earticle

영어

With the International Covenant on the Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights (Treaty No.6, in 1979), mandatory public education (Elementary and High schools) was guaranteed to foreign children in Japan. In the 1990s, in order to solve the problem concerning the decline in domestic labor force due to aging and low birth rates, the establishment of a national system for accepting foreign immigrants became the direct concern of the Japanese government. After the year 2000, school enrollment problems of those immigrant children came above water, and, that led to the enforcement of 'multicultural symbiotic societies’ policy which promoted child care, education, social security, and contribution to society, in an attempt to make the country a better, safer place for people to coexist. The purpose of this study is to analyze the current status of the Japanese multicultural education policy, and to draw the implications of educational support for immigrant children and adolescents in Korea. In order to achieve the goals stated above, we first analyzed the multicultural symbiotic educational policy framework in the web-sites of the Japan Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Cabinet Office, and the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication through the understanding of various literatures. Through these analyses, we could identify the various types of problems and challenges which had been at stake from 1991, until now, and have found some successful cases. Tasks and implications for Korea based on the results of this research were suggested as follows. Firstly, cooperation system focusing on schools and local government in local community should be established. Secondly, training procedure for teachers and professionals should be set to meet the needs of education institutes based on continuous research. Thirdly, enrollment of foreign students should be regarded as an opportunity for the whole school to be exposed to various cultures. Fourth, flexible teaching and learning methods should be developed for students to accept different languages more naturally through various cultural contexts with multicultural sensitivity. Based on the results of this study, we suggested some recommendations for future research of foreign children and adolescents education support.