Kim, Min Ji;
(2023)
Happiness as a Floating Signifier: Happiness education and ‘happy human capital’ in the OECD and South Korea.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Along with other humanistic notions, such as global citizenship and lifelong learning, the concept of happiness has been attractive to education stakeholders as a generic antidote to the social problems of increasing alienation and youth suicide rates. South Korea is an interesting case in this regard because, while the country has consistently ranked as one of the top-performing countries in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment’s (PISA) subject areas, its success came at the cost of student happiness. Its poor performance on the PISA’s measurement of happiness and life satisfaction generated an educational ‘crisis’ narrative, granting the government the legitimacy to introduce a ‘Happiness Education Policy’ (HEP) in 2013. The purpose of this thesis is threefold: firstly, to explore how OECD, as an influential global education policy actor, has driven the happiness discourse in education policy and what its approaches were; secondly, to investigate the emergence and manifestation of happiness discourses in Korea’s education reform; and thirdly to understand how the notions of happiness and ‘Happiness Education’ are understood and practised by school-level actors in their day-to-day school lives. Through a documentary analysis of OECD publications and key policy documents of the two governments of Korea, semi-structured interviews with policy intermediaries and school-level actors, and an online questionnaire with school-level actors, this thesis identifies that the concept of happiness turned into a ‘floating signifier’. It reveals that the concept is constantly resignified per the political and economic interests of the institution(s) or per school-level actors’ belief in their daily roles and aspirations in promoting student happiness and well-being. The thesis finally argues that the concept of happiness may suffer the same fate of being dictated by a narrow functionalistic focus on competence and skills as already experienced by other humanistic initiatives, such as lifelong learning and global citizenship education.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | Happiness as a Floating Signifier: Happiness education and ‘happy human capital’ in the OECD and South Korea |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2023. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| Keywords: | Happiness, Well-being, Comparative Education, OECD, East Asia, PISA, Happy human capital, Floating signifier, Sociotechnical imaginaries |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Education, Practice and Society |
| URI: | https://discovery-pp.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10176029 |
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