Towards Progressive and Dynamic Multicultural Education: Teachers’ Awareness of Multicultural Education in South Korean Schools

While multicultural education was first started in the United States by concerned activists and educators to secure social justice for both presently and historically marginalized groups, educators in other parts of the world are seeing it as a tool to better meet the needs of their own marginalized students. Such is the case in South Korea, which has experienced rapid demographic changes in recent decades. This article explores how South Korean teachers understand the increasing diversity in South Korean society and examines their perspectives on multicultural approaches in schools using a survey of 86 schoolteachers in three different cities. The findings suggest a need for politicalization of multicultural education beyond mere tools to address immediate problems facing the cultural others in Korea. 

While multicultural education was first started in the United States by concerned activists and educators to secure social justice for both presently and historically marginalized groups, educators in other parts of the world are seeing it as a tool to better meet the needs of their own marginalized students. Such is the case in South Korea, which has experienced rapid demographic changes in recent decades. This article explores how South Korean teachers understand the increasing diversity in South Korean society and examines their perspectives on multicultural approaches in schools using a survey of 86 schoolteachers in three different cities. The findings suggest a need for politicalization of multicultural education beyond mere tools to address immediate problems facing the cultural others in Korea.