South Korea and North Korea have been divided and trained for over 70 years in different educational systems and methods. Recently, South Korea and North Korea introduced a new curriculum, South Korea emphasized learning through inquiry in the 2015 re...
South Korea and North Korea have been divided and trained for over 70 years in different educational systems and methods. Recently, South Korea and North Korea introduced a new curriculum, South Korea emphasized learning through inquiry in the 2015 revised science curriculum, and North Korea in the 2013 Science curriculum. However, there was a lack of comparative research on how to understand each inquiry and apply it to textbooks in the new curriculum. Therefore, this study attempted to find common ground and differences by comparing and analyzing the characteristics of inquiry tendency and inquiry activities in South Korea's 2015 Revised Curriculum Physics 1 textbook and North Korea's 2013 science curriculum Advanced Middle School Physics 1 textbook. For this study, Romey(1968) framework analyzed the text, illustrations, problems, and activities of inquiry-oriented in the entire textbook. To supplement the limitation that Romey's analysis framework analyzes the inquiry orientation of the classical view and presents only quantitative results, the language network analysis of the inquiry activities was done and the network structure was interpreted as eight scientific practice analysis frames of NRC (2012).
As a result of the analysis, it was found that the North Korean text area and the South Korean activity area were inquiry-oriented. Through this, it was found that North Korea induces student participation in the text and South Korea engages students through the activities. As a result of language network analysis, South Korea had key words and key links that emphasize mutual cooperation, and inquiry activities were organized in a structure with six elements: concept, phenomena, measurement, feature, discussion, group activities. And each sub-structure, include scientific practices of 'Asking questions and defining problems', 'Planning and carrying out investigation', 'Analyzing and interpreting data' and 'Constructing explanations and designing solutions' and ‘Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information’. In the case of North Korea, the key word and the key link consisted of linking objects to explain concepts or concepts. In addition, it can be said that it has a concept-oriented scientific inquiry structure, as it is structured by introducing concepts and confirming concepts from words to represent simple phenomena. Also, the sub-structure does not include science practice through mutual cooperation and communication processes such as 'Constructing explanations and designing solutions', ‘Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information’, and 'Analyzing and interpreting data'.
In conclusion, South Korea's Physics 1 textbook was composed of six elements of exploratory activities, such as discussion and experiment, in a structure with connectivity, and emphasized collaborative inquiry activities. On the other hand, North Korea's advanced middle school 1 physics textbooks have a concept-oriented inquiry activity structure, with a structure of inquiry activity as a process of presenting a phenomenon, introducing a concept suitable for the phenomenon, and confirming the concept. Also, unlike South Korea's mutually cooperative learning, there was a difference in that it emphasized individual concept learning. However, there is a limitation of textbook research in this study in that it is not possible to generalize the entire physics textbook by analyzing only the common parts of physics 1 textbooks due to the differences between the two Koreas' academic systems, the difficulty of collecting North Korean materials, and the actual appearance of education. To overcome the limitations of this study, further analysis of physics textbooks for all high school courses and follow-up research through interviews with North Korean defectors' teachers or young North Korean defectors are needed.