Developing Science Curriculum for Gifted Learners in South Korea

Abstract

Curriculum for the gifted learners in Korea is supposed to be differently designed and implemented depending on different gifted educational institutions under the guidance of individual provincial offices of education. (There are 16 provincial offices of education in Korea and each office has an autonomous governing system, while the Ministry of Education provides education policy directions and promotes policy implementations through administrative and financial support and evaluation systems.) General guidelines and directions for curriculum development of gifted education have been prepared at national level and recommended for gifted educational institutions to implement at regional level. The guidelines were mainly developed by NRCGTE, KEDI (NRCGTE is a National Research Center for Gifted and Talented Education and is a sub- research unit of Korean Education Development Institute (KEDI). KEDI was founded in 1972 as a government commissioned NGO institution and serves as a leading institution in educational policy research and planning, guiding the national agenda in formulating a unique education system contributing to Korea’s dynamic growth. www.kedi.re.kr) and distributed amongst 16 provincial offices of education. Korea established a Law of Gifted Education in 2000 and the first national plan for promotion of gifted education began in 2003 and continued for 5 years until 2007 and the second plan followed between 2008 and 2012. Currently, Korea has implemented its third plan, which is from 2013 to 2017. During the first national plan, a general guideline for developing curriculum for gifted education was developed by KEDI (Seo HA, Park KH, Park JE, Implementation manual for gifted education. RM 2004-63. Korean Educational Development Institute, Seoul, 2004) and distributed nationwide. Although the general guidelines for curriculum development were not mandatory, individual provincial offices of education adopted them to a certain extent for evaluation of gifted educational institutions.