Effects of experimental curriculum on political socialization of middle school students in Korea

In-Yeop Chung, Purdue University

Abstract

This investigation was designed to examine the effects of the Experimental Curriculum on Political Socialization (ECPS) for Korean middle school students. The subjects were 147 eighth and ninth graders at three public middle schools in Seoul, South Korea. They were divided into three experimental groups and three control groups. Each school included one experimental and one control group. The ECPS was taught during 10 days of one semester. The independent variables were the ECPS and school. The dependent variables seven political attitudes--attitude toward social studies, interest toward social studies topics, sense of political efficacy, attitude toward law, attitude toward civil liberties, attitude toward compromise, and attitude toward politicians--were examined to see if the ECPS affected the Korean middle school students. Two-way analysis of variance--treatment (2) x school (3)--of the posttest means was conducted to determine whether the hypotheses related to the dependent variables should be or should not be rejected. The findings indicated that the ECPS had a significantly positive effect on attitude toward politicians regardless of school at the P $>$. 10 alpha level. Although the treatment effect was not significant on the other dependent variables, there was a significant school effect on attitude toward law and an interaction effect on attitude toward social studies, interest in social studies topics, sense of political efficacy, attitude toward civil liberties, and attitude toward compromise. The findings of the school effect meant that the means of the coed. school indicated the highest scores, those of the female school was the next, and those of the male school was the lowest for both the experimental and control groups in attitude toward law. The findings of the interaction effects indicated the ECPS has significantly different effects on the students of the experimental and control groups according to the different three schools in the five political attitudes. Even though several political attitudes except one were not changed positively by the treatment intervention, they were not changed negatively. Therefore, it can be concluded that the ECPS has a potential as a special curriculum for political socialization because the short time treatment should be considered as a crucial limitation to changing the students' political attitudes, and because the several weaknesses reasoned from a field experimental study could not be controlled in this study.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Gay, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Curricula|Teaching

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