Kim, Ji Eun; (2023) Global Citizenship Education in South Korea: politics, policy and practice at national, regional and school levels. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

In the past decade, South Korea has positioned itself as a global leader in Global Citizenship Education (GCED) and is actively engaged in the international policy process. In this context of state-led GCED, regional- and school-level initiatives to promote GCED have also emerged. One of such attempts is the GCED Policy School introduced by the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education (SMOE); both GCED Policy Schools and SMOE serve as the main sites of inquiry for this study. Qualitative studies on GCED have been thus far heavily dominated by Western-oriented perspectives and case studies and have often lacked a holistic and comprehensive approach for involving both policy makers and practitioners. In order to address this gap, this qualitative study analyzes documents and interviews collected from SMOE and seven GCED Policy Schools in Seoul, the capital of South Korea, through a constructivist interpretive paradigm. By engaging with multiple levels of stakeholders, this study aims to answer the following Research Questions: 1) Why did the SMOE introduce GCED as a key policy area? 2) How is GCED conceptualized in the policy? 3) How are global citizenship and GCED perceived and practiced by different practitioners at the school level (i.e., school leaders, teachers and students)? 4) What are the professional, material and external contexts that influence implementers’ perceptions and practices? In addressing these questions, two theoretical heuristics are used for analysis and have led to key findings. First, the GCED conceptual framework presents four different approaches to GCED (i.e., neoliberal, tourist, humanitarian and critical); the findings suggest that the tourist and humanitarian models of GCED are more predominant than others in regional-level policy and in school practices of GCED. Second, this study also draws on Stephen Ball’s policy cycle and demonstrates that the policy formation and the school-level implementation of GCED is neither linear nor straightforward but a consistent process of political compromises and recontextualization.

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