• The Korean Journal of Elementary Counseling
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.33-50
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to develop a PBL-based career education program and to examine its effectiveness on school children's career maturity. It's specifically meant to prepare a career education program to assist students to get an accurate grip on their aptitude, interest and personality and explore various sorts of occupations in the course of solving authentic and contextual career-related problems. After children's developmental characteristics and needs were analyzed, task analysis was implemented, and the objectives were defined. And then the core of the program, PBL problems were developed, and the validity of the problems were verified Evaluation plans and tools were prepared to assess children's problem-solving process and presentation, and an online learning space was designed. The program that consisted of 10-minute 21 sessions was provided to fifth-grade elementary schoolers for eight weeks. The findings of the study were as follows: The experimental group that participated in the PBL-based career education program showed a more significant improvement than the control group that didn't in career attitude and three career attitude subfactors involving planness, disposition and compromise. And the former made a more significant progress than the latter in career ability and its subfactors including vocational comprehension, self-understanding and decision-making skills as well. As a result of making a content analysis to make up for the survey, the students reported that they were able to get an objective understanding of themselves and acquire diverse and profound knowledge on work and the business world in the middle of solving the given PBL problems related to different areas in group and giving a presentation. In conclusion, a PBL based career education program developed by this researcher encouraged the students to have an objective self-understanding, to have a dynamic interactive discussion with their group members. Therefore the program had a positive impact on boosting the career attitude and career ability of the elementary schoolers. The findings suggested that in the field of elementary career education, autonomous learning attitude and subjecthood are the crucial factors to stimulate school children to explore and create their own future.