Unfreezing Citizens and Reconstructing Curriculum-Making: Deliberative National Curriculum Revision Experiment in South Korea

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Seven
  In Roundtable Session: Comprehensive Perspectives on Teaching and Learning in Asian Contexts (Table 6)

Abstract

We explored the case of the South Korean Nation Curriculum Revision of 2022, which was a unique policy experiment emphasizing the democratic and deliberative process of state curriculum-making using policy learning and policy feedback theory. We argue that the 2022 NCR was policy elites’ attempt to enlighten the public and themselves about the deliberative and democratic process of curriculum-making which cultivated a culture of exercising civic agency; however, deliberations were dominated by the fear of surviving in the global market reiterating the preexisting psychology of catching up with the West and Western hegemony embedded in it. We discussed the implications from the perspective of Asia as method–an epistemological strategy overcoming the one-way flow of Western modernity.

Authors

• Soo Bin Jang, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Taeyeon Kim, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
  Presenting Author