The Evaluation of knowledge about life program in the elementary schools

ABSTRACT On the brink of the 21st century, the realization of social development, to a large extend, depends on the education systems of countries. Within the roles of education system, elementary school institutions involve basic phase in terms of acquiring social roles and preparing learners for further educational milieu. As it is the case in every level of the education instutitions, education program takes the first place among many that affects the quality of the educational application in elementary education as well. Taking into account the development in science and tecnology, it is an inevitable requirement that the education programs be developed. The course called as Knowledge about Life which has been taught in the first three grades of elementary schools is the skeleton of all other courses. Since Knowledge about Life prepares the students social life and facilitates their future learning as a basic component, the significance of teaching Knowledge about Life cannot be denied. From this point of view, it is thought that improvement of the program of this course is imperative. For this reason, it is necessary that the Knowledge about Life programs should continuously be improved. This research has been carried out in order to determine the views and suggestions of teachers, who have been teaching Knowledge about Life in their classes of first, second and third levels in elementary schools. The results, which were collected according to the goals of the study, based on the data from related literature and data collecting instrument. This survey has been employed to 372 teachers who are teaching first, second and third classes of 45 elementary schools in the center of Eskişehir in 1998-1999 academic year. Collecting data from all teacher subjects were realized at the percentage of 90.05%. The questionnaire which was designed for this study composed of four personal questions, 24 questions about ongoing position of the mentioned course and 12 questions IVabout future of the issue. The validity and reliability of the data collecting procedure was tested through a pilot study. The SPSS statistical analysis computer program was made use of in processing and analyzing the data. The data were analyzed in terms of the techniques of frequencies, percentages and Chi-Square and the C (Contingency) values were calculated to determine the realitionship between variables. The.05 significance level was considered. Having analyized the data, the following findings were found out:. Most of the teachers who have been teaching the Knowledge about Life courses to first, second and third grades of elementary schools have positive views on the Knowledge about Life course program and its application. Additionally, female teachers were found to have more positive views than male colleaques.