Abstract
This study examines elementary school teachers' thoughts on the level of understanding, importance, difficulty of classes, and suitability of social studies subject competency presented in the 2015 revised social studies curriculum. For this, the responses of 178 elementary school teachers in Gyeonggi-do were analyzed and the results are as follows. First, as a whole, elementary school teachers showed a very positive attitude toward social studies competency. They answered that they fully understand, consider it important, and are suitable for teaching social studies. However, there were some difficulties in putting it into practice, but not enough to be concerned about. Such a positive response is because the subject competency differed in expression only, but it was traditionally emphasized in social studies education. However, how to incorporate the competencies required by the new era, such as creative thinking and information utilization, into the contents and skills of social studies education emerged as challenges. Second, although they generally responded positively to social studies subject competency, there were also differences by several variables. In the understanding and importance of creative thinking, male teachers showed higher positive responses than female teachers. Conversely, female teachers showed a higher positive response than male teachers in the importance of communication and collaboration skills and the importance of information utilization skills. Regarding the importance of critical thinking abilities and the overall difficulty of classes, those from social studies majors responded more positively than those from non-social studies majors. This seems to be because critical thinking is an ability emphasized only in the social studies education, which is not found in other subjects. On the other hand, as for the importance of information utilization, teachers from non-social studies majors responded more positively than teachers from social studies majors. This seems to be because teachers in social studies education thinks it is relatively less important compared to the other subject competencies that have been traditionally emphasized. Further, competencies based on the characteristics of social studies, which have been traditionally emphasized in the survey on social studies competency of elementary school teachers, should be further emphasized and elaborated, but efforts required by the new era should be melted into the characteristics of social studies to be reborn as social studies competency. And it is judged that these efforts should be made together with additional theoretical discussions and consideration of teachers' perceptions.
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