Studie af Sydkoreas skolesystem

I sommeren 2012 valgte vi at tage til Sydkorea for at studere en af de hurtigst voksende økonomier i verden og se hvordan deres uddannelsessystem og undervisning foregår. Med hjælp fra vores netværk af udlændinge med engelsk som modersmål der arbejder på Sydkoreanske skoler som engelsklærere og KEDI (Korean Educational Development Institute) fik vi besøgt til en masse skoler og talt med lærere, ledelse og elever.

Vi deltog også i OECDs  konference om universitetsmiljøer der blev afholdt i Seoul og blev i den forbindelse hyret til nogle dage senere at lave et oplæg for KEDIs organisation. Vi har for nylig haft besøg af en delegation fra KEDI der gerne ville se og diskutere skoler og undervisning i Skandinavien.

I forbindelse med at vi etablerer denne blog og er ved at udvikle en dansk hjemmeside har vi nedlagt den del af vores hjemmeside hvor informationen om vores studietur lå og derfor smider vi indlægget ind her i stedet.

Studying South Korea

As one of the fastest growing economies in the world, South Korea is in the middle of a fascinating development. We went to explore the educational system and see some different learning environments.

We visited two elementary schools, three middle schools, 1 high school and two universities. All which you can see pictures of through our worldwide page (the pics here are links too).

As you might notice the architecture is almost identical on all the schools, but there a small differences, prides and efforts that separates them. For instance in Suncheon Maesan Girls High School they have a music house where the wind instrument band led by the very enthusiastic and engaged conductor and teacher showed us why it’s the pride of the school.

In Neulpureun Middle School they have a monitoring room where the teacher is videotaped while teaching so she can review her own lesson and teaching techniques alone or with her co workers. 4 times a year she reviews it with her management.

One of the things that we noticed all of the schools have (all a little bit different) is a broadcasting room, a room where the children can film and broadcast live or recorded to all the classrooms in the school. In Denmark we still have speakers (no image) where the sound can be hard to understand/interpret because of the quality and mostly the staff delivers the messages.

South Korea is a polite and respectful culture where a lot of education is focused on learning by heart, while the big corporations all show a lot of innovative thinking. Until now the corporations and the educational system has shown that it can lead in development. The development has brought on new challenges and it will be interesting to see if the educational environment will change to meet the demands of the new job market and ways of living or if people will develop the skills outside the system. Whichever, it will have to happen if South Korea is to keep up its growth and development.