한국어 교육학의 정체성에 관한 연구

A Study on the Identity of Korean Language Education

Korean language education has made rapid external progress steadily since the 1980s. However, this external growth needs to transform and establish a unique type of study that harmonizes externally and internally in terms of content. In order for one’s efforts for the development of Korean language education to bear fruit, establishing an academic identity for Korean language education is the single most important thing to be done. For this goal, one needs to examine the current situation and directions for the academic development of Korean language education. This study examined the course of Korean language education throughout its history, including the current picture, especially by studying the current research status of Korean language education in two journals, Bilingual Research and Journal of Korean Language Education. Finally, by studying the relationship between adjacent academic disciplines and by considering the Korean language as a subordinate learning domain of the study of Korean language education, this study explored research directions, seeking a unique learning domain for the study of Korean language education. Looking at the relationship between Korean language education and adjacent disciplines, the study of Korean language education has had the strong characteristic of being an intermediary discipline, but there is the possibility that it could move up to a higher status that can be equivalent to one of the pure academic disciplines. Therefore, after basing one’s study on the relationship with adjacent academic disciplines, one needs to find distitinctive features in Korean language education and accumulate research studies containing their own theories of Korean language education. Then, Korean language education will grow as an international discipline.