A Comparative Examination of Early Childhood Character Education Programs in South Korea and the United States: Negotiating Traditional and Western Values

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study addresses one important question: Is there a way to balance globalization and multiculturalism such that nations can use curricular ideas from other nations without erasing elements of local culture within the curriculum? Based on the premise that globalization is an active process of negotiation, this study is an examination of the Korean Character Education Program (KCEP) for kindergarten in terms of its active negotiation between two value systems: the fundamental, traditional Korean values, and western values that have influenced the foundation of Korean early childhood education (ECE). This study aimed to analyze how and to what extent the KCEP of the national ECE curriculum reflects the adoption of Western educational influences, while reinforcing traditional Korean values, by comparing it with the Child Development Project (CDP), an exemplary American character education program. Based on an analysis of three main curricular elements of the two programscurricular contents, teaching-and-learning methods, and core goals-it was found that KCEP maintains traditional values (i.e., filial piety, care) as curricular contents and adapts them to Western practices (i.e., discussion, experiential activities), resulting in a domain-specific balance between Korean values in contents and Western values in pedagogy. In terms of the KCEP’s core goals, Korean and Western values were found to coexist in a complementary relationship.

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