한국의 다문화교육정책에 대한 비판적 고찰

Abstract

It has been more than 10 years since the Korean government launched a multicultural education policy. Nevertheless, much concern has been voiced about the difficulties that multicultural students faced in school and Korean society. This study aimed to investigate the Korean government’s multicultural education policies and explored its strengths and limitations. For this purpose, government policy documents on multicultural education between 2006 and 2017 were collected and analyzed based on four approaches to multicultural education, namely, the assimilation approach, pluralism approach, neoliberal approach, and critical approach. The results showed that Korean government multicultural education policies relied heavily on the assimilation approach in the early stage and then gradually on the neoliberal approach. Policies based on a pluralistic approach were occasionally implemented, but were very limited in scope. In consequence, structural problems that perpetuated cultural prejudice and inequality remained unsolved while minority students were forced to adapt quickly to the mainstream culture. The findings suggest adopting such a critical approach to multicultural education encourages critical awareness and participation in building democratic education and society.