Voices of Students and Teachers: Multicultural Education and the Well-Being of Students from Diverse Backgrounds in South Korea

• In Event: Teacher Identities, kindness curriculum and systemic reform

Proposal

In the past two decades, South Korea has experienced a shift from a homogenous to an ethnically diverse population largely due to an influx of migrants. When children born into these families enroll in Korean public schools, they alter classroom dynamics and demonstrate the need for better adaptation. Although a multicultural curriculum has been developed, the strong emphasis on the Korean language and culture has further led to maladjustment and marginalization. With the 2006 curriculum, the Ministry of Education recognized the difficulties children from diverse backgrounds face when adapting to school life that create not only education gaps but also lead to mental health issues. Students from diverse backgrounds are 2.3 percent more likely to experience school bullying (Ministry of Education 2023). By providing students with extra Korean classes, the government aimed to support these students.
Our study explores the association between the implemented multicultural curriculum and the well-being of students from diverse backgrounds. Well-being is a salient factor in determining academic success, healthy relationships, and overall physical and emotional wellness for better school integration and contentment (Seligman et al. 2009). Through the lens of culturally inclusive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995) and well-being theory (Seligman 2011), we provide a stronger understanding of how the culturally inclusive curriculum relates to the well-being of students from diverse backgrounds. The findings contribute to the body of research by possibly identifying the components of successful inclusivity and the improvement of Korea’s current multicultural education and curriculum.
Our research questions are the following:
1. How do teachers recognize their role as implementors of the multicultural curriculum?
2. How do teachers and students from diverse backgrounds perceive the well-being of these students?
3. What are the teachers' and students’ perspectives on the relationship between the implemented multicultural curriculum and the well-being of students from diverse backgrounds?
We conducted semi-structured interviews with students and teachers to gather accounts of their experiences in schools. In exploring the respondents’ views and experiences with the multicultural curriculum, we took an interpretive approach, using an inductive strategy to search for common themes and present these outcomes through a descriptive interpretation (Creswell 2003; Merriam 2002). The interpretive approach helped us look at the deeper meaning beyond what the participants shared, ultimately enabling us to find patterns between experiences.
To ensure a more robust and accurate data set, we first sent each participant a brief survey to fill out. The questionnaires provided us with demographic information such as birth country, length of time living in Korea, and what culture they identify with. In addition, to learn more about their perceptions of the term “well-being,” they were asked to rank their top ten choices in order of importance (one being the most important) that define well-being based on the PERMA theory of well-being (Seligman 2011). This allowed us to understand how they experience well-being in their lives.
We then conducted in-depth semi-structured interviews with five teachers and three students from diverse backgrounds. We employed open-ended questions to obtain participatory knowledge claims through a narrative approach by collecting the individual stories of their past experiences (Creswell 2003; Taylor et al. 2015).
Our findings identify components of well-being such as positive relationships, a sense of belonging, strong language skills, and a character development process that influences identity formation and school adjustment. One of the major findings of this study was the important role of teachers in the lives of students from diverse backgrounds. All three interviewed students referred to their teachers as important to their lives, especially in helping them adjust to Korean cultural norms and classroom settings. Throughout our interviews, we found that not only teachers but relationships between peers and parents affect the lives of students from diverse backgrounds. More specifically, friendships helped them to overcome hardships and made them feel included. Lastly, one of the concurrent responses across all our teacher and student interviews was that the multicultural curriculum was either superficial in its efforts or lacking in its application. For the teacher responses, many mentioned there were no noticeable practical efforts in the curriculum or resources available for teachers.
Our research confirms that CRP can be used to integrate students from diverse backgrounds into Korean classrooms effectively. However, while CRP focuses solely on the importance of students maintaining their identity, we posit that preserving one’s culture while embracing the mainstream culture showed positive results for students. Ultimately, the sense of belonging students from diverse backgrounds feel, as well as the support they receive through an additional multicultural curriculum, appears to improve their well-being, strengthening the need for proper implementation of the multicultural curriculum. From our findings, CRP is not currently present in Korean schools. Its introduction and active use in Korean classrooms would promote the well-being and effective integration of students from diverse backgrounds.
Additionally, it is important to develop an adequately robust multicultural curriculum that can effectively assist students from diverse backgrounds in adjusting to public school settings and that allows all students to participate in an environment of mutual respect and curiosity for different cultural identities and languages.
Finally, we underscore the need for concrete strategies to guide future research and practical initiatives aimed at promoting continued discourse on multicultural education, recognizing these students as the next contributing generation of adults shaping the evolving landscape of Korea.

Authors

• Doori Kim, Stanford Graduate School of Education

• Jessica Lichtner, Stanford University