Analysis of creativity and character activities in the clothing section of t he 2015 revised technology and home economics textbooks

This study investigates how the creativity and personality education pursued by the 2015 revised National Curriculum are reflected in the Technology·Home Economics Clothing section in middle/high school textbooks. The activity tasks presented in eleven textbooks are divided into two core concepts (i.e., life culture, management) and six teaching-learning methods (i.e., practical problem solving, experimentation and practice, project, discussion and debate, problem-based learning, and role play). Three main findings are made: First, the names of activity tasks for creativity and personality vary from textbook to textbook. However, many are organized, so learners solve real-life problems by themselves or in groups using theoretical learning content. Second, the percentages of &quotlife culture&quot and &quotmanagement&quot related tasks from the total tasks are 50% and 47.3%, respectively, in the middle schools. Also, the percentage of the &quotlife culture&quot related tasks in the high schools is 45.7%, indicating that the creativity-personality-related tasks are less than half of the total activity tasks. It was also found that the number of activity tasks in the high school textbooks was smaller than in the middle school textbooks. Third, practical problem-solving tasks account for more than half of the total tasks, which reveals that the practical problem-solving method is too much emphasized than other teaching-learning methods. It is desirable to develop activity tasks that involve experimentation and practice, projects, discussion and debate, problem-based learning, and role play in addition to the problem-solving method.