A Study on Teachers’ Perceptions of Safety after Nuri Curriculum Revision in 2019

Abstract

This study attempted to comprehensively search how teachers perceive 'safety' when operating the curriculum and what difficulties and demands are in the operation process as the Nuri curriculum was revised in 2019 to emphasize infant-centered and play-oriented. To this end, in order to select early childhood teachers with expertise suitable for the purpose of this study, six early childhood teachers with more than 5 years of maturation experience were targeted based on the teacher development stage theory (Katz, 1985). The data collection method was selected as a focus group interview (FGI) to collect and analyze data suitable for the purpose of the study to emphasize infant autonomy and examine teachers' perceived safety awareness and difficulties in the revised Nuri curriculum. As a result of analyzing the data collected in this study, three topics and six subtopics were derived: (1) the importance of safety unrelated to the curriculum (2) finding the boundary between play and safety (3) finding out safe play together. Regardless of the curriculum change, teachers recognized that risk exists, safety should be protected, considered the scope of looking at play and safety, experienced a dilemma between safety and play, and safety was with risk, and experienced changes in teachers and infants for safe play. When discussing the main implications for safety in the revised Nuri curriculum situation based on the results according to the derived topic, first, a positive reconceptualization of teachers' perception of safety is required. Second, there is a need for dilemma-oriented teacher education that teachers can face in the field. Third, a culture that guarantees teachers' expertise and autonomy is required. Fourth, education is required to allow infants and children to internalize safe attitudes and behaviors based on play and experience. Finally, it is required to continuously develop and distribute data and evaluation tools to provide a safe environment.