• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.163-188
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• 2010

This study set out to develop and evaluate an educational program for the Clothing Life of Home Economics through the theme-based integrated approach develop integrated thinking abilities for solving everyday problems. For those purposes, it selected a couple of themes in the area of Clothing Life toward which the theme-based integrated approach could be develop and evaluate an educational program. The developed program was applied and assessed in total 28 hours of field lessons given to eighth graders attending B Middle School in Busan Metropolitan City. The analysis stage involved an exploration into programs related to an integrated approach to other subjects; the design stage identification of program types; and the development stage theme selection according to the selection criteria. The previous studies were analyzed along with the Technology and Home Economics textbooks to select a theme. two themes "Clothing Management" and "Fabrics(Materials)" were selected after discussing with the students on the Messenger and with a group of experts. Then content was organized and composed around the themes by discussing connections with other subjects. There were three evaluation; one by experts, another through preliminary lessons, and the other through field lessons. Following the research procedure, a theme-based integrated program was developed for the two selected themes. It contained total 49 and 32 learning materials for "Clothing Management" and "Fabrics(Materials)," respectively. Those learning materials were comprised of experiments and practices according to the nature of the themes. Each program consisted of the goals, learning content, content organization chart, learning activities, and evaluation; learning activities experiences, practice and experiment activities, self-directed activities and problem-solving processes; and evaluations self-evaluation, teacher evaluation, peer evaluation, portfolio, and experiment reports. The program was assessed three times. The first and second evaluation results found that the program was well compatible with the current needs, was properly organized to give lessons through integration with other subjects, and continuously maintained the students' interest. They, however, requested that there should be detailed explanations about each part of the program content. In the third evaluation done by the students during field lessons, 60% of them said that the program was fun and its content was easy to understand, that they realized a theme could be connected to several other subjects, and that the program could be applied to actual life. The educational program through the theme-based integrated approach is significant in that it is an educational program for the area of Clothing Life and tries an integrated approach. It helped the students not only gather knowledge in an integrated manner, but put it to practical uses to solve various problems they faced in actual life by creatively changing integrated knowledge. The study will be hopefully used by many teachers so that the students solve problems based on the ability of integrating various knowledges organically.