The concept of competencies, which emerged outside the confines of schooling, has been adopted by education authorities around the world as the logic of education reform, and it has also influenced the Korean scene. As a result, competencies were plac...
The concept of competencies, which emerged outside the confines of schooling, has been adopted by education authorities around the world as the logic of education reform, and it has also influenced the Korean scene. As a result, competencies were placed at the forefront of curriculum documents in both the 2015 and 2022 revised curricula in Korea. However, competencies were presented in the 2015 revised curriculum with conceptual confusion, and even in the 2022 revised curriculum, the unsystematization and confusion of the competency concept is still a subject of discussion.
This conceptual confusion and disconnect from school-based understandings of competencies has created challenges for teachers in the classroom. Teachers report that they struggle to understand what competencies are, how they work, and how they can be taught to nurture them. With such a lack of clarity on how to teach competencies, teachers have been forced to practice the competencies outlined in the curriculum in their classrooms, so they have been relying on their own expertise to cope with the situation. Despite the pedagogical limitations of competencies, efforts to incorporate them into social studies education are still needed.
Outside of social studies education, there is a demand for education that is useful for both economic and civic life, and that prepares students to respond to changes in the world. Within social studies education, there is a need to explore competency-based pedagogies that build on the strengths of a flexible, integrated, and student-centered approach. In this situation, there is a need to study the practices of competency-based teaching in the field. In particular, it is important to study the practices of teachers who are highly specialized and who are interested and passionate about developing students' practical competencies. This is because research can give us clues about competency-based teaching at the subject level, which we can then discuss with other teachers.
The concept of teacher agency can be a useful analytical framework when studying teachers' classroom practices. It is unlikely that all teachers will respond in the same way to the demands of competency-based reform, and teacher agency provides a framework for a systematic understanding of the temporal and structural context in which teachers' practices differ from one another. This is because teachers, faced with the demands of the national curriculum, practice subjectively in the temporal flow of their own past, future, and present. In practice, teachers do not deliver the curriculum as it is, but flexibly reorganize the national curriculum by determining classroom objectives, teaching and learning content, and methods according to their own values. In doing so, teachers selectively apply habits and values accumulated from the past, orient their teaching based on projective imaginings of the future, and make judgments about their teaching practices in response to the current physical and relational environment.
Therefore, this study explored the case of a middle school social studies class that strives to nurture competency based on theories within and outside social studies and teacher agency theory, and raised the following research problem and research questions to draw implications for competency-based teaching through the analysis and interpretation of the case.
Research Problem: How can we understand middle school social studies teachers' instructional practices to nurture competencies in the context of a curriculum shift toward competency-based curriculum?
Research Question 1: What does competency-based classes in middle school social studies look like?
Research Question 2: What factors influence middle school social studies teachers' implementation of competency-based classes?
Research Question 3: What competencies do students perceive they have developed through competency-based classes in social studies?
To answer the research questions, social studies teachers' instructional practices in two schools to nurture competencies for citizenship were explored using a qualitative case study method. The researcher conducted two months of participatory observation of the lessons of two teachers working at Middle School A and Middle School B. The researcher conducted in-depth interviews with teachers and students, and collected field materials such as classroom materials and student work. Based on the data collected, this research described the social studies classes in each school and examined the teachers' practices in terms of the iterative, projective, practical-evaluative dimensions of teacher agency, exploring the reasons why competency-based classes appear in such a way. Finally, this researcher explored the students' thoughts and experiences in such classes to understand their perceived growth in competencies.
As a result of the study, the teachers interpreted the meaning of the competencies introduced in the curriculum centered on the role of citizenship as they understood it as social studies teachers, and selected the competencies most needed by the students in their classrooms among the many competencies needed to fulfill the role of citizen and set them as classroom objectives. Teacher Park Cha-cha of Middle School A wanted to foster students' ability to play the role of global citizens based on their imagination of a globalized world. He felt limited in developing higher-level competencies when students' basic knowledge and motivation levels were deficient, so he wanted to help them acquire the ability to play the role of a citizen on their own. Therefore, he set "the ability to study on their own" as a specific classroom objective along with the content elements of the culture unit as the basis for becoming a global citizen. On the other hand, Joo Eun-sung, a social studies teacher at Middle School B, imagined a future Korea in which Korea would face a uniform and competitive system and culture, and understood the ability to actively implement change and solidarize with community members as a capacity that students and citizens should possess. Therefore, she set "the ability to actively implement change" as a specific classroom objective, along with understanding the content elements of the political participation unit, as students who are subordinate to adult decision-making.
The teachers' goal setting was influenced by the projective elements of "orientation toward civic education" and "imagination of future society" among the dimensions of teacher agency.
Teachers were using their expertise in their professional lives to run classes based on competency goals and lesson objectives. Through an individualized teaching program called "courseware workbook-based learning," Middle School A's spur car led students to cultivate competency basics and learning attitudes in the process of self-directed learning. Students began to "approach" competency learning by encountering entertaining stories from teachers' storytelling and QR code videos, and they "contextualized" competencies into their own lives by experiencing experiential activities before and after individualized learning. As students engaged in authentic self-study, or individualized learning, they "constructed" the knowledge and ideas underlying the competencies themselves, "reorganized" their existing knowledge and ideas by matching their answers with the teacher and other peers, and finally "practiced" the knowledge they learned in group quiz games and performance assessments. This practice was influenced by the teacher's practice of developing self-study as an iterative dimension of teacher agency, her belief in constructivist learning principles, and the "experience-centered philosophy" as a shared value in the teacher community.
On the other hand, Joo Eun-sung from Middle School B had a very different approach to teaching: she ran a "'I am a citizen' project" based on the changemaker project model. Students began to explore the real-world problems they faced and "face" the reality that they needed to exercise their capabilities as citizens. They then compared and reflected on their own characteristics with those of changemakers and realized their level of competency. In the process of defining the problem and developing action alternatives to solve it, they "utilized" the practices and hints provided by the teacher as a guide, and "integrated" their individual competencies through collaboration. Finally, they "practiced" by implementing the results of their collaboration to address real-world problems as citizens. The factors that influenced these teachers' practices were the teachers' development of project-based learning, their belief in constructivist learning principles, and the influence of "challenge" as a shared value in the teacher community.
Teachers' classes made students feel empowered. Students at Middle School A valued "growth in the ability to form their own thoughts," "forming their own study methods and attitudes," "forming positive attitudes toward social studies," and "growing in the ability to understand other cultures." The researcher understood this growth as the growth of the basic foundation of student initiative and competency. On the other hand, students at Middle School B reported that they valued "growth in the ability to form their own thoughts," "develop a critical view of reality," "develop the ability to solve problems through collaboration," and "develop a sense of responsibility as an agent of change." The researcher understood this to mean that students had grown in student initiative and higher-level competencies (higher-order thinking skills or transformational skills, depending on the perspective, but generally referring to higher-order and transformational skills that go beyond the basic level).
I summarize the implications of these findings as follows. First, it is necessary to revitalize the discussion of social studies competencies around civic roles. Adding the idea of competencies to previous studies that have designed social studies learning experiences around social roles, the idea of competencies can be used to systematize the roles that citizens play in real-life practical situations and the competencies needed to play those roles.
Second, this research found that it is necessary to continuously build competency-based classroom models within teacher communities to develop competencies in stages, taking into account student and school contexts. Since changes in teacher practice are closely related to the teacher community, it is necessary to discuss various student and school situations within the teacher community and build a competency teaching model that considers the competency level of students in each school and environmental factors.
Third, the 'Competency Incubator' model and the 'Competency Lab' model are presented for reference when building a model of social studies competency-based classroom. The 'Competency Incubation' model is a model that improves the attitude of students who lack the basic foundation of competency and builds the foundation of competency based on the characteristics of the social studies class of Middle School A, and the 'Competency Lab' model is a class design that allows students who have some basic foundation to demonstrate their competency in real-life problems based on the characteristics of the social studies class of Middle School B. By comparing the appearance and background of these competency-based classroom models with the situation of the school where the teacher works, it was hoped that the teacher would be able to design a suitable classes.
Keywords : competency, social studies competency-based classes, teacher agency, social roles, Competency Incubation model, Competency Lab model
Student Number : 2021-39974