• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.150-167
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• 2021

Since the advent of tertiary curriculum, middle school history education has been focused on political history, but many students perceive history as a simple memorization subject and complain about difficulties in abstract learning. The researcher saw this problem as caused by the history curriculum, and carried out this study for the purpose of proposing a revitalization of cultural property education in the middle school history curriculum. First, through the analysis of prior research, the usefulness of cultural property education, such as nurturing creative talent and realizing interactive history classes, was revealed, and the problems of the current political history-centered middle school history curriculum were pointed out. Afterwards, as a result of conducting an opinion survey on middle school 3rd grade students and social studies teachers, it was found that first, both middle school students and their teachers thought that the current political history-centered history had much room for improvement. Second, all groups agreed on the necessity of cultural property education in history education. However, in reality, it was found that it was not easy to sufficiently educate students about cultural property in a political history-centered curriculum. Third, teachers thought that it was necessary to improve the current history curriculum in order to enhance cultural property education. Based on these findings, the researcher suggested an improvement plan for the 2015 revised history curriculum. First, in the 'nature of the subject' section, cultural properties and historical materials should be included, and in the 'objective' section, politics, economy, society, and culture should be included. Contents related to cultural properties should be added to the sub-themes in the 'content system and achievement standards', and cultural properties-related contents should be further reinforced in the achievement standards, 'teaching, learning and evaluation'. It was suggested that this section should include cultural property learning and historical material learning, and guidance on teaching and learning methods of cultural property education should be added. If these aspects are reflected in the 2022 revised curriculum that is currently being developed, cultural property education will be improved, and more lively history education will be provided to students.