본 연구는 최근 사회문제로 대두되고 있는 생명경시 풍조 현상을 해결하기 위하여 초등학생의역할 모델인 초등교사와 초등학교 6학년 학생의 생명윤리에 대한 인식에 관련된 변인들을 규명하고, 생명윤리교육의 중요성에 대한 강조 및 운영에 관한 정보를 제공하고자 수행하였다. 연구 목적을 달성하기 위하여 서울시와 경기도 중소도시 지역의 초등교사와 학생 362명과 287명을 대상으로 생명윤리에 대한 관심 및 인식에 대하여 조사를 하였으며, 교사들에 대해서는 초등학교에서생명윤리교육의 수행 실태 및 생명윤리교육이 효율적으로 수행될 있는 방안에 대한 설문조사를확대 실시하였다. 본 연구를 통하여 얻은 결과는 다음과 같다. 첫째, 초등교사들은 그리고 종교유무별로는 영역간에 유의한 차이는 없었으나 종교가 있는 교사의 평균점수가 높게 나타났다. 둘째, 초등학생들도 생명윤리교육의 중요성과 생명윤리에 대한 관심은 높았으며, 성별, 종교별, 지역별로 유의한 차이가 있었다. 셋째, 초등교사의 생명윤리교육 시 어려운 점은 적용 가능한 자료와 프로그램의 부족에 대한 인식이 높았으며, 이에 대한 개선이 필요한 것으로 나타났다. 또한 생명윤리교육에 적합한 수업 방법은 시청각 수업이나 토론 수업이라는 응답이 많았으며, 생명윤리에 대한 정확한 정보를 얻을 수 있도록 교사 연수 프로그램이 개발되어야 할 필요성이 제기되었다.
The purpose of this study was to investigate the levels on the perception of bioethics of elementary school teachers/6th grade students, and to emphasize the importance of bioethics education and provide the information on bioethics education in order to solve a trend of making the light of life that recently emerged as a social problem.
For these objectives, a survey was conducted by 362 elementary school teachers and 287 students in Seoul and small- or medium-sized cities of Gyeonggi Province that were chosen for purpose sampling.
The questionnaires consisted of the attention and perception of bioethics, variabilities according to sex, religion, age and service area for the teacher group, and sex, religion, age and school area for the student group. And, the teachers were also measured through 23 questions made up 13 items for learning topics to bioethics education, 5 items for role of the teacher for bioethics, 4 items for teaching method and teaching materials for bioethics education. Statically analysis was conducted on each of the variables through mean, t-test and F-distribution, Scheffe test through SPSS 12.0 program.
The major results of this research were follows: First, the teachers became realized about the importance of bioethics education and had much interest in bioethics. And, the teachers showed significant differences in the perception of bioethics among themselves according to gender, age and service area, except for the religion. Second, the students also discovered the importance of bioethics education and had much interest in bioethics. And, the teachers showed significant differences in the perception of bioethics among elementary school students according to sex, area and religion. Third, because the elementary school teachers had a high level of perception on the lack of materials and programs that could be applied to lesson, it is needed to solve these problems to activate the bioethics education in elementary school field. Also, many of them mentioned audio lessons, video lessons and discussion lessons as the proper type of lesson for bioethics education, and raised a need to develop an in-service training program to provide teachers with accurate information about bioethics.
In conclusions, the strengthening of bioethics education through curriculum of primary teacher education institute and in-service teachers training course is necessary to meet the knowledge and values of bioethics for teachers because the class teacher instructs almost all subjects in elementary school. And to increase the ethical perception of elementary school students, many programs containing learning contents should be associated with the present time situation and need to be developed to induce the interest of the student.