Languages, cultures and identities of newcomer adolescent learners: Deconstructing multicultural education in South Korea

Despite the South Korean government's recent policy interventions to accommodate the emerging social and classroom reality that has increasingly become multicultural, few guidelines have been provided for multicultural education practice at the local and municipal levels in South Korea (Henceforth, Korea). In particular, investigations focusing on newcomer adolescents' linguistic and cultural identities are scarce. In this light, this doctoral inquiry investigates how multicultural students, their languages and cultures are reflected in Korean society and schools and especially, how newcomer adolescents' linguistic and cultural identities are negotiated in terms of their own success in Korea. 8 multicultural education policies and 27 news media publications as well as the narratives of 7 students and 6 educators from two high schools are analyzed through Fairclough's (1992, 2003) critical discourse analysis. Based on the analysis, the discourses of diversity embedded in the nation-state texts and popular media as well as in the institutional contexts are discussed in relation to five orientations to diversity, which are derived from Ruiz's (1984) theoretical framework of three orientations to language planning and Cummins'(2001) empowerment framework.;The study reveals that an ideology of Korean ethnocentrism is reflected throughout the policy and news media articles as well as school administrators' conceptualizations of diversity and multicultural education. Despite the emergent progressive orientations of viewing diversity as a right and resource, the predominant discourses of viewing diversity are that diversity is a problem/threat to society and is a problem/impediment to multicultural students' social integration. It is evident that diversity is only appreciated once multicultural students are fully assimilated into Korean society. Thus, the notion of multicultural identity is absent or at best hidden in the Korean context. The study highlights that schools and policy makers need to make a shift in their orientations to diversity toward diversity as a right, resource and a form of empowerment through critical multicultural education in order to instill just and equitable worldviews in students. Educators' negligence in considering these possibilities contributes to reproducing unequal power relations that disadvantage linguistic and cultural minorities and perpetuate the hegemonic status quo in Korean society.