| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立臺中教育大學 === 特殊教育與輔助科技研究所 === 94 === A study of integrated curriculum implemented
by gifted classes in elementary schools
Abstract
The purposes of this study were to (1) analyze the current status of the curriculum and instruction, teachers’ qualifications and teaching environment of the integrated curriculum implemented by gifted classes in elementary schools; (2) to compare the differences of the curriculum and instruction, teachers’ qualifications and teaching environment between self- contained and pull-out program in elementary schools.
A questionnaire designed by the researcher and titled as “A questionnaire of the status quo of the integrated curriculum implemented by gifted classes in elementary schools.” was administered to 195 qualified teachers of elementary gifted classes from the north, central and south of Taiwan, including 55 from the self-contained gifted classes and 140 from the pull-out gifted classes.
The major findings of this study were as the following:
I. The current status of the integrated curriculum implemented by gifted classes in elementary schools
1. The integrated curriculum implemented by gifted classes was designed interdisciplinarily and based on students’ interest. Teachers evaluated students’ performance according to their products and homework. The main pressure came from the pacing and time.
2. Teachers’ knowledge base for the integrated curriculum was adequate to the job and could increase the interests and achieve the expected learning performance. Also the teachers’ attitude was very active, when they encountered difficulties during integrating curriculum they would ask for help from colleagues.
3. The school administration could support the relative hardware and equipment, but seldom afforded resources and assistance during the progress of integrating curriculum. The gifted children’s parents highly supported the integrated curriculum. They could arrange cooperative activities during parent-teacher association and planned funds to support teaching. The most important parts to improve were the integration of community resources was not so well, schools’ activities were hard to combined with the community’s activities, people from the community knew few of the integrated curriculum and school-based curriculum.
II. The differences of the integrated curriculum implemented between the self-contained and pull-out gifted classes:
1. There were significant differences in the models of the integrated curriculum, people’s planning, the course issue, the resource of the teaching material, the evaluation and the difficulties of implementation between the self- contained and pull-out gifted classes. There were more difficulties on the curriculum and insruction design expressed by the teachers of the pull-out classes than the the teachers of the self-contained classes.
2. Due to the identical qualified background, there was no significant difference in both of the the knowledge base and teaching attitude between the teachers of the self-contained classes and pull-out classes.
3. There was no significant difference in “support of school administration” and “the integration of community’s resource” between the self-contained and pull-out gifted classes in the integrated curriculum. However, the support from the parents in the pull-out classes was significantly more than the the self- contained classes .
Based on the above research findings, some suggestions for gifted education and future studies were made.
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