Sun Joo Kang
This panel is organized by the Academy of Korean Studies and the Korean History Education Society.
Hanseok Ko is a visiting researcher at the Center for Educational Research, Seoul National University. His research focuses on the provincial governance of the Roman Empire, its interactions with provincials, and the content of world history education.
Eun Kyung Shim is an EdD candidate in the Department of History Education, College of Education, Seoul National University. Her research interests include historical agency in world history textbooks and history education in international curricula such as A-level and IB.
Mimi Lee is an Associate Professor in the Department of History Education, College of Education at Seoul National University. Her research interests include the role of historical materials, the teaching and learning of historical inquiry, and history teacher preparation.
Soeun Lee is an Associate Research Fellow at Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation (KICE). Her research centers on students’ historical understanding, historical literacy, and the teaching of ‘difficult histories’.
Yongjun Park is an M.A. student in Department of History Education, Korea National University of Education, and a history educator in the Korean public education system. His research interests encompass the exploration of the prevailing trends and intrinsic nature of discourses in the fields of history and history education, with particular attention to the ways in which these discourses themselves are historically situated and constituted.
The Korean History Education Society
Session
World history education in South Korea has undergone continuous revision, reflecting shifting historiographical paradigms, national priorities, and changing understandings of global interconnection. While curricular reforms have sought to address critiques of Eurocentrism and to incorporate approaches associated with New World History and global history, significant tensions remain between reform discourse and classroom practice. This panel investigates the current state and challenges of world history education in South Korea through four interconnected dimensions: national curriculum discourse, textbook narratives, high-stakes assessment, and scholarly debates shaping reform.
The first paper analyzes the normative goals embedded in national curriculum documents, identifying enduring tensions between “human history” and “today’s world.” The second paper investigates how high school textbooks construct global narratives, focusing on Eurocentrism and the distribution of historical agency. The third paper turns to assessment by examining eleven years of College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) items, revealing how high-stakes testing constrains the realization of global history ideals. The fourth paper situates these developments within broader scholarly debates, analyzing how researchers’ positionalities shape discourse on world history education in Korea.
Taken together, these studies show that world history education in South Korea operates at the intersection of global intellectual trends and national institutional structures. By integrating curriculum, textbook, assessment, and discourse analysis, the panel offers a comprehensive examination of how “the global” is conceptualized, institutionalized, and contested in world history. Korea’s experience offers a valuable case for international scholars seeking to understand how world history education is evolving within national education systems in a period shaped by new debates about globalization.