The purpose of this study is to prepare measures of content-based learning in Korean for the subject of history, which can be applied to educational institutions for multicultural elementary students.
Recently, the problem of multicultural families h...
The purpose of this study is to prepare measures of content-based learning in Korean for the subject of history, which can be applied to educational institutions for multicultural elementary students.
Recently, the problem of multicultural families has become an issue. This is a social issue, as the rate of multicultural familys is increasing. In particular, multicultural students have two problems. They cannot adjust to living in Korea and their school, and many multicultural students underachieve.
Today, the number of regular elementary, middle and high school students is decreasing, while multicultural students are steadily increasing. Hence, preparing a countermeasure is required to solve the problems that multicultural students face.
Therefore, this study suggests teaching history to multicultural students as a measure to help them adjust to living in Korea and their school, and to improve their basic scholastic ability.
History is included in cultures and society all over the world, it enables us to understand other cultures and improves our awareness of the differences between cultures. Also, we can build an upright character through many historical events and l figures. In addition, we can share a community spirit and sense of unity from living in the same society, and we can improve our self-esteem as members in the society, all through history education.
Therefore, this study emphasizes the need of history education for multicultural students, and aims to find measures to teach history in Korean.
Currently, as already mentioned, there is a need for an improvement in education in the Korean language for multicultural students in order to better their basic scholastic ability. However, analysis on the Korean education curriculum for multicultural students fails to propose a concrete education measure and contents for regular subject classes in Korean education institutes.
Thus, this study aims to set up a specific measure for history in Korean in educational institutes. Many multicultural students find it difficult to understand vocabulary and content in history class, as the vocabulary and content are so wide, and background knowledge is required, which is usually lacking. Hence, the content of history classes in Korean have to include basic background knowledge, vocabulary and content related to history.
The class has to help improve language abilities and use content-based teaching with subject related basic background knowledge in order to understand vocabulary and content. At lower grades, immigrant children of multicultural families and children of foreign families lack basic Korean vocabulary, content and background knowledge as they have lived in overseas countries. This problem becomes more serious at higher grades, where vocabulary and content is more abundant and more difficult.
Korean’s curriculum is a spiral curriculum, whereby the basic contents and concepts are repeated as the student gets older. Thus, students have to be strong with the basic levels from elementary course contents. Therefore, this study suggests that practical class contents and teaching measures for teaching elementary history should be basic.
The study analyzed content and linguistic features of history, and created a basic survey for teachers currently working in school and teaching history in Korean.
Results from the basic survey show that teaching history in Korean to multicultural students should the reflect current Korean language curriculum and society subject curriculum contents. Multicultural students also have to study vocabulary, content, and background knowledge for history classes.
Thus, from the survey results, the principles of educational content construction are selected based on the Korean language curriculum and the elementary social studies curriculum. Practical examples are suggested, such as the learning model utilizing sheltered content instructions as a content-based teaching method.
This research is effectively reflected in the Korean language curriculum and the elementary social studies curriculum contents, and has selected principles of educational contents for teaching history in Korean, based on the survey.
The Korean curriculum does not include specific measures for teaching history, however, in this study, principles of educational contents for teaching history in Korean are set, and educational content selected using principle, concrete measures is suggested.
The target subjects of this study are multicultural elementary students, not students from all grades, and hence just deals with elementary course history content. These are limitations to the study.
Therefore, based on this research, a study investigating the teaching of history in Korean for middle-high school multicultural students should proceed. In addition, studies on other the teaching of other subjects in Korean should also be carried out.