• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.644-654
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• 2017

Due to globalization and the increasing number of international marriages, Korea has become a multicultural society. In 2012, the Korean Ministry of Education established guidelines for education on multicultural understanding for all K-12 students. The purpose of this study is to understand how education on multicultural understanding is conducted and to provide suggestions for improvements. Based on the six goals of multicultural curriculum in Bennett's conceptual model, this study explores how multicultural education specialists conduct their instructions and how they convey the value of multicultural understanding in public schools. Four multicultural education specialists were recruited, and various qualitative data were collected from pre- and post-interviews and classroom observations. The data were analyzed through thematic analysis. The study findings show that the participants educated elementary students by introducing their own (or spouse's) culture through their traditional clothes, food, and customs. This indicated that they focused mainly on developing multiple historical perspectives and strengthening intercultural competence. However, their current education on multicultural understanding may not help students to increase an awareness of the state of the planet and global dynamics, and to build social action skills. Finally, we suggest that multicultural education should be integrated and infused into national (regular) curricula so that all students can enhance their multicultural understanding.