Moribund Curriculum: Shadow Education in South Korea and Its Effects on Public Schooling

• In Event: Decolonizing Standards, Shadow Education, and Abolitionist Teaching

Abstract

This study builds on Huebner’s work to explore how schooling and curriculum practices have been replaced by shadow education in South Korea. Westerners tend to interpret Korean education based on the results of standardized tests such as the PISA and TIMMS, but the reality is that in South Korea, school curricula and teachers’ professional teaching practices have been increasingly weakened as more students have relied on shadow education. Based on qualitative in South Korea, this study explores how students learn outside of schooling, with results that may be surprising for Western readers. These findings emerging are becoming increasingly relevant even in the West, as this unexpected trend in student learning culture is becoming a pervasive part of education and development.

Authors

• Seongho Choi, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Jaeseong Jo, Chinju National University of Education