Newsletter

Northeast Asian History Foundation has been working in various ways to strengthen history education and vitalize education of East Asian History. Particularly, the Foundation has provided "training sessions" for teachers of East Asian History from the capital and regional areas of the country in order to raise their professional level of knowledge on 'East Asia History'. The Foundation has responded to the society's increased interest in East Asian History after a revised curriculum for social studies was announced in 2007.

The training program is focused on conveying appropriate methods for teaching East Asian History so that issues on the history may be dealt with from an objective perspective. The training is comprised of 5 lessons including ▲Introduction to Development of the Training Program on East Asia ▲The Relations between the Histories of Korea, China and Japan and the East Asian History ▲How to Teach East Asian History. Lecturers have been chosen mainly from those who participated in developing a draft textbook of East Asian History in order to keep their high level of understanding in this subject.

The first training session was provided during the summer school holiday in 2008. 116 history teachers across the nation participated and completed the prescribed course of study through two sessions, one from August 4th to 8th and the other from August 11th to 13th. The two training sessions were followed by six professional workshops over three periods from September to November 2008 to deal with some major issues raised about the East Asian History education. The workshop was planned for improving the professional quality of the East Asian History course for revitalization of the subject, and for expanding the horizons of knowledge about East Asian History.

Development of teacher-centered curriculums and provision of in-depth training programs

Teachers training sessions were provided twice in 2009 from August 3rd to 7th and from August 10th to 14th. 262 middle and high school teachers in social studies applied across the country (Seoul 79, Busan 40, Daegu 40, Daejeon 40, Jeonbuk 40, Jeju 23) and 253 of them completed the prescribed course.

On the other hand, the Office of Information and Exchanges conducted a survey to improve the content of the program. Questions were asked about the program's contribution to improving, developing and raising the quality of the school education, program's components and lecture content (level), and the level of satisfaction with the lecturers. Most of the respondents answered that the program contributes to improving, developing and raising the quality of the school education, and the responses about program's components and lecture content were highly positive. Also, 98% of the respondents expressed that they would attend if an in-depth training program were provided.

The Office of Information and Exchanges has a plan to develop the training program so that the class will be led centering on the teachers present in the class. As part of this plan, an intermediate-level training course (30 hours) will be offered in January next year during the winter school holiday in Seoul (2nd session), and in Busan.