Jeewon Park
Jeewon Park is an assistant professor in the Department of History Education at Chongshin University, South Korea. Her research explores how historical inquiry and historical literacy inform history teaching, with a focus on supporting teachers in designing inquiry-based lessons grounded in thoughtful understandings of learners. She received her Ph.D. in History Education from Seoul National University, where she examined how preservice history teachers design inquiry-based lessons and how their conceptions of historical inquiry and learners shape instructional decision-making.
Her work centers on preservice teacher education and the pedagogical use of historical sources, curricular materials, and inquiry tasks. More broadly, she examines how developments in historical scholarship and evolving digital contexts influence the organization of historical knowledge in schools. In this session, she examines how developments in world history scholarship reshape curricular structures and influence the organization of historical knowledge in school settings.
Chongshin University
Session
This study examines how the global history paradigm—particularly its emphasis on relational and cross-regional processes—is translated into secondary-level world history curricula. Drawing on global historiography and curriculum theory, it investigates whether curricular frameworks and textbooks reorganize historical knowledge around interregional processes or continue to privilege regionally organized narrative structures.
Using a comparative qualitative approach, the study analyses two influential yet structurally distinct systems: the Korean National Curriculum and state-approved textbooks, and the AP World History: Modern Course and Exam Description with its aligned materials. Focusing on the period 1200–1750—a formative era of intensified interregional exchange—the analysis proceeds along three dimensions: (1) the structural positioning of interconnectedness within curricular organization; (2) the explanatory role assigned to cross-regional interaction in narratives of historical change; and (3) the forms of historical reasoning foregrounded in learning objectives and assessment prompts.
The findings show that both systems explicitly reference global interconnectedness, yet its curricular translation differs in scope and institutional expression. In both contexts, regionally organized sequencing remains prominent, and cross-regional interaction often functions as thematic emphasis or contributing background rather than as a consistently structuring explanatory principle. Differences are evident in how reasoning about cross-regional processes is articulated and institutionalized within curricular and assessment frameworks. The study argues that the translation of global historiography into secondary education does not occur primarily through the addition of global content, but through shifts in structural organization, explanatory logic, and reasoning demands. Historiographical innovation becomes durable only when embedded within institutional design and assessment practice.