Furthermore, parents have also seen positive changes in their children’s
behaviour and study habits at home since the introduction of the new
curriculum, and parents have also seen greater participation by their children
in school activities. These studies also note that teachers have welcomed the
differentiated instruction approach as it provides a key to efficiently integrating
students who are at different levels. A study to evaluate the effectiveness of
the new curriculum (Kim, et al., 2013) found that teachers think the changes in
teaching and learning approaches have brought about self-directed learning by
students, leading to changes in behaviour.
Emerging practices under the 2009 curriculum
Engaging students in collaborative learning activities
Collaborative activities (group work) are characterized by student participation
in discussion and cooperative learning. These activities enable students to
develop skills such as compiling outputs from group work for self-assessment
and presentation-skills. Group work also provides an opportunity for teachers
to assess the participation of individual students in discussions, and to assess
students’ teamwork skills. Table 4 provides an example of how a two-hour Korean
class for high school 2nd graders uses group work (Lee et al., 2011).
Table 4 : Using group work in a Korean class
Time Main activity10:20 • Teacher supervises grouping and seating arrangements.
- Teacher shares the learning objectives with the class: group discussion to linking
students’ views with what is presented in the textbook.
10:35 • Teacher explains the topic, the students’ roles and the methods of group
discussion.- The students engage in group discussion of a particular topic.
- Teacher monitors the group work.
10:45 • Each group presents the outcome of their work.
- Students take notes of what is presented.
- Teacher makes comments between the presentations by the groups, if necessary.
10:59 • Teacher sums up the presentations of the group work.
- The class is told the task for the next group activity, ‘Brain Writing’.
- Mini-break.
11:22 • Teacher introduces the new group activity (Brain Writing), explaining that it
involves each group discussing and brainstorming for key words related to the
given theme.