tables. To conclude the study, among many findings, two major points are of great importance to mention here. First, the new textbooks have adopted more of varieties in physical appearances and contents per se as to the older ones. And yet, there still found a weakness in numbers of authors participated to a full reflection of contents variety. In addition, the background of authors reflected on an unrealistic idealism which lacks the on-site information provided by the school teachers. Second, the strict regulations created by the Ministry of Education for developing textbook found restricting the authors creativity and thus contents variety of textbooks. Those restricting factors include letter type and size, coloring, paper quality, and volume size.