지자체의 귀농교육의 전개와 과제

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

South Korean municipal governments have recently placed focus on an educational mission to accommodate the rising number of middle-to-older-aged individuals that return to farming. Often, the objective of these learners and participants of municipal training-for the purposes of returning to farming-is to potentially settle in the local area. The purpose of this study is to aid municipal governments in their mission to retain these middle-to-older-aged individuals by analyzing the needs of the participant learners and proposing points of improvement for the municipal training procedure.
The current study involved a three-month observation of the educational course as a participant in the Sobaek Mountain DreamTown Educational Program at the Residential Return-to-Farm Support Center in Yeongju City, South Korea. This qualitative case study focused on analyzing the educational environment and its relationship to the changing needs of learners. The following characteristics were observed: 1) the needs of learners in the training program were heavily influenced by discussion and dialogue, openness and frequency of collaborations, and encounters with adverse situations that stimulate and encourage participants’ autonomy; 2) learner needs became more distinct and individualized over the course of the training process, contributing significantly to their subjective experience of the program; 3) the educational curriculum had to be adjusted based on participants’ involvement in order to fulfill individual learners’ needs, resulting in betterment of subjective experiences of participants’ lives at the Residential Return-to-Farm Center; and 4) learners’ needs were dynamically created throughout the duration of the training program.
Thus, the task of the municipal government should be to strategically prepare a task-specific, step-by-step agenda and to create environments for the training program in order to best address the changing needs of the participants before, during, and even after the end of the educational program.