Youth Perspectives on Educational Inequalities during COVID-19: A Korean YPAR Project

• In Event: Lessons from COVID -19 in Lifelong Education

Proposal

This paper explores Korean youth’s perspectives on educational inequalities during COVID-19 and presents policy recommendations based on youth voices. We seek to answer two research questions: 1) How have high school youth in Seoul, South Korea experienced educational inequalities during COVID-19? and 2) Based on youth’s voices, what policy recommendations can be made to address educational inequalities during COVID-19?
The paper is based on a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project conducted with youth in Seoul, South Korea from February to November 2021. The topic of study was chosen based on participating youth’s experiences with widening educational gaps during COVID-19. Initiated with the hopes of addressing an educational inequity issue that impacts the lives of participating youth, the YPAR approach enabled us to embed youth perspectives throughout the research process.
YPAR engages youth as research collaborators, reconstructing youth as holders of knowledge (Cammarota & Fine, 2008). In doing so, YPAR challenges traditional power dynamics in research where the researcher writes and produces knowledge about the researched from a detached and neutral standpoint (Torre & Ayala, 2009). As such, YPAR has been understood as a “radical epistemological challenge” that redefines where knowledge exists (Fine, 2008, p. 215). Grounded in feminist, anti-racist, and social justice frameworks, YPAR questions existing social hierarchies and engages in critical social change (Cahill, Quijada Cercer & Bradley, 2010; Cammarota, 2017). This project draws from YPAR’s critical orientation to center often-silenced youth voices in imagining and enacting a more equitable education.
Striving for educational equity has become ever more challenging during the pandemic (Fay et al., 2020). Educational inequalities worsened as disparities in socioeconomic status and family backgrounds played a larger role in shaping students’ learning experiences (Frohn, 2021; Reimers, 2022). In Korea, students’ socioeconomic background, mediated by access to electronic devices, availability of educational support from family, and access to private education, disparately affected student learning during COVID-19 (Park, 2020). Korean schools quickly adopted distance learning and implemented policies to lend electronic devices to low-income students (Byun & Slavin, 2020). However, challenges posed by COVID-19 exacerbated existing educational inequalities in Korea where students’ class backgrounds play an influential role in their access to private education, widening the gap between academic achievements of high and low-income students (Byun & Kim, 2010).
This study focuses on the city of Seoul, where educational disparities have been at the highest levels in the country even before COVID-19 (Kim et al, 2020). The YPAR research was funded by a small research grant from the Seoul Institute and aimed to provide policy recommendations at the metropolitan government level. Our study adds a qualitative study that highlights underexplored youth perspectives on educational inequalities during COVID-19 to the emerging literature on the topic.
We conducted our research in three stages. Firstly, we surveyed existing Korean scholarship on COVID-related educational inequalities and analyzed relevant policies issued by the Seoul metropolitan government and Seoul metropolitan office of education.
Secondly, we conducted interviews to gather in-depth insights into youth perspectives on educational inequalities during the pandemic. We first interviewed three high school teachers and administrators to contextualize our understanding of educational inequalities that shape everyday experiences at high schools in Seoul. Then, we interviewed twelve high school students on their experiences with schooling and educational inequalities during COVID-19. Semi-structured interviews allowed us to shed light on students’ experiences with educational inequalities during the pandemic in their own words (May, 2011). We employed purposive and convenience sampling to recruit students who reside in and attend high schools in Seoul, South Korea. The interviewees represented a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and school types.
Based on our interviews, we drafted suggested policy recommendations to address educational inequalities during the pandemic. We conducted a focus group interview with six student interviewees to ask their opinions on relevant policies of the Seoul metropolitan government and Seoul metropolitan office and seek input on our initial list of suggested policies. The focus group interview helped us create a setting where participants co-create richer insights by adding their thoughts to the group conversation (Williams & Katz, 2001). We finalized eight policy recommendations after the focus group interview.
Our findings highlighted educational inequalities during COVID-19 as experienced by students. Online classes posed numerous challenges to students, including difficulties with focusing, challenges in asking questions to teachers, and exposure of students’ home settings via video. Restricted in-school sessions, which were provided every other week to high school students from April 2020 to September 2021, left students with few opportunities to build social relationships and engage in civic and extracurricular activities. Interviewees shared their experiences with widening educational disparities during COVID-19, including feeling left behind for students who could not afford private education, witnessing widening gaps between less-resourced students and those with additional educational support, and struggling with access to electronic devices and wifi.
Based on results from student and focus group interviews, we suggested eight short and long-term policy directions. Our recommendations are: 1) Better publicity of Seoul metropolitan office of education’s educational support policies 2) Creation of a system to reflect student voices on educational policy-making processes 3) Increase in educational subsidies 4) Production of student-centered class content to be utilized in teaching basic learning standards 5) One-on-one academic counseling for students 6) Provision of various pedagogies and class subjects for individualized education 7) Access to diverse extracurricular educational experiences 8) Long-term structural change needed to eradicate educational inequalities.
In a pandemic setting where urgency and uncertainty often took priority over student voices in policy-making processes, our YPAR project foregrounded youth perspectives in improving educational equity. Co-led by high school youth, this project created a space for youth to take agency in imagining how their educational experiences could be improved. In doing so, it enabled youth to break away from neoliberal subjectivities under highly competitive Korean education and engage in citizenship practices by challenging norms perpetuated in the schooling system (Cho, 2015; Landgraf, 2020). Youth voices need to take center stage as we build towards a better, more equitable education.

Authors

• Woohee Kim, Harvard University

• Jeungeum Woo, Seoul Global High School