Analysis of Teaching Methods in Elementary School Home Economics Education : Focussing on the Field of Food (Report No. 1)

The purposes of this study are to clarify the contents of teaching in the field of food in elementary school home economics education from the home economics textbooks and to examine actual teaching methods for those contents and for future subjects in teaching. This report addresses the former purpose. As materials, we selected 84 elementary school home economics education textbooks that were used in the 40 years from academic 1961 to 2000. The analysis results are as follows. First, changes in the number of pages assigned to each of the fields in the textbook were observed in the ranking of four fields; clothing, food, dwelling, home economics, and the field of food has been ranked at the top since academic 1980. Second, with regard to changes in the number of items assigned in the textbook to each section of teaching in the field of food, the ratio of the items was the highest for "cooking and exercise" from the beginning, accounting for more than 60. percent of the total, while the ratio was the lowest for "manners." Third, changes were observed in the teaching items and their contents in the field of food contained in the textbooks of academic 1980 and those of academic 1992; such changes occurred in connection with the revisions made in the 1977 issue and the 1989 issue of the course of study.11KJ00004175197departmental bulletin pape