JEONBUK NATIONAL UNIVERSITY
The Department of Child Studies offers a wide range of courses focusing on the development of infants and children within the family, peer-group, and school settings. The department also concentrates on a dynamic understanding of various families and interpersonal relationships in a rapidly changing society. The major objective of the department is to prepare students to gain the knowledge to become educators, leaders, and professionals within the following child and family areas:
- Infancy and child care education
- Child counseling
- Child welfare and policy
- Healthy family support policy
- Family life education and family counseling.
Students can earn national certificates such as Child Care Educator and Healthy Family Specialist, promoting career opportunities in child care centers and nursery facilities and Healthy Family Support Centers. Additionally, student can earn other certificates including Child and Adolescent Counselor, Family Counselor, and Family Life Educator. Graduates of our department work in social facilities for children and adolescents, and centers attending to women and family needs. Furthermore, 10 percent of our graduates obtain a license as a secondary school teacher. Some of our graduates enter graduate school in areas of Human Ecology, Child and Family Development, as well as the College of Education studying Human Ecology Education.
Outlook
Due to the increasing number of working mothers, there is a growing need for child care facilities and infant nursery facilities, as well as attention on the quality of these programs. Due to increasing rate of divorce and domestic violence, as well as other issues facing families, there is an increased need for preparing our students in Preventive Education of Child and Family Issues, Child and Family Counseling and Healthy Family Support services. With running and expanding the Child and Family Center, there are growing needs for faculty who are leaders in infant and children's needs, child and family counseling, and other services for helping families in the community.
Necessity and Purpose
The change of the nurturing environment and the increase in nurturing demand:
- Increased family instability and increased problems of the welfare of children in these families.
- Increased attention to improve the quality of early childhood eduction Increases in child and family problems and the demand of counseling.
- Children's psychological and emotional needs arising from rapid changes in our culture and social environment.
- Family instability and the increase of other family problems as a result of the increasing divorce rate in Korea.Focusing on providing skills, knowledge and leadership to our students This department seeks to prepare specialists who can effectively deal with the changes of today's families, focusing on early childhood needs, child counseling, and family counseling.
- Fostering the skills for child counseling with the ability to work with both special needs children and gifted children.
- Fostering the skills for family counseling attending to both prevention and intervention to promote healthy family functioning.
