The purpose of this study is to find an alternative paradigm for school innovation. Until now, the Korean government has carried out many school reform policies with unsatisfactory results. In this situation we need to examine the problems with the po...
The purpose of this study is to find an alternative paradigm for school innovation. Until now, the Korean government has carried out many school reform policies with unsatisfactory results. In this situation we need to examine the problems with the policies and find alternatives to achieve effective school reform. This article investigates the literature on the cause of the miscarriage of the Korean government's school reform policies.
The literature points out that the conservative teacher culture, a bureaucratic administration system, top-down administration, policy makers' lack of understanding of schools, and the change to a postmodern society were the reasons for the policies' miscarriage. The literature also points out that the professional and autonomous participation of teachers is the key to success of school reform policies. This means that the existing policies have not succeeded in promoting teachers' professional participation, and thus they could not achieve what they had expected. Furthermore, the policies were analyzed based on politico-technological paradigms. To solve this problem we have to move to an educo-interpretive paradigm. The educo-interpretive paradigm seeks to understand the teacher's perspective, and to examine school problems and look for the solution to the problems from the teachers' viewpoints.