Abstract
Comparison of Multicultural Awareness
among Korean Parents, Australian Parents,
and Korean Parents living in Australia
Nam Sang-ji
Department of Early Childhood Education
Thesis Advisor: Prof. Choi Suk-ran
In the process...
Abstract
Comparison of Multicultural Awareness
among Korean Parents, Australian Parents,
and Korean Parents living in Australia
Nam Sang-ji
Department of Early Childhood Education
Thesis Advisor: Prof. Choi Suk-ran
In the process of forming basic worldviews and relationships with those surrounding them, infants and toddlers are highly susceptible to prejudices and stereotypes held by their parents or those living with them in relation to gender, race, and social class. As long as there is timely intervention in multicultural education by parents and early childhood teachers, there is a possibility that these undesirable traits could be corrected. In this study, the researcher aims to find out the differences among parents in Korea and Australia, and Korean parents living in Australia in terms of their perception of multiculturalism.
The main goals of this study are as follows. The first goal is to see how Korean parents, Australian parents, and Korean parents residing in Australia perceive multiculturalism. Second, the researcher wants to look at how different their multicultural perceptions are. The third goal is to examine whether and how demographic features of the three parent groups affect their multicultural perceptions. The test subjects for the study were 514 parents, including 174 middle-class Korean parents who send their children to schools in Seoul, 166 middle-class Australian parents to send their children to schools in Sydney, and 174 middle-class Korean parents who reside in Sydney and send their children to schools in Sydney.
The survey consisted of 43 questions, which were divided into four sections. The tools to measure the multicultural awareness were the "social distance scale" yardstick (Bogardus, 1928) and the "ethnic exclusionism" yardstick (EUMC, 2005). The final version of the survey questions was revised by three early childhood education experts in terms of the questions' form and wording, which then went through a content validity test.
For statistical analysis, the SPSS Statistics 21 package was used, with the test of statistical significance at the level of 0.05. The statistical techniques used in this study were as follows. First, a frequency test was performed to find out general features of the test subjects. Second, an explanatory factor analysis was conducted to analyze the validity of the measurement tools. By using Cronbach's alpha coefficient that allows an analysis of the internal consistency of variables, the degree of reliability was analyzed. Third, mean and standard deviations were derived in order to find out descriptive statistics of major variables. To see whether the normality assumption is satisfied, skewness and Kurtosis were calculated. Fourth, to examine whether there was a difference in major variables depending on test subject group, one-way ANOVA and Scheffder post-hoc test were performed. Fifth, in order to understand awareness of multiculturalism of each test subject group, a cross-tabulation was performed.
The summary of the study’s results is as follows. First, feeling threatened by immigrants, support for multicultural society, feeling distant due to ethnic differences, and social distance turned out to be statistically significant. As for feeling threatened by immigrants, Korean parents living in Australia had a higher degree of awareness than Australian parents residing in Australia. In terms of support for multicultural society, Australian parents had a higher degree of awareness than Korean parents living in Australia. As for feeling distant due to ethnic differences, Australian parents had a higher degree of awareness than Korean parents living in Korea and Australia. In the case of social distance, Korean parents had a higher degree of awareness than Australian parents, while Korean parents in Korea and Korean parents in Australia had a higher degree of awareness than Australian ones.
Conclusions derived from this study are summarized below. First, for children to have a positive perception of multiculturalism, it is of utmost importance for their parents to have it first. In order to make Korean society a better place for anyone with different backgrounds to live peacefully, parents need to provide multicultural education to their children while the government and schools must come up with educational materials and training programs to that end. Second, it is of necessity for the whole society to accept families from international marriage and migrant workers as their own, with equal opportunities for all. Third, the government must streamline programs for encouraging multiculturalism as there are too many overlapping programs with little effectiveness. In addition, the programs must not be taught like monotonous lectures but offered in the form of festivals for all participants. Finally, the researcher believes that this study may provide the foundation for emphasizing the importance of parents in multicultural education while pointing to the right direction for future multicultural education. It may also offer useful recommendations on what Korea's multicultural policy and education should be like in 10 years' time from now.
Keywords: multicultural awareness, Korean parents, Korean parents residing in Australia, Australian parents, multicultural education
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