Why is future school reform canceled in high SES neighborhoods? Interpretations of global educational ideas by multiple stakeholders in South Korea

• In Event: Education Policy and Educational Reform

Proposal

Purpose
As the uncertainty grows with rapid changes in our societies due to globalization, and advanced science and technology, future competencies and future schools have gained popularity since the turn of the millennium (den Besten et al., 2011; Nasrun and Fang, 2013; OECD 2020). Future schools are founded on the belief that through appropriately designed education, students can be equipped with the right competencies to handle future challenges. It is important to note that future schools are not just about technology; the larger aim of future schools is whole child development; moving away from traditional academic-oriented learning to the balanced development of 21st-century competencies using technology.
In 2021, the Ministry of Education (MOE) in South Korea (hereinafter, Korea) announced the Green Smart Future School (GSFS) project. The GSFS is a reform project that aims to rebuild school buildings that are over 40 years old into eco-friendly, technology-embedded schools that can provide learner-centered and competency-based education through ICT(Ministry of Education, 2011). However, due to strong protests from Korean parents, the MOE backed off and allowed the schools to apply for withdrawal if they want. It is interesting to note that as a result, GSFSs in higher SES neighborhoods were all canceled, while those in lower SES neighborhoods remained active.
In this regard, this case study seeks to explore the complex phenomenon of why a future school reform is active in some districts while canceled in others by using the concepts of context and interpretations, which are the theoretical frameworks of policy borrowing studies.
Framework
The success or failure of educational reform depends on the interpretation of educational policies by various stakeholders such as teachers and parents (Vasallo, 2000; Brinkmann, 2019; You, 2019). In the process of interpretation, context plays a major role in determining how people interpret certain discourses.
This is especially true if educational reform is founded on borrowed ideas from the external system. In order to understand policy borrowing, understanding 'context' is crucial (Rappleye et al., 2011). This is because policies introduced from the outside of the system undergo a complex development process that is transformed while interacting with the context of the internal system (Cowen, 2009). As globalization becomes highly advanced, understanding the local context is becoming more and more complicated as new problems and paradigms of education emerge.
Therefore, context and interpretation are an important lens to help understand why some educational reforms are active while others are canceled by examining the gap between the policy discourse and the local interpretations.

Method
This study is a qualitative case study to investigate why the future school reform is active in some regions and canceled in others by exploring how different stakeholders at different levels (i.e., policymakers, teachers, and parents) interpret borrowed educational ideas embedded in the GSFS reform project.
In the first part of the study, discourse analysis was carried out with policy documents, government reports, and published articles to investigate how the policymakers interpret the global ideas and the GSFS project. The documents were reviewed multiple times to analyze what and why global ideas are borrowed in the GSFS reform project, and how are they translated at the policy level in Korea. In the subsequent part, within-case and cross-case analysis was conducted with interview and document data to examine how the local stakeholders (i.e., teachers and parents) interpret the global ideas and the GSFS project. The in-depth interviews were conducted with five teachers and five parents from two districts respectively; one district where the GSFS project was the most active (lower SES neighborhood), and one where it was all canceled (higher SES neighborhood).
Findings
Based on the analysis, it was possible to see that there are two gaps: (1) a gap between the political discourse of the GSFS reform and the interpretations of teachers and parents at the ground level, and (2) a gap between the local interpretations based on their SES context.
The central global educational idea embedded in the GSFS official discourse was ‘competency-based learning (CBE),’ ‘student-centered education (SCE),’ and ‘well-being’. On the political discourse level, SCE was translated as individualized learning and CBE was translated as digital competence, socio-emotional competencies (i.e., collaboration and communication), creativity (problem-solving skills), citizenship (i.e., civic participation, global citizenship), and transformative competency. The idea of well-being was translated as students’ individual relaxation and resting, and the eco-friendly school environment.
To the local stakeholders (i.e., teachers and parents), SCE was understood as an education with activities and process-oriented assessment. It was an education that is unrealistic in the higher SES neighborhood and a necessity in the lower SES neighborhood. CBE was interpreted as ICT-based learning, and while those in the higher SES neighborhood focused more on the negative side effects of using smart devices in school, teachers and parents in the lower SES neighborhood were actively adapting ICT in classrooms. On well-being, teachers and parents from both districts understood it as students’ happiness now in school, but those in the higher SES neighborhood tend to believe today’s well-being needs to be suffered to enjoy true well-being life afterward, while those in the lower SES neighborhood believed non-cognitive factors such as relationships and student agency can foster student well-being.
The findings show that these gaps in interpretation have instigated different regional responses to the GSFS reform. It was found that the gaps exist because various stakeholders in education (i.e., policymakers, teachers, and parents) responded differently to the fast-changing social contexts due to globalization in Korea.
Significance
This study contributes to policy borrowing studies by complicating the concept of local context, which was generally understood as having one dimension. While previous studies focused on how borrowed Western policy interacted with the local East Asian cultural context (Fu, 2014; Tan 2015; You, 2019), this study seeks to further complicate the issue by intersecting socioeconomic context with cultural context. Therefore, this study sparks the possibility of expanding scholarship on globalization by examining how global ideas interact with the intersection of various contexts in local societies, and how this affects and transforms them.

Author

• Hyeyon Chung, Yonsei University