Even though teaching was highly respected in the traditional Korean context, securing talented and devoted teachers is another challenging issue altogether. Since the establishment of Korean government, it prioritized the teacher policy among other educational issues, and tuned its policy corresponding to changing socio-economic development. For the convenience of the reader, we will review the Korean teacher policy in three periods: adoption (from 1945 to 1960s), development (in 1970s and 1980s), and transition (after 1990s).[1]There are a few literatures which categorized the Korean education by time periods, including; Lee, C. J. (2008) "Education in the Republic of Korea: Approaches, Achievements, and Current Challenges", in Fredriksen and Tan (eds.), An African Exploration of the East Asian Education Experience. World Bank Press. Chapter 5, pp. 155–217.View
He categorized Korean educational development by four stages: reconstruction and expansion of elementary education (1945–1960), quantitative growth of secondary education and development of vocational education (1961–1980), qualitative improvement of education and expansion of higher education (1981–2000), and restructuring (2001–present). However, it was hard to find another study that categorized the period by the teacher policy. Pre-service education and recruitment, retaining and rewards, and other key issues for each period will be reviewed.
During the adoption period, the supply of teachers was the most urgent goal, and various types of teacher training or teacher certificate granting institutions were established by the governments. Also major legislations which formulated the legal status of teachers were legislated to attract talented persons to the teaching profession. As the certificate granting institutions especially private ones grew drastically, the quality of training and the employment of their graduates became major issues during the development period. The government restructured some of the colleges and strengthened the requirement of graduation. However, the increased number of pre-teachers from private colleges raised questions about the preferential recruiting of graduates from national ones, and from the 1990s onward all the certificate holders could take open competitive examinations to become public school teachers. As the fierce competition showed, the teaching profession prestigious, thus the professional development or in-service training of them turned out to be a critical issue during the transition period.
However, the social prestige that school teachers earned during the industrialization periods has been withering because of many reasons. Various social demands of rapidly changing societies ask more from teachers and schools, which cannot address all the changes with its rigid outdated systems. The system established during the industrialization period has not been suitable for teachers to showcase their talents and professionalism. The result of an international survey showing that Korea teachers were at an average level of job satisfaction but ranked the lowest in terms of
Self-efficacyAccording to social cognitive theory, self-efficacy refers to individuals’ beliefs about their capabilities to successfully accomplish a particular course of action. Teachers’ sense of self-efficacy consists of efficacy in instruction, student engagement and classroom management, and is an important factor in influencing academic outcomes of students, and simultaneously enhances teachers’ job satisfaction. Research also has shown that students’ self-efficacy has an important influence on their academic achievement and behavior (revised from OECD, 2014: p. 182) [Source: OECD (2014). TALIS 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning. OECD Publishing.]View can be understood in this context.
[2]1) OECD (2012) The Experience of New Teachers: Results from TALIS 2008 (Data tables on Teacher Self-efficacy, Chapter 5, pp.105-108).View
2) OECD (2014) Talis 2013 Results: An International Perspective on Teaching and Learning (Data tables for Teacher self-efficacy and Job Satisfaction, Chapter 7, pp.405-425).View The government has addressed many new policies to revitalize the passion of teachers. Master teacher
[3]Lee et al. (2013) Positive changes: The education, science and technology policies of Korea.View, Sabbatical Year for Enhancing Teacher Competence (SYETC), and Open Recruitment of Principal
[4]Joo and Reyes (2010) A political analysis of the policy process of the Open Recruitment System of Principals in Korea. KEDI Journal of Education Policy, 7(2), pp.233-255.View are recent efforts to motivate teachers.
