New Approach to Develop Professionalism, Focusing on Modern Craftsmen and Skilled Engineers in the Social Studies Classes

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

We reviewed the results of a survey on professions, to which 3,000 elementary and junior-high-school students responded. The survey findings show that (i) they are given the opportunity to consider professions by their family members, friends, and mass-media rather than by social studies classes, (ii) high-ranked jobs are similar among elementary and junior-high-school students, so are low-ranked jobs, (iii) professions that children receive little information of, e.g. logistics, are least popular. The criteria of popular professions are (i) they can enjoy the job, (ii) they can show one's personality, (iii) they can develop their career. Those professions favored least has less media coverage, therefore, children do not have an opportunity to judge whether the profession is good or not.Taking into consideration the above findings and the results from other researches, we chose course of study and textbooks of "industrial studies" for 5th graders. We mainly reviewed the subject of "man … More ufacturing", the area children tend to have less vocational understanding. The analysis clearly shows that the contents focus on understanding of industrial systems so students have insufficient knowledge about workers. As the previous research on "civic education" for junior-high-school students indicates, the materials give too much priority to understanding the basic concept of economy. Therefore, students have less understanding of vocational lives of people. There are some challenges in making elementary and junior-high-school students develop vocational understanding, including value of work.To cope with such challenges from an educational point of view, we conducted a research on "modern craftsmen and skilled engineers" and their workplaces. The outcome shows that by learning about professional and skilled workers, students successfully develop vocational understanding and professionalism. We taught 5th graders based on the research findings and reviewed the improvement of their understanding. We also suggested teaching plans of "civic educations" for junior-high-school students. Less