Comparative Analysis of Teachers Perception and Practice of Multicultural Education and Global Citizenship Education: Focusing on Siheung City, South Korea

2020년 8월

서울대학교 대학원

협동과정 글로벌교육협력 전공

문정민(Jeongmin Moon)

This study aims to identify the similarities and contrasts between multicultural

education and global citizenship education, which is presented as a new concept

in Korean schools where diversity is increasing in the process of growing

interdependence and interconnectivity caused by globalization. Accordingly, this

study examined the theory and practice of multicultural education and global

citizenship education, which are currently being promoted in elementary school

courses, through literature research and a survey of teachers, respectively.

In particular, Siheung City in Gyeonggi Province is an area in which about 10

percent of the population, most of whom live near the Sihwa National Industrial

Complex in the southern part of the country, have a multicultural background. On

the other hand, the northern part of the city is part of the Seoul metropolitan area,

with most of the resident population being mainstream Korean. Therefore, the

district has been designated as an exclusive educational internationalization zone,

and multicultural education and global citizenship education are actively carried

out.

Moreover, unlike middle and high school courses where there is a wide gap in

understanding multicultural education and global citizenship education by subject,

elementary schools are assumed to have a high level of experience and

understanding of multicultural education and global citizenship education because

most teachers teach all subjects. From this circumstance, this study has targeted

teachers working at elementary schools located in Siheung, Gyeonggi Province.

According to a survey of 121 in-service elementary school teachers in Siheung

City, the result displays that the most significant factor in improving teachers’

understanding of and teaching effectiveness in multicultural education and global

citizenship education was whether related training programs were completed. It

also reveals that teachers’ perceptions of multicultural education and global

citizenship education vary depending on the environment in the region where the

school is located. In other words, teachers in the southern industrial complex,

which has a large number of students with multicultural backgrounds, had high

perceptions of multicultural education, while teachers working at schools in other

regions had a high-level perception of global citizenship education. Moreover,

regarding the implementation status of multicultural education and global

citizenship education in Korea’s public education, the key results of the previous

research were similar to this study’s survey results.

In terms of the relationship between the two education initiatives, teachers

recognized global citizenship education as a more important concept than

multicultural education. This is because many teachers tend to practice

multicultural education as an assimilation approach, setting the geographical

boundaries of multicultural education for Third World countries and Korea,

forming the main background of multicultural families residing in Siheung. In

contrast, they regard global citizenship education as a tool to foster competitive

citizens in the international community under a neo-liberalistic approach, meaning

a free economic market.

This is because teachers do not take multicultural education and global

citizenship education as a leading educational element. Instead of being used as

one educational element in the curriculum, the two existing education initiatives

are accepted and carried out in the school through assimilation and neo-liberalistic

approaches prompted by national needs rather than the social justice aspect.

Given these results, it is necessary to expand teacher training on multicultural

education and global citizenship education in the future and establish policies to

ensure that the two education initiatives are mutually complementary. Finally, this

study empirically analyzed the relationship between multicultural education and

global citizenship education, which has been discussed only theoretically. It also

pointed out that the two education initiatives are conducted nationally, resulting in

a lack of understanding of both teachers.