An Exploratory Study on Value Education in Korean Secondary School Social Studies Classroom

The purpose of this study is to examine attitudes of teachers toward value education and reality of value education in Korean secondary school social studies classroom for more effective teaching of values in social studies education. Such study has significant meanings. As Korea is rapidly changing to information society, value conflict is becoming one of serious social problems. It is also needed to seek new values which are appropriate in new information society. 236 teachers of social studies, history education and geography education in Seoul, Inchon and Kyunggido are selected as samples. We can find very interesting results. Most of teachers think value education in social studies very important. They are, however, not familiar with recent teaching methods on values such as value clarification, value reasoning and value analysis, depending mostly on simple traditional ways of lectures and giving moral stories to students. In addition, they do not know well specific process of value teaching such as solution of value conflict, seeking alternative ways, predicting the result of selection. The primary reason for such situation seems that teacher training schools are not giving proper instructions. From this study, we may suggest for effective teaching of values that teacher training schools must offer more effective courses for value education in social studies during both preservice and inservice training periods. Also, academic associations of social studies education are recommended to have more active scholastic meetings for study of value education.이 연구는 서울대학교 사범대학 발전기금 1996년도 Lemix 학술연구비의 지원에 의해 이루어졌음