Middle School Curriculum Research Articles

Development of an anxiety scale for chemistry

Chemistry is regarded as a difficult subject by many; but at the same time, it takes an important place in middle and high school curriculum and many college degree programs require chemistry courses. Therefore, researchers have attempted to develop instruments to assess the levels of chemistry anxiety. This study aimed to develop an “Anxiety Scale for Chemistry”, which is essential to setting an alternative for existing tools to determine anxiety for chemistry of students. This study has been carried out to develop a tool to measure the level of anxiety of students studying in the high schools in Turkey. The scale was developed as a result of the following processes: (1) Literature scan and creation of the item pool, (2) Taking expert opinions, (3) Item-total correlations, (4) Item distinctiveness features (5) Exploratory factor analysis (6), Cronbach’s Alpha internal consistency reliability, (7) Examination of correlations between sub dimensions, (8) Confirmatory factor analysis. According to the results obtained, the scale is acceptably reliable for the research in social sciences.

Application of Multimedia Technology in Middle School Education Management

<p>In today’s era, the connection between science of technology and all aspects of social life is increasingly in-depth. Multimedia technology, particularly in the sphere of education and teaching, demonstrates its tremendous advantages, such as vast teaching resources and the ability to move between various teaching modalities at any moment. To a large extent, all of these have aided the successful execution of China’s education reform. Teachers and students were continually adjusting to the dispersion of conventional roles, resulting in an increase in instructional efficacy. How to improve the significance of multimedia in middle school curriculum development and achieve our academic objectives of "fostering individuals" has now become a contentious issue among academicians. Aiming at the current situation of the development of middle school education management in China, this paper adopts the method of combining questionnaire survey with comparative experiment, proving the advanced nature of multimedia teaching mode. Meanwhile, with the help of questionnaire analysis, the author also understands some middle school students’ real ideas about the application of multimedia technology to the classroom. The experimental results show that multimedia technology is very effective in middle school education management. The classroom quality has been effectively improved, and the enthusiasm of students in class has been improved by about 20%. Furthermore, such an improvement was obtained in only one month of testing, which is quite encouraging. Finally, the researcher provides a thorough review of the research, arguing that using multimedia technology should not only enhance the material’s effectiveness, but also prevent overwhelming the viewers.</p> <p> </p>

자유학기제를 위한 진주검무의 교육콘텐츠 연구

The free semester system was operated by the Ministry of Education-designated test operation school in 2013, and as of 2016, this system got to be implemented at the middle schools around the country. The free semester system aims to build up one’s dream and talent through career exploration activity and diverse experience activity away from the burdens of taking an examination for one semester among the middle school curriculum.
 With the addition of ‘Creative Experience Activity’ to the 2009 curriculum, the code ‘Creativity’ was highlighted, but practical creative education wasn’t realized. To overcome such a limit, what was suggested at a national level was the very “Free Semester System.”
 In case of a school which put the free semester system into practice in 2015, unlike the fundamental purpose of this system, there were many cases where the programs, which were conducted in a club activity and after-school activity, were extended as the free semester system.
 The education which can serve to develop a potential talent through the free semester system is no other than arts education, and among others, the educational field stands in need of experience and education of the national intangible cultural heritages.
 It’s because the national intangible cultural heritages provide diverse elements which can be used as educational contents as they cherish our people’s identity, historicity and cultural prototype. At present, the transmission of intangible cultural heritages is in good progress, but they have not been properly used as cultural heritages which arouse sympathy between generations, and have the property of realism(presentness). In order for intangible cultural heritages not to be the heritages in the past, the existing cultural heritages should be recreated as the present ones through education contents. This researcher is intending to propose Jinju Sword Dance education contents which are suited for the free semester system on the basis of the experience in teaching the National Intangible Cultural Property No. 12, Jinju Sword Dance.

불균등한 SW·AI 경험이 교육격차에 미치는 영향: 체험 활동 프로그램의 AI교육 사례 중심으로

In the era of the 4th industrial revolution, it can be said that securing SW·AI talent is very important to strengthen national competitiveness. In order to secure SW·AI talent, the world spends a lot of money and time on SW·AI education and puts great effort into nurturing talent. The Republic of Korea also reflected the SW education content in the elementary, middle, and high school curriculum by reorganizing the curriculum from 2015. Through SW-oriented universities and AI graduate school education support projects, large budgets are also invested in higher education institutions to focus on nurturing SW·AI talents. However, in reality, there are high voices of concern that both the quantity and quality of SW·AI education are insufficient. With this background, this study started from the point of view that the cause of the AI education gap in the experiential activity program for high school students is the difference in prior SW·AI experience. High school students who participated in the experiential activity program were analyzed by dividing the level of fun, difficulty, satisfaction, and expectation by SW·AI experience. As a result of the analysis, it was possible to confirm a significant result that SW·AI experience is affecting AI education. Based on the results of this study, it is necessary to minimize the educational gap that may occur due to the failure to receive SW·AI education equally. For this, SW·AI education should be converted into a required subject so that SW·AI education can be systematic and continuous from elementary school to high school, and the number of hours of classes should be expanded systematically.

Discipline Construction and Teaching Reform of “Chinese Curriculum and Teaching Theory in Middle School”

Middle school Chinese curriculum and pedagogy are the carriers of students’ teaching methods and contents. From the nine-year basic compulsory education reform to now, the publication of middle school Chinese curriculum and pedagogy teaching materials has increased year by year in quality. From the perspective of teaching, middle school Chinese curriculum still has many shortcomings in the process of teaching reform and discipline construction. Therefore, this paper discusses the strategies of teaching construction and reform, in order to improve the teaching quality of the subject, clarify the significance of middle school Chinese curriculum teaching reform and discipline construction, and combined with the current situation of teaching construction and discipline reform.

The impact of perception of middle school curricula according to the next generation of science standards on conceptual comprehension and thinking skills

There is an urgent need to update the science curricula content in light of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS). The purpose of this research is to present a proposal of the science curricula content in light of the NGSS. Secondly, the effect of NGSS on conceptual understanding and higher-thinking skills among first-year intermediate students is also analyzed. This work is unique as no research is conducted on the topic as per the best of our knowledge. Hence, the research may motivate further studies on the topic. The semi-experimental method was used to know the impact of teaching science in conceptual understanding and higher thinking skills. The sample consisted of 62 students divided into two groups. The control group was led the “nature of material” unit in the first-year intermediate book, issued by the Ministry of Education in 1438 AH. A list of science tools was prepared for analyzing the content of science curricula in light of Next-Generation Science Standards (NGSS). Two tests were prepared, a conceptual understanding test and a higher thinking skills test. The research revealed different results: the availability degree of science for the next-generation science standards curricula in the intermediate stage was low. The developed unit’s size effect in light of these standards on conceptual understanding and higher-thinking skills among the research sample was high with a value of 0.89-0.91.

Model my watershed: an investigation into the role of big data, technology, and models in promoting student interest in watershed action

The Meaningful Watershed Educational Experience (MWEE) is a curriculum framework designed to support students’ Environmental Literacy (E-Lit) by promoting critical thinking about watersheds, but there is a paucity of empirical evidence in the literature to demonstrate its effectiveness in increasing E-Lit and a lack of understanding of what MWEE instructional activities best support E-Lit. The Teaching Environmental Sustainability—Model My Watershed (TES-MMW) middle school curriculum is a data-rich MWEE that promotes student analysis of local watersheds. This large-scale study was conducted in eight states across the United States of America from 2016 to 2018, with data from 38 teachers and 1,263 students ages 11–18. The data shows a positive impact on students’ E-Lit in watershed content and action. The study further suggests that four of the project’s curricular elements were most influential in promoting environmental action for students. These curricular elements follow the MWEE framework, and as such, the MWEE essential elements are valuable guides in curricular design to support students’ E-Lit development.

Current Status and Prospects of ‘Literature’ Education as a Liberal Arts Curriculum of Universities

This article seeks ways in which to educate literature as part of the liberal arts curriculum for universities. In response to changes in the university's curriculum and system, this article examined the current status of liberal arts “literature” courses, Also, this article explored the methods used in the teaching of literature courses as basic studies. Literary works have been used as useful teaching materials in early writing education, and classical texts have achieved their goals by utilizing proven literary works. In cultural education, literary works are also used as a primary source and as part of media education. In terms of the university system, the Humanities departments have begun to disappear. Literary education has resulted in a situation in which liberal arts have to take charge, and so now it is necessary to ask questions regarding the identity of literature and to examine the methods of teaching literature education. Before this article discussed the methods involved with literature education as a basic study, we looked at the prior discussions on literature education as liberal arts education. Interest in literature education began in the mid-1980s, and research became active around 2010. Interest in and research on literature education as liberal arts education has also been gradually increasing, and a series of facts suggest the legitimacy of literature subjects as basic studies, along with a willingness to actively communicate with the changed educational environment. In order to better understand the methods of teaching literature education at the university level, this article examined the link between secondary and university education. The current secondary education curriculum was revised in 2015, and both secondary and higher education implement competency education for talent development required by the times, and the ultimate goal is the same. However, since literature must reach the achievement standards designated through textbooks in the middle school curriculum, there is a limit to internalize the literature. Literature education in universities shall take into account the university's talent award and educational goals, but may develop literary skills by maximizing the experience of actively interpreting and enjoying literature through various teaching methods. In liberal arts education at universities, literature courses should be able to capture academic universality and achievements as basic studies. Literature courses should be teach to read the narratives of media that form diverse cultures and cultivate interpretations that can allow our students to discover the value of the times in which they live. The particular language of literature should be understood and the theoretical basis for understanding and enjoying the flow of human history and civilization should be taught through Mimesis (reenactment), narrative and plot, point of view and the speaker, critical methodology, and the literature itself. Through a self-reliant and active interpretation of the work, one should be able to identify the literary principles embodied in the work, and tell what discourse the work has created in the lives of one's contemporaries.

Korean Language Education to Improve Multicultural Acceptance: Practical Methods in Connection with the First and Second Grade Middle School Curriculum

Korean Language Education to Improve Multicultural Acceptance: Practical Methods in Connection with the First and Second Grade Middle School Curriculum

Instructor Views on Technology Use and Coding Training

With the inclusion of the Information Technology and Software course in elementary and middle school curricula in Turkey, the Ministry of National Education has started to offer Technology Use and Coding courses. In this study, opinions of 12 instructors who taught Technology Use and Coding courses were consulted. The study aimed to determine the level of comprehension of the trainees through the evaluation of in-service training. The study was conducted as a case study, one of the qualitative research designs, and the data were collected using a semi-structured interview form. The data were analyzed using the MaxQDA 2020 software. As a result, it was determined that the trainees who attended the courses voluntarily were more willing to learn. The trainees who voluntarily attended these courses stated that they preferred these courses due to the popularity of coding training. While the duration of the course was found to be sufficient, it was determined that offering the courses after work hours caused a decrease in the motivation of the trainees. Inconvenience of training centers, lack of educational materials and insufficient number of instructors were stated as problems encountered in courses. It was observed that the attendees of the course liked the algorithm and block-based coding subjects, and that the instructors did not give enough importance to the subject of coding without computers.

Teachers' views related the middle school curriculum for distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This qualitative study aims to examine teachers’ opinions concerning the middle school curricula that have been in use for years, in order to determine its suitability for distance education during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants consisted of eighteen middle school teachers from different subject areas in Turkey. A maximum variation sampling method was employed for participant selection. The data was collected through semi-structured interviews. Due to the pandemic, the interviews were conducted using video conferencing applications. The data was analyzed through content analysis. According to the findings, the teachers report that while they are effective in achieving cognitive objectives, they have difficulties in achieving affective and psychomotor objectives. In addition, the teachers do not prefer to design their own materials, rather they mainly benefit from ready-to-use materials during emergency distance education. The teachers also reveal that direct instruction and questioning were the teaching methods and techniques they preferred in online courses and that they were unable to adapt other methods and techniques to distance education, which resulted in students experiencing teacher-centered activities. Moreover, the teachers complain about students not attending the online courses on time or even at all, their disinterest, a lack of instant feedback, limited communication with students, and insufficient course lengths. Another critical finding was that the teachers only use homework, end-of-unit quizzes, and participation to online courses as measurement and evaluation tools and agree that they are unable to administer reliable and valid evaluation tools. The limitations of the study and implications for future research are later discussed.

한일 중학교 영어과 교육과정 비교 연구

한일 중학교 영어과 교육과정 비교 연구

Teachers’ Perceptions of First-Year Implementation of Computer Science Curriculum in Middle School: How We Can Support CS Initiatives

Incorporating computer science (CS) into K–12 education has been highlighted in recent years as an important way to promote computational thinking skills. The aim of this study was to investigate teachers’ experiences with a new CS curriculum and address challenges to teachers during implementation. This study was designed to evaluate CS curriculum implementation in order to inform CS practices. Interview and survey data were collected and analyzed. Findings showed that teachers had high confidence in teaching CS; however, they sought professional development to acquire content knowledge and instructional strategies to effectively engage students in learning. As for the curriculum and students, the scope of the curriculum needed to be adjusted along with students’ prerequisite skills and knowledge. As for the context, some schools did not have appropriate facilities. Recommendations for implementing CS curricula and implications are discussed.

Investigating creativity-directed tasks in middle school mathematics curricula

Developing students’ creative thinking abilities while learning mathematics has been recently emphasized by many scholars, with many nations including creative thinking in mathematics as one of their overarching curriculum goals. The first purpose of the present study is to develop a framework to identify what type of mathematical tasks promote the mathematical creativity of students. The second purpose is to analyze to what degree the most commonly used three middle school curricula (i.e., Eureka, The Go Math!, and CPM) in the U.S. include creativity-directed tasks in their textbooks using this framework. Analyzing 1,500 mathematical tasks in each curriculum revealed that different curricula emphasize different dimensions of the creativity-directed tasks categories (i.e., open-ended tasks, problem-posing, connections, extensions, visualizations, and communication) presented in the framework. The result also revealed that open-ended problems are more common in the 6th grade textbooks than 7th and 8th grade textbooks regardless of the three selected middle school mathematics curricula. The implication of this study is to guide teachers with the strength and weakness of textbooks in terms of their inclusiveness of creativity-directed tasks to inform their teaching. Additionally, it is critical for curriculum developers to pay particular attention in including tasks that supporting each category and subcategory proportionately across the three years of middle school rather than emphasizing a few of them in one grade and almost completely ignoring them in previous or later years.

Disaster Risk Reduction Education in School Geography Curriculum: Review and Outlook from a Perspective of China

In order to investigate the content evolution of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) in the school geography curriculum in China, this research used the five dimensions of DRR learning framework, namely knowledge, response, action, participation, and integration, as a platform and a conceptual premise upon which to review the primary and secondary school geography curriculum standards from 1986 to the present. Geography as a carrier subject had been an integration approach of DRR in the national curriculum in China. Using the method of qualitative content analysis with the support of the software NVivo 12, we came to the following results: the DRR-relevant content in the geography curriculum standards that used for analysis in this research had undergone constant changes and finally reached a relatively stable state; the changes of DRR-relevant contents in primary school, middle school, and high school curriculum presented different characteristics. In the future geography curriculum reform, it is necessary to realize that the term disaster does not describe the natural event per se, but instead its impact on/consequences for infrastructure and society. It is bound to add more DRR-relevant content that belongs to the “action” dimension and the ‘participation’ dimension, especially at the primary and middle school stages, and to systematically incorporate the DRR-relevant content of the “integration” dimension into the school geography curriculum.

Korean language math-to-speech rules for digital books for people with reading disabilities and their usability evaluation

Although Digital Accessible Information System, an international digital talking book standard, is conducting active research on upper level education for people with reading disabilities, special components like images or formulas are difficult to read aloud in Korean. Therefore, this paper defines Korean math-to-speech rules for Contents Mathematical Markup Language based on the formulas used in the Korean middle school and high school freshman curriculum. Based on the proposed rules, a program that turns formulas expressed in Contents Mathematical Markup Language into speech was also designed through Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. Finally, a performance test was conducted to determine both the accuracy of the transformed formulas and the clarity of formulas when read aloud.

The Realistic Predicament and Path Dispelling of the Integration of Physical Education Curriculum in Universities, Middle Schools and Primary Schools

The integration of physical education curriculum in universities, middle schools and primary schools is the focus and difficulty of the current physical education reform. With the passage of the times, the integration of physical education curriculum in universities, middle schools and primary schools is increasingly troubled. This article uses research methods of literature and logical analysis to make a specific analysis from the practical difficulties encountered in the integration of the physical education curriculum of universities, middle schools and primary schools. The study found that: the current direction and setting of the physical education curriculum goals are inadequate in correspondence and cohesion; the selection and organization of curriculum content is simple and repetitive, and lacks gradualness; the three major approaches to curriculum implementation lack linkage and lack of interoperability; curriculum evaluation objects, content, and methods are out of touch, lack of integrity. The design of the curriculum objectives of each semester should focus on the main line of the core literacy of the physical education discipline, build a logically clear and sequential curriculum content system, optimize the flexible and diverse, internal and external joint curriculum implementation methods, and establish a progressive, multi-level perspective The curriculum evaluation system is established to establish a physical education curriculum system that is internally unified, horizontally consistent, vertical cohesive, and forms united.

Practice and thinking of integrating ideological and political theory courses into middle school physical education teaching

To comprehensively promote the ideological and political construction of middle school curriculum is an important measure to implement general Secretary Xi Jinping's important discussion on education, an inevitable requirement to implement the fundamental task of fostering morality and cultivating talents, and an important task to comprehensively improve the quality of talent training. Middle school students are in a period of rapid growth and development, physical activity is particularly important to promote their physical development. While cultivating the sports habits of middle school students and exercising their healthy bodies, the integration of curriculum ideology and politics in middle school physical education can promote the coordinated development of middle school students' bodies and minds, shape the correct world outlook, outlook on life and values, and make them become the new people of the age who can take on the great responsibility of national rejuvenation.

"Development and Implementation of a Process-Based Evaluation Program on School Space Design: Focusing on the Housing Life Area of Home Economics Curriculum in Middle School"

"Development and Implementation of a Process-Based Evaluation Program on School Space Design: Focusing on the Housing Life Area of Home Economics Curriculum in Middle School"

Analysis of Achievement Characteristics by Achievement Standard of the Middle School Curriculum Based on the National Assessment of Educational Achievement

Analysis of Achievement Characteristics by Achievement Standard of the Middle School Curriculum Based on the National Assessment of Educational Achievement