Mindwork: Discover What You Know
My topic would be about Korean students’ a lack of creativity. This topic has been intriguing because as a student and observer of American education, I found significant differences between Korean and American education. I believe the differences could be caused by sociocultural aspects or characteristics. Since creativity could be defined as a way of thinking differently, more liberal and open society or community which respects diversity could more easily accept creative people and enjoy creative process. In terms of that, I believe a deep rooted conservatism based on Confucianism strongly influence Korean education. It disrupts positive interactions between students or students and teachers. These facts I’ve already known would be important background information of my research.
Mindwork: Try a Google-ography
Through googling, I found a few useful articles which might support and reinforce my research. Surprisingly these articles’ topics are somewhat related to the theme, the relationships between Korean cultural aspect and students’ or teachers’ creativity which I already mentioned. It would be an important process for me to think how to make my research more developing than the previous researches.
Cultural Influence on Creativity: The Relationship between Asian Culture (Confucianism) and
Creativity among Korean Educators
Creativity and Confucianism Among American and Korean Educators
Mindwork: Shape Your Working Bibliography
I prefer APA bibliographic format. For now, I haven’t included enough materials for my research but I think collecting latest information and research articles related to my topic would be very helpful to narrow down and revise the topic.
Mindwork: Explore the Emic and the Etic
My recent experience with my own class composed of 5 Korean students made me recognize the problem. Since a lack of creativity has been considered as a major problem of Korean education in Korea, it was not so new to me but my own experience as a teacher was pretty shocking.
I was disappointed and frustrated because I could see myself through them. They seem to have same problems with open-ended tasks which had terrified me at the beginning of the master’s program.
I think I could insightfully deal with the topic because as a boundary crosser I could compare and contrast both culture and education. I don’t believe American education perfectly foster students’ creativity but there are still a lot of things Korean education could learn.
Mindwork: Use the Three Questions for Analysis
To answer three questions, I looked back Chapter 1’s exercises.
. What surprises you?
I could not find anything really surprised me because I have been thinking most of them for a long time. I was just impressed by the way of planning research. How systematic and scientific it is!
. What intrigues you?
While planning the research, I got to be interested in the relationship between sociocultural aspect and creativity. Are there significant differences between Korean students and American Korean students in terms of creativity?
. What disturbs you?
To be honest, I am worried about many obstacles when conducting the research. Since I don’t have my own class and have space restraints, collecting data would be very challenging.
Mindwork: State Your Ethics
While I conduct the research, I will be honest and exclude my personal bias and prejudices for accurate results. I also respect all individuals participating in my research. I therefore try to seek voluntary participation. If needed, I would make my participants anonymous. My all research activities will protect participants from any kind of risk.
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