Building world-class research university: The Brain Korea 21 project

This study evaluated the effects of South Korea’s Brain Korea 21 (BK 21) project, a special research funding program designed to build world-class research university. The effects were measured by examining the frequency of article publications in SCI journals during the 1995–2005 period. The results of the analysis indicated that the growth of research publications from Korean research universities was increased significantly following the implementation of the BK 21 project in 1999. In addition, during the period under study, four research universities (Yonsei, Korea, Sungkyunkwan, and Hanyang) were newly emerged. However, the growth rate of research publications was not different from that of the US and Japan, and even less than that of China. Thus, although the BK 21 project contributed to the growth of research publications of Korean universities, the project did not lessen the gap between Korea universities and world-class research universities in the US or Japan in number of publications.     

Changing Facets of Korean Higher Education: Market Competition and the Role of the State

During the past several decades, the Korean higher education sector has experienced tremendous expansion, while the quality of teaching and research has not improved very much. Despite the fact that higher education had to rely on the private sector for most of its finance and provision, market competition among higher education institutions has, until recently, been heavily restricted by the government. We argue that the government should try to incorporate more market-based policies in order to upgrade the quality of teaching and research at higher education institutions. An earlier version of this paper has been presented at the workshop, ‘Upgrading Korean Education in the Age of Knowledge Economy: Context and Issues’ sponsored by Korea Development Institute and the World Bank, October 14–15, 2002, Seoul, Korea. We are grateful to the workshop participants and anonymous referees to this journal for their comments and suggestions.     

Democratization during the transformative times and the role of popular education in the philippines and korea

Comparing popular education in the Philippines and South Korea, it is clear that a number of similarities and differences exist regarding the characteristics, methods, and main fields in which popular education has operated. ‘Church-related practices,’ ‘uniting with CO movements,’ ‘an eliteled tendency,’ and ‘a disregard for the Left’ have all occurred in similar ways in both countries. While introducing the socio-political situation during 1970s and 1980s of these two countries, this paper discusses the theories and practices of popular education. Our findings indicate how popular education in both countries has played a significant role in raising the levels consciousness in the powerless and transforming societies and enabled them to establish a better community. Moreover, each country developed different concepts, initiatives and methods in relation to popular education. In addition, popular educators have been asked to play different roles in each popular education field while most methods were in fact heavily dependent upon eliteled practices.     

Rethinking historical and cultural source of spontaneous mental models of water cycle: in the perspective of South Korea

This review explores Ben-Zvi Assaraf, Eshach, Orion, and Alamour’s paper titled “Cultural Differences and Students’ Spontaneous Models of the Water Cycle: A Case Study of Jewish and Bedouin Children in Israel” by examining how the authors use the concept of spontaneous mental models to explain cultural knowledge source of Bedouin children’s mental model of water compared to Jewish children’s mental model of water in nature. My response to Ben-Zvi Assaraf et al.’s work expands upon their explanations of the Bedouin children’s cultural knowledge source. Bedouin children’s mental model is based on their culture, religion, place of living and everyday life practices related to water. I suggest a different knowledge source for spontaneous mental model of water in nature based on unique history and traditions of South Korea where people think of water in nature in different ways. This forum also addresses how western science dominates South Korean science curriculum and ways of assessing students’ conceptual understanding of scientific concepts. Additionally I argue that western science curriculum models could diminish Korean students’ understanding of natural world which are based on Korean cultural ways of thinking about the natural world. Finally, I also suggest two different ways of considering this unique knowledge source for a more culturally relevant teaching Earth system education.     

The effect of a computer-assisted career guidance program on secondary schools in Korea

This paper examines the effect of a computer-assisted career guidance program in South Korean secondary schools. The program used for this study was developed by one of the paper’s co-authors, Young-Hye Kim, based on Harrington & O’Shea’s Career Decision-Making system. MVS (My Vocational Situation) is used for pre-post test. The t-test results indicate that there are some meaningful differences between control and experimental groups on the 9th and the 11th graders in South Korea. There appeared to be gender and age influences on the degree of the effect.     

Undisciplining Knowledge Production: Development Driven Higher Education in South Africa

South African higher education institutions are increasingly under scrutiny to produce knowledge that is more relevant to South Africa’s social and economic needs, more representative of the diversity of its knowledge producers, and more inclusive of the variety of the sites where knowledge is produced. Only a small percentage of South Africans are graduates of universities or technology institutes, and these graduates are not representative of the diversity of the South African population. As a result there is a shortage of skills to address the country’s reconstruction and developmental needs. This places a burden on higher education institutions to expand access to their programmes, and to ensure that their programmes are relevant to the developmental context. Policy makers have found in the Gibbons [Gibbons, M., et al. (1994). The New Production of Knowledge. The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. London Sage Publishers] thesis on ‘Mode 2 knowledge production’ a rationale for the transformation of higher education through the inclusion of practices which are less abstract, less discipline bound and closer to those processes which characterise the diversity and distribution of knowledge production in the wider society. Nowotny et al. [Nowtony et al. (2001). Re-thinking Science. Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty. Cambridge: Polity Press.] have taken Gibbons’ thesis further and have described society itself as becoming increasingly ‘Mode 2’. In a Mode 2 society, differentiation is replaced with integration, and networks of knowledge producers conduct their work in transdisciplinary teams across widely distributed sites. Such ‘transgressivity’ both pushes knowledge production systems forward and distributes and diffuses knowledge more widely throughout society. In this paper, it is argued that there is a need for higher education practitioners to engage critically – and constructively – with the knowledge bases of policy directives to ensure that the new teaching and learning processes and systems adequately prepare students for the complexity and diversity of South African society, and enable them to contribute meaningfully to its reconstruction and development.     

Facing multiculturalism’s challenges in Korean education and society

Multicultural policy in South Korea faces variants of challenges endemic to multiculturalism. These challenges are “dilemmas of difference,” “variable terms of inclusion,” and “legitimacy.” In Korea, these challenges arise in a setting in which ethnic diversity is of relatively recent origin, an ideology of ethnic homogeneity is prevalent, and official multicultural policy is limited in its reach to those who are designated as “multicultural families,” that is families in which one spouse is Korean and the other an immigrant, usually the wife, and their offspring. The exclusion of migrant workers and their families from Korea’s multicultural framework poses a core contradiction in Korean multicultural policies. This contradiction must be resolved if multiculturalism in education and other spheres is to promote equality and provide a foundation for national integration on terms that are equitable to the diverse constituents of Korean society. Inevitably, this will require a redefinition of what it means to “be Korean.” Even if multicultural policies fall short in their immediate effects on those toward whom they are directed, multiculturalism represents a significant shift in the discourse of Korean identity and will be terrain on which the status of diverse groups in Korea will be contested.     

Analysis of Korean students’ international mobility by 2-D model: driving force factor and directional factor

The purpose of this study is to understand the dynamics of Korean students’ international mobility to study abroad by using the 2-D Model. The first D, the driving force factor, explains how and what components of the dissatisfaction with domestic higher education perceived by Korean students drives students’ outward mobility to seek foreign higher education. The second D, the directional factor, describes the factors that influence the choice of destination country for students’ outward mobility, and is explained by the comparison of Korean students’ perceptions on the images of universities in the U.S., China, the U.K., and Australia and their expectations for higher education in each country (categorized as ‘academic’–‘environmental’). Two questionnaire surveys were conducted to analyze the two D factors and the research findings were integrated into suggestions for each country’s higher education institutions that can be incorporated into their recruitment strategies for international students.

Teaching and learning in korean classrooms: The crisis and the new approach

Learning no longer takes place as effectively as it did before in most current Korean classrooms. Many teachers have voiced concerns about a notably reduced level of students’ interest in and enthusiasm for learning school materials, lack of students’ attention to their lectures, and lack of students’ involvement in classroom activities. This negative change, which has been observed since around 1997, is often referred to as “school collapse” in Korea, meaning classroom breakdown. The paper investigates the factors that have lead to the phenomenon of the school collapse, introduces the 7^th National Curriculum as one of the new reform approaches of the Korean government, and makes some suggestions to ensure more autonomy and diversity in classrooms to promote effective teaching and learning.     

Social development of 21st century and reform of China’s elementary education

The Chinese society of the 21^st century is at a critical period of transformation. The emergence of globalization and informationalization are the most striking changes of the current Chinese society. The profound change in the social transformation and its penetrating influence on people’s lives has revealed the disadvantages of the present education. For 10 years, the “New Elementary Education”, based on the background of Chinese society, and the demand for school education reform clearly puts forward the necessity of education reform in the period of social transformation, in other words, education should achieve its transformational development. This paper presents a deep research of globalization and informationalization, which are the background of Chinese social transformation. On this basis, the paper examines the implication of ‘school transformational reform” of the present-day Chinese elementary education, and finally proposes some steps for achieving “school transformational reform”. __________ Translated from Journal of the Chinese Society of Education, 2005 (1) It is very grateful for Bao Tongmei and Chen Jiagang who translated this article from Chinese into English.     

Higher education and gender roles in Japanese society: An assessment of disparity

Conclusion The 1947 education reform and mass education after the period of high economic growth have greatly influenced women's higher education attainments. These changes are beginning to transform women's views towards education and more women with higher education attainment are entering the labour marker. However, as previously indicated, many obstacles to equal opportunity and results in the labour market still remain for women. Higher education for women has never had the same social impact as that for men. So far as the academic career of women is regarded as having ‘symbolic value’—it has a close relationship to marriage in Japanese society. Women's higher education is a social way of maintaining a sub-culture and traditional gender norms. Ph.D. in education (dissertation: ‘The gender roles of Japanese women’) from the University of California in 1993. At present affiliated to the PHP Research Institute (Japan) as a senior research associate. Areas of interest include comparative higher education, educational policy, and gender and education. Her most recently published works in English are ‘Higher education in partnership with industry: the necessity to employ off-the-job-training system’ in theInternational journal of lifelong education (vol. 12, no. 2, 1994) and ‘The gender roles of Japanese women: an assessment of gender roles of Japanese housewives in the United States’ inPHP research report (vol. 9, 1995).     

Managing differentiation of higher education system in Japan: connecting excellence and diversity

This article presents recent reform processes in Japanese higher education, concerning the tensions emerging within the system regarding ‘excellence’ and ‘diversity’. The article particularly focuses on how Japanese universities have reacted to the recent ‘competition’ and ‘differentiation’ policy promoted by the government, drawing on recent survey results conducted with academic managers at Japanese universities. It is interesting to examine the case of Japan, a historically diversified and differentiated national system, which has been changing rapidly with recent national ‘top-down’ policy reforms, followed by more recent and new bottom-up institutional initiatives. The study shows that universities are trying to achieve excellence, fulfilling different functions at the same time, aspiring to be excellent in teaching, research and social contribution without having institutional capacity to meet these expectations. Appropriate internal governance and external mediation mechanisms need to be created at the institutional level to manage diversification of the higher education system as a whole.     

Inclusive education for students with refugee experience: whole school reform in a South Australian primary school

In recent years, there has been an increase in students with refugee experience in the UK, the US, Europe and Australia. These students face many barriers to education, and appropriately educating this diverse student population presents many challenges to schools and education departments. We argue that a whole of school approach that includes school structures, culture and pedagogy is needed to provide equity for students with refugee experience. This approach to reform requires that the ‘structures and programs [that] are designed for a dominant group’ (DETE, South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability Framework, South Australia 2001), and which disadvantage minority groups, are challenged and changed. Implementing such change raises many practical difficulties, and there are few documented examples of good practice. This prompted the authors’ ethnographic study of a South Australian primary school, with a New Arrivals Program, which positions itself as taking a whole of school approach to educational reform for refugees. This paper reports on the structural changes the school has implemented in its class organisation, staff roles and curriculum. We consider the effects of government funding and neoliberal education policy on these reforms.     

Changing Spatial and Synchronous Structures in the History and Culture of Learning

This paper argues that the conceptions of ‘space’ (and increasingly ‘time’) in the discussion of ‘the university’ (in its most transcendent sense) have gone through four distinct phases in the UK. Using a Heideggerian conception of ‘space’ where usefulness is more important than proximity, the ‘ancient’ universities were ‘useful’ to the gentry and thus were ‘closer’ to them than to the excluded ‘local’ poor in the institutions’ vicinities. The ‘civic’ universities on the other hand stressed ‘localism’ as part of their mandate – to educate the people of their locality (but only those of the new industrial middle class). The ‘Robbins’ universities were a partial return to the ‘ancient’ notion of learning as a ‘lived’ activity, providing scenic landscapes on green-belt campuses where students could ‘retreat’ from the ‘real world’ for the duration of their studies. The ‘spatial’ quality of these places was thus part of a conception of higher education as ‘lifestyle choice’ where young people moved away from their locality to study. As such ‘proximity’ was an issue only insofar as the greater the distance from one’s point of origin the better for successful immersion in the growing student ‘culture’. The ‘new/post-1992’ universities partially retained their polytechnic mandate to educate local people, but embraced a colonialist impulse regarding local space usage. ‘ ‘The discussion can be further refined to argue that these four stages are merely two phases which have repeated themselves: from ancient ‘exclusivity’ to civic ‘localism’ and back to Robbins era ‘exclusivity’ and thence to post-1992 ‘localism’ once more’. The opening up of higher education via the Internet in the late 20th and early 21st centuries provides for the possibility of the growth of entirely non-spatial and asynchronous learning experiences, and as such we may well be on the verge of the fifth stage of university development.     

韩国的研究生教育战略:“智力韩国21工程”

"智力韩国21工程"("Brain Korea21工程")是韩国建设世界一流研究生院,对硕士生、博士生培养给予集中资助的高等教育项目。此工程的第一阶段从1999年开始,到2005年结束,取得了巨大成就。"智力韩国21工程"从2006年开始进入第二阶段,进一步支持并发展研究生教育,其目的是培养21世纪韩国所需的新型高级人才和国家栋梁。     

Power dynamics with international students: from the perspective of domestic students in Korean higher education

This paper explored the power dynamics between domestic and international students in the context of higher education in an Asian non-English speaking country, Korea. Despite increased international student mobility in recent years, little is known about the relationship dynamics among students from different countries, especially related to power issues. The findings in this study suggested that international students’ countries of origin and language of communication created different power statuses compared to Korean students by their empowerment and discrimination. Power differentials also existed among Korean students due to variations in their English ability to interact with international students. Conversely, international students’ attitudes and acceptance influenced Korean students’ attitudes toward them, irrespective of power differentials created by countries and language, as perceived by Korean students. The implications related to the recent trend of international student mobility are discussed.     

Does policy matter in shadow education spending? Revisiting the effects of the high school equalization policy in South Korea

In 1972, the South Korean government proposed the high school equalization policy (HSEP) to eliminate high-stakes exams and introduce random school assignment to high school entrance. This policy was intended to reduce a financial burden imposed on families due to the costs of children’s shadow education. Since its first implementation in major cities in 1974, the HSEP has been increasingly expanded to many regions across South Korea. Yet little known is about whether the HSEP has achieved its policy goal in terms of decreasing the demand for shadow education. Using data from a longitudinal survey of a nationally representative sample of South Korean seventh graders, this study assesses the extent to which the HSEP makes a difference in changes in household expenditures on shadow education during the middle school (grades 7–9). Propensity score matching methods are used to remove selection bias and test the heterogeneity of the effects of the HSEP. Results show small effects for the HSEP in reducing the financial burden of shadow education spending on families, particularly for lower income families. The findings suggest that the government intervention by reducing disparities among schools and competition for entering a particular school makes a difference in shadow education spending.     

Positioning higher education for the knowledge based economy

This article questions the assumption that increasing competition among higher education institutions is the best method of achieving a strong higher education sector in developing countries. It notes that there has been increasing emphasis on the importance of higher education institutions for sustainable development, particularly because of their importance to the global knowledge economy. For the same reason, the appropriate management of the relationship between the state and higher education institutions is vital to a strong and dynamic future for these institutions. This paper proposes a menu of options for higher education governance, grouped around ‘state-centric’ and ‘neo-liberal’ models of development. The ‘state-centric’ model proposed is based on a variety of examples of high performing Asian economies, in particular, while the ‘neo-liberal’ model is based on emerging trends in higher education management in countries such as Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom. The paper suggests that despite pressure across the globe to encourage a market among universities, this may not always be the most efficient use of resources, or the best way to integrate universities in a country’s drive for economic growth.     

SOUTH KOREAN AND THE US SECONDARY SCHOOL SCIENCE TEACHERS’ CONCEPTIONS OF CREATIVITY AND TEACHING FOR CREATIVITY

This study examined science teachers’ conceptions of creativity in science education, pedagogical ideas, and contextual factors perceived as constraints on teaching for creativity and any differences in the conceptions of teachers from South Korea and the United States. Participants in the study consisted of 44 South Korean and 21 US secondary science teachers. Data was collected from open-ended and Likert-type questionnaires. Results indicated that each individual teacher’s conception was considerably limited, but the teachers’ conceptions of creativity as a whole group were consistent with the literature. In terms of teaching methods for creativity, the teachers commonly emphasized problem-based or project-based inquiry which was consistent with the literature. The South Korean teachers tended to consider ethics as a more important criterion for judging creativity than the US teachers and emphasized providing thinking opportunity for fostering creativity, while the US teachers emphasized environmental or emotional support. Possible sources of these differences were discussed. The commonly mentioned constraints included pressure of content coverage for high-stakes tests, difficulties in assessing creativity, and class size. Suggestions for professional development of teachers and further research questions were made based on the findings.     

Making the most of the mosaic: facilitating post-school transitions to higher education of disadvantaged students

Research studies of post-school education and training conducted in Australia and internationally have revealed a mosaic of students’ education and employment experiences, with a multiplicity of nonlinear pathways. These tend to be more fragmentary for disadvantaged students, especially those of low socio-economic background, rural students, and mature aged students seeking a ‘second chance’ education. Challenges faced by students in their transitions to higher education are made more complex because of the intersection of vertical stratification created by institutional and sectoral status hierarchies and segmentation, especially relating to ‘academic’ and ‘vocational’ education and training, and the horizontal stratification of regional, rural and remote locations in which students live. If we are to achieve the equity goals set by the Bradley Review (Bradley et al., Review of Australian Higher Education Final Report, 2008) we need to acknowledge and work with the complex realities of disadvantaged students’ situations, starting at the school level. Interrelated factors at the individual, community and institutional level which continue to inhibit student take-up of higher education places are discussed in the context of discursive constructions of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘choice’ in late modernity. Research highlights the need to facilitate students’ post-school transitions by developing student resilience, institutional responsiveness and policy reflexivity through transformative education.