Korean History and Culture Seminar for American Educators Handbook 2017 NKS Seminar-Handbook-Final with Daniel | Page 47
Incorporating Korean Culture into Curriculum
Dr. Suzie Oh
[email protected]
The presenter will start the workshop by defining culture together with participants (teachers).
She will give examples on how teachers can incorporate into their curriculum, mainly in English
Language Arts or History/Social Studies.
Culture may be defined as the shared beliefs, values, and rule-governed patterns of behavior that
define a group and are required for group membership (Goodenough, 1981). Culture comprises
three essential aspects: what people know and believe, what people do, and what people make
and use. Culture may be thought of as the acquired knowledge people use both to interpret
experience and generate behavior. For the purpose of understanding your students, I summarize
cultural content with questions. The content of culture may be categorized into various
components, including family structure, life cycles, roles and interpersonal relationships, time
and space, religion, food, history, traditions, and celebrations.
Geneva Gay (2000) defines culture as a dynamic system of social values, worldviews.
Behavioral standards, and beliefs used to give order and meaning to our own lives as well as the
lives of others. Culture is multidimensional and continually changing. Culture is also influenced
by a wide variety of factors including time, setting, age, economics, and social
circumstances. Culture is dynamic, complex, interactive, and changing, yet a stabilizing force in
human life. Expressive behaviors such as thinking, talking, writing is influenced by different
mitigating variables such as gender, education, social class, and degrees of affiliation.
Examples of Incorporating Korean Culture into the Curriculum
Compare and Contrast the American Flag with the Korean Flag
Compare and Contrast American Thanksgiving with “Chusok”
Compare and Contrast Langston Hughes’ poems of oppression and those of Yi Sang-Hua
Compare and Contrast American proverbs and Korean old saying
Compare and Contrast American horizontal views versus Koreans’ hierarchy views
Compare and Contrast American’s Declaration of Independence and Koreans March
1 st movement
Compare and Contrast American love poems and Korean poems
Compare and Contrast American Life Cycles versus Korean rites of passage
Compare and Contrast American and Korean roles and interpersonal relationships
Compare and Contrast American and Korean History, Traditions, and Celebrations
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