담임학급제도에서 나타나는 가족비유와 가족주의: 지속과 변화

Abstract

This article examines the homeroom class as a cultural institution in South Korean schools, with particular reference to the affective tie between the homeroom teacher and the students. Homeroom is a universal feature of Korean schooling at both primary and secondary levels, in which a group of students are assigned to a teacher for one academic year for general guidance in their education. Based on two ethnographic research studies among middle school teachers in the early 1990s and the early 2010s respectively, I find continuities as well as some significant changes in the psychocultural underpinnings of the homeroom institution. A strong continuity was that teachers view raising persons as the ultimate educational goal and center their educational practices on the building of affective ties modeled after the one between the parent and the child, in order to achieve the goal of raising persons. Practicing a parents heart then becomes an educational imperative, by which students are viewed as ones children to be cared for with jeong. This familial model is most strongly applied within the boundary of a homeroom class, as manifest in family metaphors employed by teachers. One remarkable change was that compared to the early 1990s, when a homeroom functioned as a collective unit for educational achievements, in the early 2010s, a homeroom has come to be positioned more as an affective community for sociability.