Journal Archive

The 2015 revised curriculum aims to cultivate a 'creative fusion talent' capable of creating new knowledge and fusing various knowledge to create new value. As a basic education, we are strengthening Korean language education, reading education for developing humanistic imagination, and software education for raising scientific creativity.[1] As an education to develop computing thinking skills, software education is being emphasized as a core competence for learners in the 21st century. Accordingly, software education, coupled with the worldwide craze for coding education, is waiting for full-scale implementation on the school scene amid high interest in Korea.

According to the 2015 revised curriculum, elementary schools offer 17 hours of software training in practical subjects in grades 5 and 6. In middle schools, software education is mandatory for more than 34 hours in information classes. In addition, high schools are expanding their scope from more advanced optional subjects to general optional subjects, allowing more students to take software lessons.[2] This is meaningful in that software education is conducted as compulsory education. In elementary schools, it is doubtful whether software education can raise students' computational thinking at a time that is only 17 hours a year.

The 17 hour, 34 hour minimum time assigned to elementary and junior high school is also a problem, but there are also bigger problems. It is doubtful whether the following software classes can help students develop creative problem solving skills

As an alternative to this point, the curriculum states that "Computational thinking is not limited to software education, but is reflected in various subjects such as Korean language, social studies, mathematics, and science." This means that it is possible to do software education linked to other subjects as a fusion education. [3] In this way, we are trying various SW convergence education centered on themes connected with other subjects. For example, public institutions such as the Ministry of Veterans Affairs also hold "SW Convergent Patriot Instruction Competition" which combines the vocational lesson with software. This means that interest in SW convergence education is increasing. [4]

Especially, as the Novel Engineering education method introduced by in CEEO of Tufts University was introduced in Korea, software education applying Novel Engineering as a new SW convergence education method centering on the Jeonju National University of Education was often applied to the school site.

  Novel Engineering is a new engineering education method that integrates humanities, software education, and STEAM education, and it can be said that students can develop their thinking skills in the process of finding and solving problems in their lives. It is not merely learning according to the function. The problem solving is aiming to help students to think for themselves so that it helps students to improve their problem-solving ability.

However, there are not many SW fusion education programs applying Novel Engineering. In addition, it is too early to confirm the possibility of the new SW convergence education method because the objective educational effectiveness of it is hardly verified. The purpose of this study is to develop a software education program using Novel Engineering and to apply it to actual classroom and to verify the effectiveness of students in improving creative problem solving ability and educational effectiveness.

In order to verify the effects of the Novel Engineering based SW convergence education on students' problem solving ability, we applied the Novel Engineering based SW convergence education program developed by the present researcher to the 6th grade elementary school. Also, general SW education was applied to the comparative class. The results of the study are as follows.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how SW convergence education based on general SW education and Novel Engineering influence students' creative problem solving ability. In particular, we tried to find out the possibility as a method to cultivate creative convergent talent with humanistic character which is pursued in the 2015 revised curriculum. In order to verify the objective educational effectiveness of the SW convergence education based on Novel Engineering, which is being tried in the school field, the creative problem solving ability test was divided into the experimental group and the comparative group.

In summary, the results of this study show statistically significant differences in the significance level p <.05 from the pre-test and post-test of the experimental group. In other words, it can be said that SW convergence education based on Novel Engineering is effective in improving students' problem solving ability.

The rapid development of information and communication technology is leading the fourth industrial revolution era, and creative problem-solving ability is an essential capability to live in this age. In particular, the SW convergence education based on Novel Engineering which uses SW as a way to solve the problem and find out the problem of the main character in the book is an education to raise this capacity. In other words, I found out that it is useful to develop creative problem-solving ability as an essential competence to solve many problems that students may encounter while living. Nonetheless, the following efforts are needed to make this study more general.

First, the results of this study are limited to a limited number of students in a specific area.

Second, there is a need for prior research on books with more diverse topics and problems. Depending on the book that contains the problem, the problem-solving strategies that students establish may be different. Therefore, it is necessary to study what kind of book is more effective in improving students' problem-solving abilities and to develop a program that reflects them.