The purpose of this study is to develop evaluation criteria for assessing the curricula of Korean language majors at overseas universities. Although the Korean language has established itself as a major field of study within formal degree programs at ...
The purpose of this study is to develop evaluation criteria for assessing the curricula of Korean language majors at overseas universities. Although the Korean language has established itself as a major field of study within formal degree programs at higher education institutions around the world, a system for the qualitative management of these curricula has not been sufficiently established relative to their quantitative expansion and the diversity of their operational forms. Korean language majors at overseas universities are operated in various ways—as independent departments in some institutions and as subfields of East Asian studies or linguistics in others—and the design and operation of their curricula have depended largely on the competence of individual local instructors. Accordingly, this study developed and validated evaluation criteria through which Korean language departments at overseas universities can examine the qualitative level of their own curricula.
This study adopted the CIPP evaluation model, which diagnoses the entire process of a curriculum from planning to feedback, as its theoretical foundation. The current state of Korean language departments at overseas universities was first analyzed by region, which confirmed that the developmental stage and operational environment of departments differ across regions. On this basis, the evaluation criteria were designed as a modular system. Specifically, the system places a Common Core module, which every department must satisfy regardless of its developmental stage, as its foundation, and combines it with either an Establishment Support module, which diagnoses the institutional settlement of departments in their early stages, or an Operational Enhancement module, which diagnoses the qualitative deepening of departments in their stable stages, according to the life cycle of the department. Each module was structured around the four stages of planning, development, operation, and feedback, and a preliminary set of 247 evaluation items was derived through a review of the literature and expert consultation.
The validity of the preliminary evaluation criteria was verified through a Delphi survey of fifteen Korean language education experts from Korea and abroad. Two rounds of surveys were conducted using the content validity ratio, the degree of convergence, and the degree of consensus as criteria; as a result, five items were deleted and four were revised, finalizing a total of 242 items. The finalized evaluation criteria consist of 78 items in the Common Core module, 83 items in the Establishment Support module, and 81 items in the Operational Enhancement module. In addition, the relative importance of the evaluation categories within each evaluation stage was analyzed through the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to provide reference data for the application of the criteria. Finally, the finalized evaluation criteria were applied on a trial basis to six institutions in four countries to examine their applicability in the field, which confirmed that the criteria can function as a self-assessment tool that helps systematically examine a curriculum and identify its strengths and weaknesses.
This study is significant in that it systematically developed evaluation criteria specialized for the particular context of Korean language majors at overseas universities and proposed a modular evaluation system that reflects the life cycle of a department. By serving as a tool through which overseas Korean language departments can examine their own curricula without relying on external evaluation, the evaluation criteria developed in this study are expected to contribute to enhancing the consistency and systematicity of curriculum operation.