• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.15 no.8
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• pp.4853-4862
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• 2014

The aim of this study was to examine the effects of child-initiated cooking activity on young children's self-efficacy and learning interest. To achieve this, the child-initiated cooking activity and teacher-initiated cooking activity were performed on an experimental group and comparative group, respectively. A total of sixty-eight subjects in 2 classes of 34 four and five year old children in private child-care centers in Chungnam from September 9 to December 31, 2013 were evaluated. The results were as follows. First, the general self-efficacy of the comparative group increased slightly, but that of the experimental group increased significantly, which showed a statistically significant difference in the general self-efficacy. In addition, the child-initiated cooking activity had an effect on the improvement of the cognitive domain, social-emotional domain and physical domain by each sub-factor. Second, the general learning interest of the comparative group increased slightly, but that of the experimental group increased significantly, in which there was a statistically significant difference in the general learning interest. In addition, the child-initiated cooking activity had an effect on the improvement of attention, interest, confidence, conscientiousness and activity interest by each sub-factor. In the findings stated above, the child-initiated cooking activity was an education activity that had a positive effect on the young children's self-efficacy and learning interest.