Seung-Hwan Ham

Positioning Education in the Information Society: The Transnational Diffusion of the Information and Communication Technology Curriculum

One of the most distinctive qualities that characterize present-day society is the social fact that we are shifting to the information age. In recent years, we have witnessed remarkable developments in information and communication technology (ICT), in which microelectronics, computers, and telecommunications have converged. Transnational debates on its social and economic significance have made ICT “socially meaningful,” attracting considerable attention in different fields within the social sciences and humanities. In the 1980s, international agencies began to elaborate rationales in which ICT was viewed as providing scaffolding to enhance education (e.g., UNESCO 1986; World Bank 1988), as many scholars stressed the importance of informatics as a new language in the contemporary social condition under which the cooperative production of creative knowledge is highly emphasized (e.g., Toffler 1980; Lyotard 1984). In 2000, the Group of Eight heads of state adopted a charter that advocated providing more opportunities for school children to develop ICT literacy in order to prepare them to be “capable of responding to the demands of the information age” (G8 Heads of Government 2000, 2). With such processes of rationalization and further technological innovations, the social meaning of space and time has changed substantially, and

Educating Supranational Citizens: The Incorporation of English Language Education into Curriculum Policies.

This study investigates the cross-national institutionalization of English as a regular school subject over the past century and discusses how the rise of English as a global language in today’s curricular policy models around the world reflects an expansive conception of supranational citizenship. Our extensive comparative and historical data suggest that substantive societal characteristics of individual countries have played fairly insignificant roles in the rapid diffusion of English language education, especially in the past half century. This result sheds light on the institutionalist perspective in which the worldwide spread of English language education is understood to reflect universalistic nation-state purposes and principles of education that emphasize the empowerment of the individual in global society.

Agreement of self-other perceptions matters: Analyzing the effectiveness of principal leadership through multi-source assessment

The purpose of this study was to examine the possible effects of the simultaneous inclusion of self and other ratings of principal instructional leadership on teachers’ self-efficacy beliefs. Special attention was given to the case where principal and teacher ratings were incongruent and exhibited a self-other rating disagreement regarding the principals’ effectiveness in instructional leadership. The data used in the analyses were taken from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECDs) Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) conducted in 2008 and involved information from 672 principals and 11,323 teachers in four OECD countries located in the broader Asia-Pacific region. The study tested a set of hypotheses based on a multi-source assessment framework for the analysis of leadership performance. Results indicated that principal–teacher incongruence regarding principal instructional leadership was significantly and negatively associated with teacher self-efficacy across all four countries. The findings suggest that multi-source assessment can provide unique performance-relevant information about leadership that would not be captured by traditional single-source ratings alone.

Truancy as systemic discrimination: Anti-discrimination legislation and its effect on school attendance among immigrant children

Abstract This comparative policy analysis demonstrates that patterns of truancy by immigrant status reflect the degree of systemic (anti-)discrimination institutionalized at the societal level. Based on extensive data from 205,512 children in 9,141 secondary schools across 29 OECD countries, a series of hierarchical generalized linear modeling analyses has been conducted. The results indicate that the extent to which a country has institutionalized anti-discrimination policies attenuates the association between immigrant status and school truancy for both first- and second-generation immigrants. This pattern gives credence to the postulation that an occurrence of truancy is not merely an aberrant behavior but a social incident that mirrors the larger structure in which social goods and opportunities are distributed unevenly across different groups of people. This new insight sheds light on the possibility that immigrant children may benefit from truancy reduction interventions to a greater degree in countries with adequate legal and administrative measures for anti-discrimination.

Multicultural Education Policy in the Global Institutional Context

While multicultural education is still a contested concept with multiple meanings (May and Sleeter 2010; see also Banks in this volume), few would disagree that envisioning an inclusive education toward social justice and equity for all children regardless of their cultural group memberships is an integral part of what may be called multicultural education. Multicultural education, in such a rather loosely defined sense, has emerged as an important policy issue in an increasing number of countries around the world (Banks, 2004; Cha et al. 2012). As the pace of economic and cultural globalization has accelerated, the importance of multicultural competence demonstrated by schoolchildren has been receiving increased attention from educational policymakers and researchers, as immigrant populations are increasing rapidly in a growing number of countries.

Epilogue: Toward a Glocal Perspective

The worldwide diffusion and constant elaboration of educational equity as a public policy discourse since the mid-twentieth century epitomizes policy innovation on a global scale. The evolution and expansion of various discursive networks that tie educational professionals and reformers across countries has facilitated spreading educational equity as a universalistic policy principle throughout most parts of the globe, raising renewed awareness of inequalities and exclusions rooted deeply in social structures. A majority of countries have formally announced that their education systems are committed to education for all regardless of sociocultural group memberships.

Educating Supranational Citizens: The Rise of English in Curricular Policies

Preparing future citizens for “post-national society” (see Ramirez, Bromley, and Russell in this volume) necessitates an education for communication in intercultural and international contexts. English language education, which is now a global phenomenon, is an illustrative example. In this chapter, we investigate the cross-national institutionalization of English as a regular school subject over the past century and discuss how the rise of English as a global language in today’s curricular policy models around the world reflects an expansive conception of supranational citizenship that emphasizes the empowerment of the individual in global society. We also extend our discussion to the possible problem that the discursive rationalization of English language education as an indispensable tool to help children become supranational citizens can also lead to the legitimation of some new forms of social inequality both within and across countries, especially if curricular policies on English language education are not accompanied by sustained and shared efforts to constantly identify and minimize their unintended consequences.

Multicultural Policy and Ethnolinguistic Minority Learners’ Academic Engagement

As an integral component of the multicultural policy scheme, multicultural education has been receiving more attention from educational policymakers and researchers around the world (Banks 2008; Cha and Ham 2014; Grant and Lei 2001). Despite the concerted attention given to multicultural education as a policy agenda, systematic research on how effectively such policy effort has achieved the intended goals is less extensive than might be expected. As an attempt toward filling this void in research, this study aims to develop an empirical knowledge base that provides insight into how student learning varies depending on multicultural policy contexts. A particular analytic attention is given to examining the effect of multicultural curriculum policy on student engagement in learning by analyzing extensive international data from the TIMSS 2011 survey.

yungbokhap education, autonomy, bridgeability, contextuality, diversity, educational ecology

In an effort to redesign the traditional model of schooling, the yungbokhap model of education has recently been envisioned and experimented with as an alternative approach to schooling in South Korea. This study sheds light on the yungbokhap model of education, exploring the possibility for an expansive (re)conceptualization of the model. We conceptualize the yungbokhap model as an integrative and holistic approach to teaching and learning in accordance with the ABCDs—autonomy, bridgeability, contextuality, and diversity—as the guiding principles, not only in terms of classroom practices but also with respect to administrative and policy arrangements at multiple layers of the education system. We conclude by emphasizing the importance of nurturing a larger educational ecology, which we call the ABCD-E, in which sustainable school improvement is constantly fostered rather than externally imposed.

Welfare state regimes and educational welfare policies

교육복지 개념의 체계적 정교화를 위해서는 교육과 복지의 사회정치적 결합구조에 대한 심층적인 이해가 요구된다. 본 연구는 이러한 시도의 하나로서, 먼저 교육복지 개념을 교육의 사회정치적 목적과 관련하여 재조명하고, 이를 바탕으로 복지(국가)체제 유형에 따른 교육복지의 제도적 구현 양상을 예비적으로 분석․논의한다. 이를 통해 본 연구는 한국의...