given that paper and pencil tests prevail in national-level assessments such
as the NAEA or CSAT, and given that most universities still heavily rely on
the scores of such examinations. In order to bring about improvements in
pedagogy, efforts must be made to change the college entrance examination
system, as well as tests at the primary and secondary education levels.
The revised curriculum is causing teachers’ roles to expand to include
tasks such as curriculum development, materials development, facilitation,
guidance, instructional decision-making and evaluating. Thus, a teacher’s role
is no longer restricted to being a knowledge transmitter.
The studies highlight some of the issues and challenges that schools face in
bringing about the required changes. Regarding the process of developing
a customized curriculum at the school level to meet students’ needs, for
example, the reports note that teachers expressed concerns over the
additional workload involved in creating new syllabi, preparing materials for
differentiated instruction and setting up new assessment criteria (Cho et al.,
2012; Kim et al., 2013; Yang et al., 2011). Teachers also expressed that they
experienced difficulty in working in collaboration with the community to
vitalize creative hands-on activities due to lack of understanding by teachers
about the local communities, no communication, or no information exchange
with the communities (Cho et al., 2012; Kim et al., 2013).
It is clear that effective changes in pedagogy require teacher training, which
should be provided through local education offices. Support must be given
to teachers to assist them in making changes in pedagogical practices. For
the effective implementation of the revised curriculum, it is also necessary
to support new learning communities for teachers and to provide teachers
with adequate teaching and learning resources, while also reducing
teacher workloads and providing systemic support for collaboration with
communities. One report suggests that coordinators should be appointed
to promote collaboration between schools and communities, and a ‘control
tower’ should be established to ensure sustainability (Cho et al., 2012).