A Study on the Education of Korean Classical Poetry through Practical Use of Background Knowledge ― Based on Dosansibigok ―

The purpose of this paper is to propose a desirable direction for the education of Korean classical poetry through practical use of background knowledge and to achieve this, we have explored theories and methods for converting background knowledge into practical knowledge. First, we examined theoretical premises for the education of Korean classical poetry through practical use of background knowledge. Since the key to practical knowledge depends on participation of learners, we need to start from literary competence of learners such as ‘binary opposition’. We define background knowledge as “an additional knowledge related to understanding the text” and can expect it to be converted to practical knowledge when it could lead learners to infer the theme of the text in-depth on the basis of learners’ literary competence. Next, we explored when and how background knowledge should be provided to learners through Dosansibigok. Theoretically learners could learn Dosansibigok in 4 steps. At first, learners infer the theme of the first part of Dosansibigok from their own tacit knowledge using ‘binary opposition’ before studying the text. Secondly, they complement this inference using the background knowledge which is reconstructed by the principle of ‘binary opposition’. Thirdly, learners render the task of the text as their own and internalize the text by correlating it with their own ‘binary opposition’ experience. Finally, learners obtain the ability to learn the remaining parts of Dosansibigok and a state of mind in which they could learn ‘the irony’ of poetry developed from ‘binary opposition’. In conclusion, we have found that background knowledge which is converted into a form understood by the learners and also reconstructed as the principle which makes inference possible, all based on the learners'literary competence, can promote increase in practical literary competence. Although the conclusion has limitations since it results from predicted responses of theoretical learners, discussions in this study that explored the possibilities in converting background knowledge into practical knowledge is significant in an effort to resolve a dilemma in Korean classical poetry education which recognized the need for background knowledge but doubted its educational efficacy.