Korean Educational Development Institute(KEDI)

Learning Practices of Middle School Students and Policy Agenda for Their Improvements

While the excellent educational achievements of Korean students have been a subject of much international attention, their school learning has been viewed and appraised less favorably at home. This study believes that sufficient attention ought to be paid not just to their achievements, a direct result of school learning, but also the processes leading to these achievements. More specifically, the study takes the students’ levels of ‘engagement’ into consideration, in addition to their educational attainments, in the analysis of their actual school learning practices.

It also aims to suggest relevant policy measures for their improvements. With this aim in mind, the study focuses on middle school students, who have not been at the center of policy attention but nevertheless considerably identified by the teachers as most challenging to teach. The following are the main research questions of this study. (1) Given their attainments and engagement levels, how can the students be categorized, and how do the students in each cluster behave? (2) What are the responses of the school authorities and teachers to enable the students’ development through engagement? (3) What are the necessary policy agenda for improving the quality of the students’ learning quality?