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Date: February 09, 2005

Keimyung Preschool & Kindergarten - Korea

This is a half-day private preschool & kindergarten for children between three and five, funded by University funding and enrollment fee. Moonja Oh, an Adjunct Professor at Keimyung University notes that the purpose of this program is to provide the setting for training pre-service teachers as well as a model for the quality early education in the community.

The Keimyung preschool and kindergarten is located in Taegu, one of the major cities in Korea. It was first established in 1959 by an American missionary to provide early childhood education for children of faculty members of Keimyung University. Since its opening, the program has been based on the philosophy of Dewey and worked toward the child-centered practice. Starting in 1998, the school has begun to adopt some of the socio-constructivistic principles based on the theories of Vygotsky and Piaget, due to the introduction of the Reggio Emilia approach. There are six classrooms housed in a two-story brick building: one for 3 year olds, two for 4 year olds and 3 for five year olds. For each class, children come to school in two different groups: one from 9:00 am to 12:00 and the other from 10:00 to 1:00 pm. This type of schedule was adopted in order to provide children more opportunities for small group interaction and work, within the constraints of having just one teacher with 30 children in the class. This way, all the children can stay together for the majority of time between 10 and 12, and at the beginning and the end of school day, they can engage themselves in rather in-depth group works like projects for a good hour.

The program is in the process of adapting the socio-constructivistic principles of the Reggio approach. Having a long tradition of following Dewey's educational philosophy, the program naturally finds commonalities and affinity with the Reggio Approach.

For a full program description, please select the Program Showcase option under the Conferences/Organizations TAB at: www.childcareexchange.com, and then scroll down to Korea.

EOE is edited by Michael Kalinowski of the University of New Hampshire