On Initiatives Toward Reform in Korean Primary School Education : the Current Situation and Possibilities of the "Segyehwa" Total Globalization Policy

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Other Title
  • 韓国における初等教育改革への取り組み : 「世界化」政策の現状と展望
  • カンコク ニ オケル ショトウ キョウイク カイカク エノ トリクミ セカイカ セイサク ノ ゲンジョウ ト テンボウ

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This paper seeks to clarify the current situation of primary school education reform in Korea through a focus on the Segyehwa policy. First, amongst the context of larger Korean social changes typified by globalization, I confirm just what policy is indicated in primary school education reforms. Next, examining the Korean curriculum provisions, I clarify the characteristics of the philosophy at base in the primary school education reforms. Moreover, I explore primary school education reform developments and their associated issues. Korea is proactively engaged in responding to globalization. The force which promoted the primary school education reform focused on in this paper is none other than the segyehwa Total Globalization Policy proposed in the early 1990s. Korea's segyehwa Total Globalization Policy connotes the phenomenon of globalization as well as the response to that phenomenon, "segyehwa" has become a keyword in all fields, and in the education field it firmly established the culturing of international competitiveness, an overriding necessity for the Korean nation. In primary school education, through the influence of segyehwa, the reform centered on the strengthening of early-stage English learning and scholastic guidance, and Korea now aims for the upbringing of talented personnel and world-citizen education. In this sense, "segyehwa" contains strong elements of national policy. "Segyehwa" functioned to merger globalization and nationalism (Koreanization). The new educational structure advocated for in the education reform proposal of the Kim Young Sam administration places segyehwa more than anything else as the central pillar of reform. "Globalization" and "Koreanization" are by but polar opposites, but the reform proposal connotes that "globalization" must be sought after in a Korean context. Thus, the education reform proposal was designed to marshal both"Globalization" and "Koreanization," and to create harmony between universality and particularity.

Journal

  • 飛梅論集

    飛梅論集 8 83-98, 2008-03-31

    Graduate School of Human-Environment Studies, Kyushu University

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