Indigenous Critical Traditions for TEFL? A Historical and Comparative Perspective in the Case of Korea

Abstract

The possibility of curricular innovation in English teaching in non-Western countries has been questioned on cultural grounds. However, in some cases this may be unjustified; insufficient attention may have been paid to the diversity and extent of the educational traditions that either co-exist, or have existed in the past, in a particular cultural area. Historical and theoretical analyses may suggest greater possibilities to the curriculum developer who devotes attention to these aspects of culture. In this paper, the non-mainstream curricular inheritances within Korean education are discussed, and their resources applied to the question of feasibility of critical pedagogy in a Korean situation. After considering the role of Orientalism in establishing a position of unfeasibility that is not empirically well-grounded, this paper reviews some aspects of the Confucian inheritances common to East Asian countries, which might be inhibitory. The paper argues that the Confucian tradition has more than one side, and other cultural practices, both ancient and more recent mean that critical language curriculum development possibilities could be based on these diverse cultural and historical inheritances in the case of Korea.