The goal of this study is to understand the traits of the children from the families of marriage immigrants were examined from the perspective of the kindergarten teachers and the difficulties of kindergarten teachers responsible for them through in-d...
The goal of this study is to understand the traits of the children from the families of marriage immigrants were examined from the perspective of the kindergarten teachers and the difficulties of kindergarten teachers responsible for them through in-depth interviews.
For the above goals, the research questions included:
1. What are the traits of the children from the families of marriage immigrants were examined from the perspective of the kindergarten teachers ?
2. What are the difficulties of the kindergarten teachers responsible for the children from the families of marriage immigrants?
The Subjects of this research are ten kindergarten teachers responsible for the children from the families of marriage immigrants in Gyeong-Gi, Chung-Nam, Gyeong-Buk, and Jeon-Buk providences. From July, 2006 to October, 2006 data for this research were collected by 2 in-depth interviews with each teacher, photographing, written documents and samples of children's work. Every interview process was tape-recorded and transcribed. This researcher also took a field note on her impression about the interview during or right after each interview. Collected data were analyzed in the following procedures; a) transcription of recorded interview contents and writing interview notes, b) integration of kindergarten teachers' narrative description data, interview data and other data, c) domain analysis, d) data classification, e) taxonomy analysis, f) interpretation of classified data.
The result of this research were as follows:
First, the traits of the children from the families of marriage immigrants were examined from the perspective of the kindergarten teachers. As for the patterns of their language development, they showed poor language skills consisting of silence, short answers to long questions, and physical aggression derived from linguistic immaturity. In terms of literary, they were slower in the development, avoided literacy activities, or engaged in no verbal activities despite the knowledge because of their parents' excessive focus on alphabet learning. As far as the peer relations were concerned, they played by themselves, followed their friends in a passive manner, or sometimes made use of their 'difference' resource to make friends. Finally, as for the perception of their cultural identity, some children perceived themselves only as Koreans ignoring or avoiding mentioning their mother country. Others regarded both Korea where they were currently living and their mother country as their countries. Still others were confused about the fact that their mother country was different from that of other kids. The children from the families of marriage immigrants, who showed diverse traits, adapted to the environment through changes and getting along. But some of them had problematic behavior such as delayed language development, confused identity, and aggression.
Second, the kindergarten teachers responsible for the children from the families of marriage immigrants suffered from the following difficulties; first of all, they were troubled with the lack of theoretical knowledge and experience with those children in running the curriculum and with the limitations of actual applications. As for their relationships with the children, they confessed difficulty with those who required extra attentions from them or those who were ignored due to relatively lower interest. As for their relationships with their parents, the parents' closed attitude based on the isolated family history and polarized expectations for their children were the obstacles to the teachers' forming cooperative relations with them. Finally, they cited the aggravated institutional burden, partial coverage by the press, and lack of social and economic support as the difficulties to deal with for themselves in terms of social support. Those various difficulties faced by the teachers can cause a problem with their proper teaching and ultimately have negative influences on the quality of education, which means there should be diverse supports. Those difficulties also have meaningful implications for the teachers' attitudes and roles; the teachers should make efforts to create a desirable educational environment where all children can experience, exchange, and learn diverse cultures by using the cultural richness and diversity provided the children from the families of marriage immigrants.