A journey from the classroom to the world of educational reform: a study of three Korean teachers’ practitioner inquiry

Abstract

This article explores three Korean teachers’ experiences of carrying out practitioner inquiry as a means of providing meaningful teaching under the test-centred schooling regime in Korea. Practitioner inquiry is a concept that includes multiple genres of educational research such as action research, teacher research, and self-study that aim to change practitioners’ individual practice and, ultimately, the schooling in a society. Based on the analysis of qualitative data, the researcher found that teachers developed their knowledge and expertise in their specific areas of interest and developed strong motivations for transforming the education system. However, their inquiry was limited in practice due to the imposition of test preparation and a prescribed national curriculum. As a result, greater collaboration among practitioners, which not just involves teachers, but wider entities such as administrators, policy makers, and researchers, is required to challenge the current unjust system.

Keywords:

• Practitioner inquiry
• education reform
• standardized tests
• teaching to the test
• national curriculum

Notes

1. This is a new type of private high school in Korea that has been approved and regulated by the Ministry of Education. These schools have more flexibility in deciding school curricula, although most of them cover the national curriculum in their school curriculum to prepare for Suneung and college admission. They also have their own admissions policy and procedures to accept applicants from every local education district in the Seoul metropolitan area. Typical Korean public schools and private schools are controlled by the local education office, follow the guidelines of the national curriculum, and accept students assigned by their local education office.

2. “Kaemidong” is an abbreviation of the Korean phrase, “깨끗한 미디어를 위한 교사운동”, which means “teacher movement for clean media”. Because the original Korean name of this community is long, Kang preferred to use its abridged form Kaemidong. This article also uses the abridged name for brevity. When this community is officially presented, Kaemidong is used along with its original name.

3. Unlike other private schools, the VCCS does not belong to the public education system because it is not regulated by the local education office or the Ministry of Education (MOE). Thus, it has complete freedom to decide and carry out school curricula as well as student admission. However, graduating from the VCCS is not considered to be official completion of high school, so students should take an additional national exam if they want to be officially qualified.

4. Because the term “practitioner inquiry” is still unfamiliar to many Korean teachers and this area has not been well established, it is hard to estimate to what extent practitioner inquiry is prevalent in Korea. The concept of practitioner inquiry and action research has been introduced by a few scholars since early 2000s, yet it is not a common term used among many teachers. In Korea, the term “research” (yeongu) is used more often than practitioner inquiry to encompass teachers’ efforts to improve their professional knowledge and practice, which involves a teacher’s collaborative or self-study, taking professional development courses, and conducting research at graduate programmes (Ro & Seo, 2010).

5. For example, Jang combined the jigsaw method with his science experiment class, which he called a “table-tour jigsaw experiment class”. The teacher prepares four tables, each set up with simple but different experiments about the day’s topic. Students are divided into four tables and execute the experiment on their table. After completing the experiments, students are divided again and sent to different tables to form four new groups that will perform the rest of the experiments together. The student who remains at the original table is called the “expert”. This student repeats the previous experiment and explains the results to the new group members. Then all the group members move to the next table together and conduct the next experiment under the new expert’s lead. All groups rotate at the same time at the teacher’s signal. The table tour process repeats until every student completes all four experiments.