영유아 사교육 실태와 개선 방안(Ⅲ)-국제비교를 중심으로-

Abstract

In spite of the research results that the effect of early childhood private tutoring (or extracurricular activities) is not significant, the beginning age of private tutoring is increasingly younger. Under these conditions, this study would find the factors for parents to make their children to get private tutoring within the socio-cultural contexts through the comparative analysis between Asian countries with similar socio-cultural backgrounds to Korea and non-Asian countries with different socio-cultural backgrounds from Korea. For this comparative analysis, we investigated the current status of pre-school public education institutions and private tutoring (or extracurricular activities) of Seoul (Korea), Tokyo (Japan), Taipei (Taiwan), New York city (United States), and Helsinki (Finland). Along with this investigation, we took the survey of 300 infants and toddlers of kindergartens and child care centers within each city (total 1500 infants and toddlers, and also conducted case studies of 4 infants and toddlers of age 2 and 5 (total 20 infants and toddlers). In the results of the research, Asian infants and toddlers (of Korea, Japan, and Taiwan) got private tutoring (or extracurricular activities) to some degree, but Finnish infants and toddlers got almost nothing for private tutoring (or extracurricular activities), and the infants and toddlers of the United States got the middle degree of private tutoring (or extracurricular activities) between Asian countries and Finland. In addition, the private tutoring (or extracurricular activities) of Asian countries included not only sports and arts but also curriculum education, the private tutoring (or extracurricular activities) of non-Asian countries like the United States and Finland was generally limited to sports and arts. Additionally, we could confirm that the infants and toddlers of non-Asian countries like the United States and Finland took a lot more leisurely daily schedule than the infants and toddlers of Asian countries. These differences are related to general welfare policies including public education system and the parental view of nurturing and education of each country. On the basis of these results, we suggested 3 policy proposals such as long-term welfare level improvement, the support for the collaborative life through the diagnosis of general education policies, and the improvement of general cognition to encourage cooperation rather than competition and to recognize diversity for the healthy growth of infants and toddlers. On the basis of this direction, we suggested securing a child’s right to play through minimum quality of life, the reinforcement of parents’ nurturing competency through the reduction of labor time, satisfying parents’ individual needs through the expansion of the community-based infrastructure in the aspects of social welfare and labor policies, preparing for the future society through the reform of college entrance policy, the recovery of public trust through the improvement of the quality of public education, leading the change of the role of private tutoring through the change of private tutoring direction, the improvement in quality of life of children through the innovation of early childhood education in the aspects of educational policy, changing parents’ cognition through government-led campaign, and the improvement of parents’ cognition through parents education based on communities in the aspects of the improvement of peoples’ cognition.