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This division has engendered clearly perceived differences between two, and South Korea has maintained a strong tendency to prefer a homogeneous and uniform society, which has been reinforced by nationalist and anti-communism thoughts. From the s to the s the Korean government encouraged emigration as a means of population control, immigration into Korea was allowed only for highly skilled groups. However, since the late s Korea has faced rapid globalization, mass migration, and a dramatic demographic change in ethnicity, race, and language Kim, One reason for 2 increased migration to Korea is the slowing growth of the labour force, due in part to the influence of expanding compulsory education and the need for workers for the booming housing construction industry Kim, Since the s, these changes have forced the Korean government to make changes to its immigration policy in order to bring in and to control the arrival of foreign workers Kim, However, the government has been mainly concerned with the import of a cheap labour force in some industrial sectors, while also preventing these workers from pursuing permanent residency Lee, Historically, Korean rural families were agriculture-based and followed Confucian traditions.
However, globalization and urbanization have altered this traditional way of social organization. For example, with rapid urbanization, many young women in rural areas have chosen to leave the challenges of hard labour and economic troubles, and have migrated to urban areas in search of better education, careers, and spousal opportunities.
As a result, rural men have had more difficulty finding a Korean partner. The government therefore responded by focusing on an immigration policy to attract foreign women for settlement in rural areas. Men who could not get married began to find spouses from outside the country, and thus the number of marriage-immigrants has increased. This has led, in part, to the 1 According to the National Statistics Office , the proportion of international marriages jumped nearly eight-fold since In , the percentage of international marriages among all marriages in Korea was 1.
Now, there are , foreign workers and , marriage-immigrants Ministry of Government Administration and Home Affairs, There are , foreign workers residing in Korea; they are from China For example, several studies have shown that multicultural families face difficulties with language and cultural differences even within their own families, as well as between them and other Koreans. Moreover, studies have shown that when children from multicultural families enter school, they have lower levels of linguistic 0 20, 40, 60, 80, , , , For example, Korean activists and international organizations have identified deep-rooted racial discrimination in schools and work places, and they have pressured the Korean government to formulate policies that support immigrants, mixed-race people, and their children through protection of their human rights UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, In April , the government held a cabinet meeting during which the President, the Prime Minister, various heads of ministries, and experts discussed plans to improve the conditions of migrant workers, marriage immigrants, and their children in Korea J.
His success as a football player inspired many mixed-race people in Korea to believe that they can succeed and overcome discrimination by Koreans. It also prompted many Koreans to recognize the need not to be prejudiced against Others. The policies included a focus on helping multicultural children adjust to school and learn more effectively, and on helping mainstream Korean students perceive and respect diversity and difference. The most significant aspect of this policy was reform of the national curriculum and textbooks to include a focus on societal change toward a multicultural society and a variety of types of families Cho et al.
Since then, the government has formulated successive plans to better support children of multicultural backgrounds and make teachers more aware of the multicultural society. Korea has a centralized education system, which falls under the jurisdiction of both the central government and provincial governments. The central government formulates the national education policy, which provides state-wide guidelines and norms.
It also has the authority to set up national curriculum and criteria for textbooks. The provincial governments formulate annual 5 As of the s, Korean textbooks e. The central government can allocate monies to provincial governments to promote new and significant policies, which in turn influences provincial governments and schools to implement these policies and participate in national projects. While provincial governments have some autonomy, under a centralized education system, they are considerably influenced by national education policy and agendas.
The national multicultural education policy represents the education across Korea, and is a focus of my analysis.
I have worked at the Korean Ministry of Education for over ten years. I participated in making policies and projects for enhancing educational equity to help address issues associated with marginalized students and families. As a result, the government formulated multi-faceted solutions and policies. I participated in the policy-making process and became well aware of the policy outcomes and their limited ability to mediate conflict between various stakeholders.
During that time, I met a lot of people, including teachers, principals, district officers, multicultural families, social activists, policy experts, and staff members of volunteer organizations. However, after different experiences with various groups and multicultural families, I began to ask myself: Can we move beyond that? To what extent are our citizens aware of difference and ultimately willing to embrace it?
In Korea, there are different kinds of multicultural families depending on their home countries, race, wealth, educational level, and so on. For example, some multicultural families in which at least one of the parents is white and from North America or Western Europe, speaks English, and has a high economic status, might be treated well in Korea. Though they may have some difficulties in communicating and learning, they will experience an amicable atmosphere. On the other hand, some multicultural families whose parents are from a developing country, have low socioeconomic status, and are not fluent in Korean or English can experience discrimination and prejudice.
Also, the support they receive from the community varies depending on their home country, religions, and residential area.
For instance, immigrants from China or Japan are part of well-established immigrant groups, and have larger and stronger ethnic networks than those from Vietnam or the Philippines. Those who are in Korea due to marriages arranged by the Unification Church, which has promoted international marriage, are provided support by their network.
Those who live in the rural area have less access to community services than do those living in metropolitan areas, partly because of the simple fact of physical distance, but also because of their Korean family members often discourage them from using such services. In that decision-making process, the groups that were assumed to have the weakest support became the main policy subjects and were perceived as marginalized and far from being empowered.
Based on these experiences in making policy, I question whether Korean multicultural education policy is socially just and fulfills the needs of multicultural families. Unexpectedly, I experienced the challenges of transitioning from being a Korean citizen who is a part of the majority and mainstream culture to a non-citizen who is a part of a minority in Canada.
Canadian multiculturalism as an ideology Ng, inspired me to think of the image of a liberal, tolerant, and celebratory multiculturalism. The policy outcomes are evident in Vancouver, where many immigrants from diverse countries seem to put down roots and play a significant role in society. In Canada there also seems to be less prejudice against immigrants as compared to Korea. However, it seems that the most fundamental objective is for all students to learn the English language and Canadian values in schools aside from some programs to support Mandarin language learning or French immersion education.
These experiences and findings encouraged me to analyze multicultural education policy from a critical perspective. This gave me a chance to look back on what I contributed to and what I had overlooked during my own work in policy development in Korea. At the same time, my experiences have provided me an opportunity to explore policy options that may lead to better schooling and equitable futures for all diverse cultural groups in Korea. I also examine shifts in the policy over a decade, focusing on what has been achieved with the policy and whether it has contributed to making a more equitable Korean society or whether it has simply served to maintain the existing order.
A Critical Discourse Analysis CDA methodology frames my analysis of the discourse and my interpretation of multicultural education policy texts and representations within the official policy documents of Korea. My analysis examined five multicultural education policy documents published by the Korean Ministry of Education in , and from to Throughout my study I used the lens of critical multiculturalism to provide an analytic framework to gain a deeper understanding of how race, ethnicity, class, and gender were represented in various social contexts.
I discuss this further in Chapter Three. In analyzing the policy, I focused on two themes relating to the classified groups of minority e. With these aims, the major research questions in this study are: What approach toward multicultural education has the government of Korea drawn on to support multicultural students and to encourage Korean citizens to accept diversity and difference? In what way does the policy promote a change in education, or in what ways does it promote maintenance of existing values? I also discussed the source of my interest in and relationship to this topic, namely my role as one of the developers of Korean multicultural education policy and my interest in critiquing and improving it, especially since my role and disposition has led me to empathize with the situation of immigrants living in Korea.
These comprise the aims of the research and its research questions. Chapter Two provides a review of the pertinent literatures on multicultural policy and multicultural education from the Western perspective, and on discourses on multicultural education policy and practice in Korea. In Chapter Three, I explain the theoretical framework 14 that I drew on for this study.
In Chapter Four, I explain a critical discourse analysis as an appropriate methodology for this study. Using a Critical Discourse Analysis methodology allowed me to examine the ideology and power relations embedded in multicultural education policy, and in policy more generally, and to interrogate the social process mediated by language. Chapter Five provides a critical analysis of the multicultural education policy documents and related discourses and suggests key findings. In the last chapter, after analyzing and reflecting on the work, I suggest what should be given more consideration in policy making and practice in multicultural education in order to contribute to a more socially just society.
I also make recommendations for future research. Literature Review In this chapter, I outline the multicultural education policy research that has been conducted from various perspectives and approaches in diverse countries with distinct histories. This literature review comprises three main parts: I took this comparative approach because different multicultural societies have different histories and traditions and include different kinds of cultural diversity Parekh, Multicultural education, originally linked with concerns about racism in U. Multicultural education first emerged as an idea or reform movement to change the content and practices in schools, and was considered an ongoing process to make critical changes in schools and in society Banks, Sleeter and Grant developed a taxonomy of multicultural education, and suggested the five approaches: Briefly, each dimension can be described as follows: Banks argues that these dimensions can inform teachers about their transformative roles in the classroom.
Specifically, he emphasizes an empowerment of school culture and social structure as key aspects of multicultural education, due to its potential to restructure institutions, including schools, in order to foster a society that is equitable for all its members. Kincheloe and Steinberg offer five philosophical approaches to 17 multiculturalism: According to them, conservative multiculturalists regard non-white and poor children as inferior to those who are from white, middle-class families, and they focus on assimilating these children into mainstream society. Meanwhile, liberal and plural multiculturalists emphasize the provision of equal opportunities children need to compete in society, as well as the need to accommodate cultural diversity.
However, even 18 in Canada, there has been a long debate over the effectiveness of the policy of multiculturalism. Meanwhile, scholars like Kymlicka asserted that multiculturalism in Canada has played a constructive role in both individual identity and institutional design. That is, multiculturalism has enabled Canadian-born citizens and immigrants to Canada to have a high level of mutual identification, which has helped in establishing national identity and in creating feelings of solidarity. Also, he has insisted that multiculturalism has helped make educational institutions and political processes more inclusive of difference Kymlicka, , Yet, another view of multiculturalism has pointed out that the policy and practice of multiculturalism continues to position certain ethno-racial groups at the margins, rather than in the mainstream of public culture and national identity.
Dei criticized the much vaunted idea of the mosaic as a hierarchy of cultures, and called for anti-racism education. This criticism of liberal multiculturalism has some things in common with anti-racism. Anti-racism is a strong trend in the U. S, and more recently in Canada. Anti-racism education aims at dismantling structures and systems that have generated and perpetuated the 19 racial barriers and inequities in policies, programs, and practices of the educational system Dei, ; Henry et al.
Wright points out that Canadian multiculturalism has evolved over time. Unlike those Western European countries where conservative leaders pronounced a retreat from multiculturalism, Canada has tended to maintain it.
However, Wright warns of its demise due to a duality of external and internal threats. Ghosh and Abdi also analyzed ideological shifts in Canadian multicultural theory as divided into five phases in which the main concept is one of the following: In the second phase, adjustment, cultural pluralism and the need to help minorities adjust to the dominant culture through compensatory programs were emphasized.
In the third stage, the accommodation of other ethnocultural groups is achieved, but the removal of racism and discrimination is not. The fourth stage of incorporation enables the removal of barriers through affirmative action and equal opportunity programs. Lastly, in the final stage, integration, all groups are regarded as equal and the empowerment of school cultures is encouraged. Joshee and Sinfield classified the diverse discourses on multicultural education policy in Canada into three groups liberal social justice discourses, neoliberal discourses, and neoconservative discourses , and claimed that the current combination of neoliberal and neoconservative discourses in multicultural education has constructed diversity as a problem or threat to safety, and has positioned minority students as having deficits that need to be addressed.
They pointed out the recent shift in Canadian multicultural education policy from social justice to social cohesion, and demanded a call for liberal social justice discourse. These studies inform us that even in countries with heterogeneous populations and state-led multiculturalism policies, there are ongoing debates over the relationship between unity and diversity, and liberal democratic principles and the politics of difference.
Nagy points out that Japan has maintained a restrictive immigration policy and has had no state-level mechanism supporting migrants in Japan. Instead, it was local governments that began to initiate incorporation policies, policies toward foreigners, multicultural co-existence policies, and social integration policies because migrants entering Japan had to register at the local government office where they lived.
He claimed that it is a service-centred policy e. Even though the policy emphasizes coexistence, it does not yet include efforts to challenge social inequality through multicultural education. Globalization is one of the most important factors that have accelerated the advent of multicultural society in Korea, with its flows of people, ideas, and information Appadurai, At the same time, globalization has brought about problems because it subsumes social, cultural, and political matters under an economic logic Harvey, In the globalized era, mobility is unevenly distributed Bauman, To some, mobility reflects privilege or capital in that it allows people to maintain or improve their cultural and economic status within a stratified society by becoming transnational elites Castells, Migrant workers who move from developing countries to global cities are not privileged Sassen, ; Waters, The withdrawal of government from its role in securing social infrastructure has left individuals responsible for their own security in the social, economic, and employment arenas Harvey, Thus, this era of global capital allows only the strongest, fittest, and fastest to obtain more opportunities; similarly, the worsening conditions for the underprivileged classes are explained as a result of their lack of rigorous work, whereas their lack of equal opportunities to develop competitive strengths tends to be overlooked Harvey, Neoliberal globalization demands that education systems be more aligned with economic considerations and market efficiency, and has brought about an increasing polarization and 23 hierarchicalization of education and the workforce Hirrt, Since announcing its initial multicultural education policy in , many studies have been conducted on multicultural families and multicultural education.
Many multicultural students have shown lower levels of achievement than mainstream Korean students, and have experienced discrimination in school Jeon, ; Oh, ; Oh, Several studies on multicultural education programs revealed that the two most common programs were cultural education for multicultural understanding for both mainstream Korean students and multicultural students, and Korean language education for multicultural students.
Furthermore, most of the programs were geared towards multicultural students only, and most courses were one-time events rather than on-going courses Cho et al. Furthermore, Lee , in her critical policy analysis, described five policy discourses that are embedded in the multicultural education policy of Korea: Lee, ; Kang, Lee claimed that policy makers reframed multicultural education at the level of early childhood to assimilate ethnic minorities, and that the experiences of teachers and the voices of parents and children from different cultural backgrounds were not represented sufficiently.
Kang concluded that the politics of government-led multicultural education policy and the reproduction of discourse through conservative news media contributed to maintaining this hegemony. I looked into how other subjects, including mainstream Korean students, teachers, and the public, as well as multicultural students, are perceived in the multicultural education policy, and what agendas are suggested for them to raise their critical consciousness.
Also, it was necessary to analyze the shift of discourses represented in multicultural education policy during the past decade, and to identify how the values and the centrality of the policy have changed, in what ways, and what can be done to achieve a more equitable society. It is through this lens that I explored, analyzed, and interpreted the underlying ideologies, assumptions, and relationships within multicultural policy and related social processes.
As a prior stage, I utilized the two different perspectives viewing policy and purpose of education of the functionalist perspective and the socially critical perspective. These helped me identify dialectic relations between the explicit agendas and implicit assumptions in the policy. On the other hand, globalization ideology and neoliberal economic discourse e. In Korea, globalization and neoliberalism are forces that have accelerated immigration, introduced societal change, and permeated the policy discourse through which the Korean government established its position on multicultural education.
As such, these lenses informed some of my discussion within my wider theoretical approach. Next are the globalization and neoliberalism ideologies. The five philosophical approaches to multiculturalism followed. Finally, five approaches to multicultural education helped me focus my study on multicultural education policy see Figure 3.
The critical multiculturalism theoretical framework 3. Yang explained that the rational perspective, which draws from a positivist view and functionalist assumptions about society, emphasized cost-efficient decision making, value-neutral manners, and an orderly and rational policy process, but ignored issues of power. He claimed that in this perspective the institutions in society contribute to the ongoing stability of the whole.
As Ball pointed out, policy is derived from the consequences of struggle and compromise between various interest groups, and eventually makes the dominant values of the authoritative group hegemonic. In this perspective, we are required to ask whose values are validated in the policy, and whose are not. The functionalist perspective takes it for granted that education plays an important role in the functioning of society; when it works well, education is seen as bringing benefits such as economic development, social cohesion, and enhanced life chances for individuals, and that these benefits accrue to both society and to individuals within that society.
However, the socially critical perspective sees that the social structure is inherently inequitable, and that education in its current form both reflects and replicates unequal distribution of power and resources. The failure of education to produce benefits for those living in poverty is not 29 simply a glitch in an otherwise benevolent system, but rather is a result of the inequalities built into society and the education system Raffo et al.
This approach was based on the assumption that poor and non-white students are inferior to those from white, middle-class families. In Korea, we can think of this as the relation between children from multicultural family and mainstream Korean students. Conservative and monoculturalists dismiss the notion of power relations between such different groups, and thus, racism, class bias, and gender bias are not given consideration in the construction of their argument. In contrast, liberal multiculturalism emphasizes sameness, innate commonalities, and universal equality among groups McLaren, That is, individuals from diverse 30 races, classes, and gender groups share a natural equality and a common humanity, which allows them to compete equally for resources in a capitalist society.
However, pluralist multiculturalism fails to recognize the power relations among identity construction, cultural representation, and struggles over resources. Kincheloe and Steinberg pointed out the narrowness of essentialist multiculturalism in that they 31 overlook the importance of the intersectionality of oppression and the possibility of a broader coalition for an inclusive political, cultural, and economic democracy. Critical multiculturalism is concerned with the contextualization of what gives rise to race, class, and gender inequality, and with the intersectionality Crenshaw, of social identities or related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination, to understand how systemic injustice and social inequality occur on a multidimensional basis.
Even though the approaches were organized and used to study context in the U. The authors combined two typologies, one from Gibson and the other from Pratte , pointing out the limitations of each, such as the lack of a 32 more elaborate theorization, an overemphasis on race and not gender or social class , and a tendency to deal with issues of cultural diversity, but not social equality. Sleeter and Grant constructed their own typology of five approaches to multicultural education based on how each approach understands difference.
These approaches helped me focus my critical discourse analysis. It is based on human capital theory, which regards education as a form of investment in that individuals acquire knowledge and skills that can be used to get better jobs. However, people of both orientations aim to help students assimilate into the mainstream and ignore the wider social structural issues, such as structural barriers to economic access, and discrimination and inequality perpetuated by the majority group.
The second approach, Human Relations, aims to foster tolerance and positive feelings 33 among different groups, and to reduce prejudice and stereotyping, thus helping students of different backgrounds fit in with others and easily adapt to mainstream society. The educators who adopt this approach try to construct their classrooms to celebrate individual differences, and they regard difference as normal and valuable. However, Sleeter and Grant critically pointed out that this approach normalizes the distribution of power, and does not address institutional racism and the advantages that social stratification confers to dominant groups.
Instead, they regard prejudice as simply a matter of individual emotional disturbance. Third, the Single-Group Studies approach raises questions about the myth of the neutrality of education, the nature of knowledge, and the purpose of schooling. Thus, they emphasized that curriculum reform is the restructuring of knowledge, and they insist on including the stories and histories of the oppressed.
Single-Group Studies also focuses on the strength of the oppressed groups, and help them clarify their identities, and take pride in their ethnicity. However, this approach also has some limitations in that despite its emphasis on curriculum, curriculum is in fact left unreformed, or additional programs exist merely as add-ons and do not pay attention 34 to multiple forms of oppression.
The fourth approach, the Multicultural Education approach, promotes cultural pluralism and social equality by reforming aspects of the schooling process, such as curriculum, pedagogy, parent involvement, and tracking, for all students. Though this approach pays more attention than the other three approaches to issues of social inequality and injustice, its limitation is that educators in multicultural education often treat multiple forms of diversity e.
This is distinctly different from the Multicultural Education approach even though the two share the goals of promoting social structural equality and cultural pluralism. Sleeter and Grant described the four practices unique to this approach as follows: That is, by practicing democracy, students can learn to articulate their interests, openly debate issues with peers, organize and work collectively with others, and acquire and exercise power.
By analyzing the circumstances of their lives, students can develop consciousness about real injustices that exist in society and can bring about social, political, and economic change in the future by using their skills for social action.. In the processes of doing this, they can also coalesce across race, class, and gender lines. Sleeter and Grant concluded that even though some educators see 35 the Education That Is Multicultural and Social Reconstructionist approach as radical or infeasible in terms of implementation, they nonetheless favour this approach because it can teach students how to challenge the status quo, and promote coalitions between oppressed groups and other groups, including some that belong to the dominant racial, class, and gender groups.
As indicated above, these five approaches have different orientations and loci of interest in multicultural education; however, in examining relevant policy documents, these approaches are nonetheless useful in analyzing their status within policy documents, the ideology behind the policies, and how policy subjects are perceived. These approaches can also be useful in analyzing invisible power relations, and whether the multicultural education policy actually lessens the difficulties that multicultural children face.
In other words, did the policy address structural factors that produce or reinforce injustice and inequality, or did it simply accentuate individual differences? Neoliberal globalization has brought about an increasing polarization and hierarchicalization of education and the workforce Hirrt, It has also discouraged education for the sake of critical inquiry or seeking alternative modes of politics Giroux, Within the liberal globalization discourse, a new rhetoric of access and equity has emerged.
An emphasis on equal opportunity within an uneven society does not contribute to a more equitable social structure.
Thus, to convey the relevant backgrounds and meanings of the terms used in the policy documents, I made considerable efforts to select the most appropriate and accurate words in English by consulting with my supervisor and my native-English-speaking Canadian friends who major in English literature, while paying particular attention to words, metaphors, configurations, and priorities. It also prompted many Koreans to recognize the need not to be prejudiced against Others. In the next section, I look into the implicit construction and categorization of the multicultural students in the educational policy text 5. It was like a journey of discovering myself in relationship to the society to which I belong, as well as to the institutions within which I operate and the people who constitute Korean society. Yet, another view of multiculturalism has pointed out that the policy and practice of multiculturalism continues to position certain ethno-racial groups at the margins, rather than in the mainstream of public culture and national identity. My study reflects this critical 41 paradigm because I see the world and knowledge as the product of the social, political, and cultural struggles, and of asymmetries of power relations.
Also, neoliberalism that permeates and influences education policy, including multicultural education policy, helped me examine the process of policy formulation, the values on which it is based, and the shifts in policy agendas. Critical theories have been concerned with how domination takes place, as well as how human relations are shaped in the workplace, in schools, and in everyday life. During the s, critical approaches have received growing attention in the field of multicultural education. As Kincheloe and Steinberg put it, complex relations of power and human suffering get lost amidst the celebration of individualism and citizenship.
Dei contended that anti-racism theory mainly focuses on analysis of power relations and the relationship between social differences, and it seeks relationships that are more representative, equitable, inclusive, and capable of responding to the concerns and aspirations of marginalized communities. Critical approaches to multicultural education focus on a discourse analysis of social phenomena that distribute power and thereby contribute to inequalities between diverse ethno-cultural groups.
These approaches also draw attention to how marginalized groups resist the cultural hegemony of the majority group. Critical scholars conceive of multicultural education as something that should emphasize critical reflection and taking action that leads to social change 38 Gay, Specifically, critical multiculturalism that seeks social equality and social justice guided my analysis of the underlying assumptions of the multicultural education policy and helped me focus on what was represented in the policy document and what was not represented.
It also helped me appreciate what is needed in order to move toward a more just society. At the same time, the various approaches to multicultural education that informed me of the foci and goals of each approach helped me identify the values and orientations that underpin the multicultural policy, and also helped me examine the implicit power relations between multicultural students and mainstream Korean students that are constructed through the policy.
The theory of globalization and neoliberalism informed me of the impetus behind the migration of others to Korea, their differential treatments in Korean society, and the impact that neoliberalism has had t on the education policy framework within which the multicultural education policy is situated. I brought these theoretical frameworks together to critically analyze the policy document, focusing on the ideology of the policy, the construction of the image of multicultural children, 39 and the progress or changes that were made through the policy.
These are interwoven dialectically throughout the policy. I drew on a Critical Discourse Analysis to examine the underlying assumptions of the Korean multicultural education policy. This approach helped me to assess my social and political roles in multicultural education. In terms of paradigmatic stances, I subscribe to the critical paradigm.
My study reflects this critical 41 paradigm because I see the world and knowledge as the product of the social, political, and cultural struggles, and of asymmetries of power relations. In this study, the following are the three research questions I address: By using a critical discourse analysis, I explored how majority groups and multicultural families are constructed within the policy and how their needs and policy agendas are interrelated. I paid attention to the orientation of the policy, namely, whether it focused on maintaining the status quo or on bringing about change.
In this study, the meaning of the policy and its priorities were traced with analysis within and across the policy documents. He argues that CDA makes an effort to make explicit power relationships which are hidden in discourse, and thus, to derive results that have practical relevance Meyer, CDA is related to critical theories that are concerned with issues of power, privilege, justice, and hegemony.
Scholars in the critical research tradition share some assumptions: Scholars in the CDA tradition define discourse as language use as social practice, which reflects and constructs the social world dialectically, and which is mediated by power relations. Foucault's theories of discourse have had a tremendous impact on the social sciences. Fairclough and Wodak outlined several features of discourse, namely, that it does ideological work, it constitutes society and culture, and it is situated and historical.
Moreover, power relations are partially discursive, and the role of the analyst is to study the relationship between texts and social practices. CDA is popularly used to describe, interpret, and explain important educational problems. Specifically, CDA scholars focus on how language mediates relationships of power and privilege in social interaction, institutions, and bodies of knowledge Rogers, These characteristics of CDA can be summarized as in Table 4. Discourse It emphasizes on language use as social practice, which reflects and constructs the social world. Discourses do ideological work within historical contexts.
Analysis It suggests analytic tools for relationships between texts, discourse practices, and social practices. It is used for description, interpretation, and explanation. By analyzing multicultural education policy written text, documents and critically interpreting the meaning of the text through the lens of CDA, and by focusing on wording, metaphors, ethos, grammar, interactional control Fairclough, , I was able to detect what ethnic and cultural issues and inequalities are hidden in the educational policy.
Secondly, I believed the CDA approach was useful in identifying changes in multicultural education policy over time. Drawing on CDA, I was able to determine the discursive practices in producing and consuming the text the policy document on multicultural education Fairclough, Wodak , [and to] theories of social cognition T. Fairclough argues that discourse is an important form of social practice, which reproduces and changes knowledge, identities, and social relations, including power relations.
Fairclough insists that the goals of CDA are to contribute to social equity in multiple realms, including education. CDA regards education as a significant area for the reproduction of social relations, ideology, identity-formation, and possibilities of change Blommaert, With an emphasis on the centrality of context to language, CDA allows for an investigation of the relationship of language to power and to other social processes, actors, and relations Hyatt, Social processes can be seen as the interplay between three levels of social reality: Fairclough suggests that in this approach, analysis is focused on two dialectic relations: He demonstrates that there are three main ways in which semiosis relates to other social elements of social practices and social events: Networks of social practice are articulated through discourses Hyatt, The aim of policy analysis is to uncover how authors of texts which are seen as semiotic representations of social events represent and construct the social world, institutions, identities, and relationships, and how these are shaped and characterized ideologically through relations of power Hyatt, It offers a systematic framework for analysis, uncovering how language works as an agent in the discursive construction of power relations.
In this study, a CDA framework provided a systematic approach to investigate the relationships between multicultural children, multicultural education policy as social practices, and ideologies as represented through Korean literatures on social phenomena and policy documents. In what way does the policy promote a change in education, or in what ways does it promote a maintenance of existing values?
I first reviewed the related policy documents of other Ministries of Korea e. Then, I conducted data gathering and a preliminary content analysis of media and research in order to further examine textual representations of ethnocultural groups in Korea. From there, I began to examine specific educational policy documents for a focused CDA. In reviewing the related policies of other ministries, I determined that different values and agendas were proposed for different groups. In particular, openness was aimed at attracting foreign talents professionals in order to contribute to supporting the economy; social integration was targeted more at marriage immigrants; human rights were targeted at everyone; and public safety was aimed at illegal migrants.
This study examined a single type of document: These documents are produced annually by the Ministry of Education of Korea. From these documents, I chose to use five dating from the year and the years to Table 4. By reviewing them, I was able to trace a shift of the policy within the span of a decade.
In fact, prior to the document, there was little mention or representation of multicultural students or families in such documents. The government and Korean society assumed that multicultural students and families would be assimilated into Korean schools and society, and therefore the government did not consider them an important policy subject at that time. The announcement of the policy has particular significance in that it was the first major shift in official governmental policy, and this shift influenced subsequent research, policy making and implementation, and school practices.
The policy document, the most recent one, is important in that it was formulated by the new team that was established within the Ministry of Education earlier that year to focus on multicultural educational policy. After long discussions about the need to create a separate team to focus on multicultural education policy, the team was eventually established and was able to devote itself fully to its mission. As such, the creation of this new team confirms the growing importance of multicultural education policy.
It also provided me with the most recent 49 educational policy for my critical discourse analysis. Therefore, this document functions as a kind of nation-wide standard in the area of multicultural education. I organized, categorized, and coded the documents according to the research questions.
The first phase of my coding process involved the translation e. I chose to utilize both thematic analysis and the analysis of lexical choices to select, code, organize, translate, and file the selected textual sections or excerpts from the documents Glesne, In doing this, I read through the Korean language documents several times and found frequently used and emphasized words that were associated with specific groups, that is, policy subjects.
For example, the categories of multicultural children and mainstream Korean children were associated with different words and orientations depending on the policy agendas. The former is focused on the characteristics of multicultural children, such as their lack of Korean language, lack of academic achievement, and their potential for dual language capacity, and is aimed at promoting their adaptation to school. For their part, multicultural children should learn the Korean language in preparatory courses or after school program in order to be included in the mainstream school system, while mainstream students should learn tolerance and diversity in order to accept multicultural children as their peers.
This preliminary finding informed later phases of my CDA.
Prior research had shown that analyzing the policy documents with a critical or poststructuralist perspective can help in detecting the different positioning of majority and minority groups Y. Through this coding and categorization process, the data provided indications of how policy subjects were socially constructed.
Meanwhile, mainstream Korean students were not explicitly mentioned as policy subjects, which meant that they were seen as the norm. Furthermore, the multicultural students whose parents 51 were from North America or Western European countries were not likely to be regarded as policy subjects as they were assumed to have more chances and higher abilities despite their different ethnicity.
I will elaborate on this construction of multicultural students and the relation with mainstream students in the next chapter. The difficulties they encounter are different, but they are treated nearly the same. Mainstream Korean students Not explicitly mentioned as policy subjects Regarded as the norm, which makes others appear to be deviating from the norm. English-language speakers from Europe, North America By definition, this group is included in the multicultural family group.
But given the high socioeconomic status, it is not conceived as a policy subject. Many Korean husbands who have married to spouses from China, Mongolia, the Philippines, and Vietnam work as machine operators or builders, whereas the majority of Korean wives whose spouses are from the U.
These schools have a certain quota for Korean students who had lived in foreign countries for over three years, and the competition for entering these schools, specifically English-speaking schools, is high despite the high tuition fees. This situation also helped construct the image of English-speaking multicultural children as different from other multicultural children.
The CDA social processes approach focused on two dialectic textual relations: In this approach, all social processes constitute a social field, an educational institution, or political organizations, and are represented through discursive text Fairclough, In my study, social structure, which is general and abstract, reflects the historical, economic, social, and political contexts of Korean society. In a critical discourse analysis, the meta-level social practices were representative of the general field of education and how political elites used discursive strategies and images within this field to maintain or reproduce social privilege and ethnocultural inequalities.
Finally, for social events, I primarily selected texts that examined the policy subjects in relationship to discourses about their social conditions SES: Socio-Economic Status , educational outcomes, or opinions, as represented by statistics and reports. This multilevel model is complex and was only utilized for a few CDA processes. This will be explained in the next chapter. To explore the shifts in the policy, I first analyzed the policy document from , and focused on its rationale, its 54 orientation, and its perception of multicultural students and their families.
Then, I used these attributes to analyze similarities and differences between the other documents leading up to the policy document. A preliminary finding was that there was considerable progress made in instituting the policy recommendations within other policies, institutions, and infrastructure related to multicultural education policy; however, what I focused on was the current ideology and the fact that its underlying assumptions revealed that little had shifted or changed, and thus it reproduced existing values and inequalities, and contributed to only minor social change.
This was the focus of my CDA. In this way I hope to contribute to advancing the field of multicultural educational policy. This approach also provided me with a new opportunity to look at the policy and its priorities more deeply and with greater reflexivity, beyond my existing social policy values, norms, and procedures. In Korea, the first official policy document on multicultural education was only published in Before this time, there was recognition in Korea of demographic changes and new immigrant groups with diverse educational needs, but this was only acknowledged by teachers and activists at the local level.
There were no policies addressing these emerging issues at the central government level. Since that time, and since the creation of the first government policy document in , governments central and local , policy makers, researchers, and citizens have begun to pay more 55 attention to social and educational issues of multicultural students and their families. As such, the focus of my CDA could only include polices and discourses that presented the social perspective and the practices with respect to multicultural families and multicultural education starting in and the shifts afterwards.
This was the main limitation on my data collection and analysis. Thus, my research did not deal with interpretation and practices at the local level. This presented a challenge and some limitations in representing the dialectical relationship between the wider educational policy, as social process, and examples of social events or social actors who implement the policy recommendations.
I was limited in my ability to analyze the more local-level and unequal power relations between several groups such as children from multicultural families, mainstream Korean children, and diverse teachers and parents. Thus, I first read and analyzed policy documents in Korean.
The language shifts between Korean and English added another level of complexity to my research and analysis. To begin the analysis, I first had to translate the relevant English documents that related to critical multiculturalism discourse, the five approaches to multicultural education, and other discourses into Korean. This helped me use of theory to select valid texts. I thoroughly read the policy documents and selected the pertinent excerpts that showed the orientation or priorities of the policy, and then translated them from Korean to English so that I could place them within my English thesis.
However, when I translated these excerpts into English, I found it difficult to preserve the complex meaning and nuance of the labeling of the policy subjects, such as multicultural children, mainstream Korean students, and new-comer students. As such, my translation processes may have affected the accuracy of a CDA that endeavours to focus on 56 discursive vocabulary, grammar, syntax, and critical interpretation, in order to capture and convey the subtle nuance and sophisticated meanings. Thus, to convey the relevant backgrounds and meanings of the terms used in the policy documents, I made considerable efforts to select the most appropriate and accurate words in English by consulting with my supervisor and my native-English-speaking Canadian friends who major in English literature, while paying particular attention to words, metaphors, configurations, and priorities.
Nevertheless, it was a major challenge to translate, analyze, and interpret Korean text into the English language as well as to apply English theories and CDA methodology into Korean discourses. This represented another form of intertextual and dialectical analysis Fairclough A Critical Discourse Analysis and Findings 5. My CDA focused on multicultural educational policy documents that were published between and First, I provide a brief overview and description of the main characteristics of the and policy documents.
The focus of the analysis was the main purposes, agendas, and perceptions of the policy subjects, as well as discursive changes in the policy over time. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required. To get the free app, enter your mobile phone number. Would you like to tell us about a lower price? Learn more about Amazon Prime.
This definitive collection takes an in-depth look at the higher education system in Korea. The editors and contributors present a fundamentally Korean view of the important issues for the Korean higher education system. In systematic, well written essays, they construct theoretical perspectives to analyze the development of the higher education system in Korea's competitive society, a project never before undertaken in the English language.
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