This study analyzes how territory-related learning is organized and represented in Korean Geography Inquiry, a career-elective subject in the 2022 Revised National Curriculum, and designs a new territorial education teaching model integrating perspect...
This study analyzes how territory-related learning is organized and represented in Korean Geography Inquiry, a career-elective subject in the 2022 Revised National Curriculum, and designs a new territorial education teaching model integrating perspectives from critical geopolitics and empathy education. The data consist of the 2022 curriculum documents for Korean Geography Inquiry and two authorized textbooks. Methodologically, the study combines curriculum document analysis, text mining, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), and visual-material analysis.
The findings are as follows. First, the 2022 curriculum more explicitly presents an “issue–inquiry–alternative” learning sequence and civic competencies. Second, textbook discourse still presupposes the nation-state as the central actor and tends to frame territory primarily as a space of “security” and “resources.” Meanwhile, everyday territorial experiences, maritime and aerial spaces, and border/borderland regions—as well as multi-actor, multi-scalar connections and affective/action-oriented tasks—are only partially realized. Third, to address these limitations, this study proposes a four-stage teaching model: (1) structuring territorial issues and expanding perspectives, (2) exploring and comparing alternatives, (3) designing governance alternatives, and (4) presenting results and reflecting. Fourth, to operationalize the model, a five-lesson instructional case was designed around the Ieodo (Suyan Rock) EEZ dispute.
This study contributes by reconfiguring territorial education from a single nation-/ethnicity-centered approach toward a relational, peace-oriented, and global-citizenship-based framework, and by translating curriculum and textbook analyses into actionable design criteria through an integrated analysis–interpretation–design procedure. Limitations include the restricted analytic scope (Unit 5 and two textbooks), the interpretive nature of CDA, and the lack of classroom implementation and empirical evaluation of learning outcomes.
Keywords: 2022 Revised National Curriculum, Korean Geography Inquiry, territorial education, Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), geopolitical imagination, empathy education, teaching model