Redesigning Learning Experience for Future Talent in S. Korea

Problem

To give you some background, this is what Korean public education looks like. Students in South Korea spend 12 years at school preparing for Su-neung, a college entrance exam, which is similar to SAT in the US. The right side is a typical day in the life of a Korean student from elementary through high school. The orange color represents students' study hours. The timetable may vary depending on the grades, but the hours of study might exceed two-thirds of a day.

On the other hand, students spend little time for themselves. Only 4 out of 10 elementary school students reported they spend more than 3 hours to have fun. And this number would decrease as they get near to college entrance exam. Also, 33.8% of students said they sometimes or often contemplate suicide and the primary reason for this was due to their academic performance.

Also, compared to the counterparts in other OECD countries, Korean students felt less satisfied and happy with their lives and they tend to worry more about failure.

Our Research Target

With this said, we wondered how we might create a happy and safe environment for students who are the actual protagonists in Korean education. To achieve this, we thought it’s worthwhile to focus on the elementary school students who are in the beginning stage of the whole system. This will allow us to intervene as early as possible in the system and also explore various potential solutions away from intense college admission.

Research Finding & Insights

Through conversations with public school teachers, we found that there are some positive movements happening in elementary education. Educational reformation led by the government aims to encourage collaborative learning environments / and the focus of assessment has changed from result to process. With this new policy, teachers said they have more autonomy now / to try new activities in class other than just giving lectures. They also gave students more room for questions and discussions. However, these efforts don't seem to have much effect in reality. We discovered 4 reasons behind why it’s difficult to drive a meaningful change.

First, Power play from parents is the obstacle to change. But these parents aren’t just culprits but they’re also victims. If you see the chart on the right, you’ll see parents directly absorbing all the social tensions such as peer pressure, competitive atmosphere and so on. Under these pressures, parents get anxious and transmit the pressures to students and teachers. They try to rule over the two in the name of what is best for their children’s future. And such behavior undermines teachers’ autonomy, which leads to less opportunities of diverse pedagogies and unsatisfied educational journey.

We also noticed through interviews that most of the parents had double bind messages. While parents describe a good education should foster children’s diverse interest, they establish a master plan for their children to get a few top universities. While parents complain about school programs and its quality, they limit teachers’ new attempts and efforts for children. And this gap stems from parents' belief that going to top colleges is the best/fastest way to succeed, from parents' worry of their kid falling behind, and from parents' distrust on teaching quality of public schools in comparison to private academies.

Students’ fear of failure often holds them back from taking the initiative in class. Aside from students being affected by societal and parental pressures, students’ were actually most affected by the relationship in classroom.They expressed the fear of being judged by their teachers and peers, which kept them from sharing their ideas freely.

Moreover, the way students learn is making them passive. Students are in the system where they have no choice but to rely on rote learning, referred to as cramming or memorizing. As you see in this graph, Korean college admission process is unchangeable status quo. The impact of this result-oriented process trickles down to middle and high school education and this clashes with the bottom up change happening in elementary schools. Compromising with the system, teachers resort back to giving lectures and students resort back to simply memorizing the contents. Though rote learning has its own benefits, it rarely leaves room for students to explore and discover alternatives themselves.

Opportunities

But we be believe challenge we have, can open up new opportunities for both parents and students.

How Might We

Ideation

These are our initial concepts: the first button and vivid growth for parents and learner’s lab and maker’s lab for students.

Our initial concepts for students are  Learner’s playground & Makers’ lab.

They both aim to reduce students’ fear of failure by providing team exercises to build up relationships. Also both will  allow them to take the initiative by engaging in hands on projects and activities. Existing private and public education tend to perpetuate and compromise with the traditional way of learning. Where we aim to be is on the top right corner encouraging more transdisciplinary, engaging and collaborative learning.

Learners’ playground is targeted for 1st to 3rd grade students to improve resilience to failure by doing gamified team activities(such as escape rooms) that encourage students to solve problems together.

Makers’ lab is targeted for 4th to 6th grade students. It provides activity based STEAM education which incorporates arts and crafts to STEM education. This will allow students to learn things in a more open-ended and less restrictive way and make them applicable to real life.