Research on Development of Standards for Educational Content for Gifted Inventions in Elementary Schools

This study aims to systematize and modernize the educational content for gifted inventions, originally developed in 2011, by reflecting on the changes in the educational landscape. Given that the majority of gifted students are in elementary school and considering the results of a demand survey among those in charge of invention-gifted education institutions, the scope of this study was limited to developing content standards for elementary school students in the 5th and 6th grades. The study involved an analysis of the educational content of 131 invention-gifted education institutions nationwide in 2022 and a survey of 23 elementary invention-gifted education experts. The goal was to guide the revision of the elementary invention-gifted education content standards in 2023. The revision primarily aimed to balance the number of standards across major content areas and to reflect industry demands and national-level curriculum guidelines. This research process led to the formulation of the 2023 elementary school gifted-invention education content standards. The new standards consist of 5 major areas—understanding of inventions, inventions and society, inventions and convergence, invention problem solving, and inventions and intellectual property—and 23 standards. The 23 standards were further distributed across four areas of understanding inventions, four areas of invention and society, five areas of invention and convergence, six areas of solving invention problems, and four areas of invention and intellectual property. In addition, a total of 139 achievement standards for each level were presented. The results suggest that the revised standards are expected to mitigate differences in the quality of gifted education stemming from variations in educational conditions due to factors such as teachers and regions while also preventing the overlap of gifted-invention education content between elementary and middle schools.