Effects of Cooperative Learning Methods on Sex Education among Primary School Students

협동학습이 일부 초등학생의 성교육에 미치는 효과

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the effectiveness of cooperative learner-centered methods of sex education. Methods: This study was carried out on 5th grade elementary school students in D-district. Nine classes were divided into 3 groups using each different teaching methods: group A (a cooperative learning), group B (a lecture) and group C (a control group for a comparison). The study period was from Oct. 17 to Dec. 2 in 2011. Both groups A and B received sex education lessons for 40 minutes for 4 weeks and were tested their sex knowledge and attitude to compare the differences. Results: The scores of sex knowledge for all three groups were increased and their sex attitude was increased as well. The points of sex knowledge between pre and post test in group A are greater than the group B's. Thus, the cooperative learning approach with Group A was more effective to improve student's sex knowledge. But the difference between the sex attitude scores was not statistically significant. Group A and B showed a positive improvement in both their sex knowledge and attitudes compared with the control group. Conclusion: This experiment shows that an active teaching methods is more effective to improve student sex knowledge than a passive approach. Thus, a cooperative learning method results in increases of both student's sex knowledge and interests in learning sex education. It needs to develop more diverse teaching methods and programs on sex education that are more systematic and tailored.