외국인 유학생과 함께하는 자유학기제 프로그램 참가자의 다문화 인식 개선 연구 = A Study on the Improvement of Multicultural Awareness of Participants of Free Semester Program with Foreign Students

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

The purpose of this study is to organize educational contents for multicultural understanding and improvement in multicultural awareness as a program of the free semester system targeting middle school students and implement it and then analyze the results. The educational program is intended to allow Korean middle school students to perform multicultural learning and activity with foreign students, cultivate their understanding of cultural differences and attitudes towards mutual respect, and raise their practical competence in participating positively in forming sound relationship with members of other cultures.
The education was basically instructor-led, and groups of three to five including foreigner students as well as Korean middle school students were formed to participate in activities positively. After that, the middle school students came to accept foreigners who had seemed strange and hard to be with before familiarly afterwards. The educational contents were centered around topics appropriate for the level of middle school students and organized for them to attain the education goals and objectively properly. They were asked to exchange linguistic elements (greetings), new year’s cultures, numbers’ symbolic meanings, behavioral differences, and gift-giving cultures, learn about different currencies in the world, and create an international currency.
To examine how the learners’ multicultural understanding and improvement in awareness had been realized after the program, a survey was done before and after the education. According to the results, after the education, students came to be aware of different members of multicultural society better, and more of them learned that Korea is a multicultural society. Also, after the education, they came to know about foreigners’ cultural tradition or custom better. It means that they changed more positively in terms of living with foreigners in Korean society. Aside from that, the learners answered that they came to realize cultural similarities and differences, acquire a sense of equality to live with foreigners communicating favorably with them, have an attitude to think outside the box and not to be discriminative, consider others respecting different cultures and understanding them, cultivate their awareness of being in a community, feel the necessity for knowing and learning different cultures, and also acquire favorable attitudes about other cultures. This implies that the program intended to enhance multicultural understanding and awareness is highly effective.