ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 aims to describe the movement, especially from the 1990s, to pursue democratic and high-quality school education in South Korea. In recent years, the excellence of South Korean education has received much attention due to its continuously high scores in international academic assessments. However, South Korea faces many serious educational problems because of the highly competitive circumstances in schools. For example, as regards student learning, school education in South Korea is highly focused on university and college entrance exams. As a result, students tend to be denied opportunities for authentic and meaningful learning. Further, South Korean students do not seem to have enough opportunities to communicate and collaborate with other students to practice and develop democracy in schools because, in many cases, students are required to compete with other students for higher grades. Concerning teachers’ learning and professional development, while each South Korean teacher is highly competent, they do not have enough opportunities to learn from each other and share their stories about daily teaching and learning. In other words, administrators and teachers in Korea tend to have a weak base of support from the professional learning community in schools. To overcome these competitive and isolated situations in education and create a new type of education based on democracy and publicness in Korea, teachers and citizens have formed various kinds of networks for reforming schools since the 1990s. In the beginning, the movement was promoted at a grassroots level. Gradually it has involved government agencies and administrative organizations in school reform projects. This chapter will focus on the powerful and dynamic efforts made by teachers and citizens seeking democratic schools in South Korea, as well as describe how they have brought changes in the teachers’ professional learning community and student learning in specific school sites in South Korea.
