Teaching ‘multiculturally’: geography as a basis for multicultural education in Korea

ABSTRACT

Along with its multicultural transformation, Korea is experiencing structural challenges of multicultural education that has been often criticized as assimilation driven and immigrant education oriented. In fact, multicultural education targeted at the Korean public should be as equally important as the newly arrived migrants, if not less. The paper seeks to identify existing complications of multicultural education in Korea by reviewing its practices in the sociopolitical context, while providing alternatives from the perspectives of geography. The importance of localization and place-based pedagogy is exemplified by the strength of geography education, emphasizing its compatibility and contributory potential to multicultural education. In addition, geography field trip lessons of Daegu that may be of interest to multicultural educators are presented as reference lessons in further developing multicultural education in Korea. By teaching multicultural education more ‘multiculturally,’ geography education not only outright reflects the richness of Korea’s growing cultural diversity, but also lends its flexibility nature and all-encompassing approaches to enhance social cohesion and inclusion.

KEYWORDS:

• Multicultural education
• geography education
• Korea
• localization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2016S1A5B8924268).

Notes on contributors

Shawn Shen

Dr. Shawn Shen is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography Education, and a researcher affiliated with Multicultural Studies Center supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea. His current research focuses on Korea’s international migration policy and the changing multicultural landscape and society. Dr. Shen has contributed to the featured fieldwork study on Tuvalu climate change migration and New Zealand. Previously, he has lectured at the School for International Studies, Simon Fraser University, Canada, and Department of Geography, University of Otago, New Zealand.