The alternative education movement, which started in the late 1980s as a part of educational reform, couldn’t keep up with the systematic education since the mid 1990s and raised discussions as dropouts and bullying became a social issue.
As Primar...
The alternative education movement, which started in the late 1980s as a part of educational reform, couldn’t keep up with the systematic education since the mid 1990s and raised discussions as dropouts and bullying became a social issue.
As Primary·Secondary Educational Law enforcement decree became enacted, interest in alternative education arose, and as children’s needs and personality became diverse, that subject looks for new educations and wants professional education in various sectors, spreading towards those opposing public education, and is expanding to alternative schools for children of multicultural families and young defectors.
Alternative schools can be classified as regular school type, seasonal school type, weekend·after-school program type, homeschool type, urban type, and rural type according to operation format and location.
Urban typed here means an alternative school located in cities for students who left school, or can not go to normal schools due to economic reasons. Also, it means more than a simple alternative school with the educational motto ‘using various human·material resources as educational resource and connecting diverse network’, it is operated as authorized, non-authorized and commissioned.
Urban typed alternative school being operated by civil organizations cannot receive support from the government and rely on financial support or tuition so it is hard for them to self-support, thus under harsh educational facilities.
Research on such urban typed alternative schools have increased with the increased attention, but the researches were focused on educational programs, so research on educational environment is still in the beginning stage.
Thus this study finds out the condition of urban typed alternative schools in Korea and Japan, and evaluates the facility usage condition through analyzing 28 schools which have different facility usage format.
In addition, it is focused on finding out ways to activate urban typed alternative schools by planning connections with local facilities to elastically use the spaces for alternative schools that have financial difficulty and limited space, and thus cannot expand.
Urban typed alternative schools thrive for individual custom education, and with the ‘alternative education program operation project’ of Seoul city in 2001, started to increase rapidly. Currently, 19 urban typed alternative schools in Seoul are linked with ‘Seoul Alternative Education Center’ and receiving financial and human resource support.
However, study and analysis on 28 alternative schools located in cities elsewhere reveal that the alternative schools are being unauthorized operated by individuals and civil groups, thus in a poor environment. This could be because alternative schools use external local facilities a lot, but the financial issue is also a big problem.
With such background, the following characteristics have been found about urban typed alternative school conditions and space allocation and usage status.
First, the number of urban typed alternative schools increased drastically in 2001, which seems to be caused by Seoul city’s ‘Alternative Education Program Operation Project’ in 2001.
Second, since the main subjects are students who are within the district, they are located in the city where it’s easily accessible.
Third, most either rented a building or used public facilities. This seems to differ according to financial support and operation format.
Fourth, analyzing general status, the semesters are freely organized and participation of parents play an important role in selecting the subjects, which seems to be caused by custom education and project-based educational process of urban typed alternative schools and since the participation of parents affect the student’s ability to adapt.
Fifth, looking at space allocation of alternative schools, they seemed to form small, multi-purpose and specialized spaces. This is estimated to be caused by limit of space and educational programs.
Sixth, looking at usage traits, they make usage of public spaces, thrive for sociality improvement, and turned out that they had plans for changes or expansion of available space.
Seventh, they are connected with various local facilities according to educational programs. By making use of local environment and connecting work place with internship educational process, alternative schools thrive for the students’ self-identity and sociality improvement.
Looking at these factors, in order to overcome the difficulty of finance and limited space, and use the space elastically, the following will have to be taken into consideration.
First, is the usage of unused classrooms. Schools located in the cities are experiencing unused classrooms as the number of students decrease, and ways of putting this together is being discussed. Urban typed alternative schools will be able to overcome space shortage problems by making use of unused classrooms, and the psychological state between students of the public system and alternative schools will have to be taken into consideration.
Second, is the usage of government and public offices in the area. Municipals must allow unused offices appearing from policies, to be used by alternative schools for either free or low cost. Through this, alternative schools will be able to operate safely without having to worry about transfers or financial issues.
Third, is the linkage with local facilities. Through links with local facilities, alternative schools can overcome space limit while students can improve their sociality. Also, by changing the perspectives people have on alternative schools, reducing conflicts with local residents when alternative schools have to transfer in, or use the facilities, can be possible.
Fourth, is the usage of various programs and links with local facilities. Considering the fact that it is usually difficult for alternative schools to have connec