티치 포 아메리카(Teach For America)의 비판적 재조명: 교사교육의 신자유주의적 재구성 및 한국 교사교육에 주는 시사점을 중심으로

Abstract

Over the last two decades, Teach for America (TFA) has rapidly grown with the greatest success in influencing the field of teacher education and education policy making and social reform in the United States, as well as globally. Despite the increased popularity and heated debates over the TFA around the globe just as in the US teacher education policy and practice, there has been little scholarly attention paid to this topic in Korean context. Addressing the near silence in Korea to the currently most controversial, global reform movement, this paper provides 1) an overview of local and global TFA trends and a review of the existing literature on TFA; 2) a conceptual framework that reframes TFA as a neoliberal, political and social reform; and lastly 3) implication for teacher education in Korean context. The finding based on the literature review suggests that it is critical to understand TFA not simply as an alternative teacher preparation and placement program that provides a solution for persistent teacher shortages. More importantly, TFA is a paradigmatic reform movement designed to disturb and fundamentally reshape the arguably “broken” teacher education systems. Three scenarios of the transfer of the TFA to the Korean teacher education system are discussed: 1) Incremental improvement within the existing system, 2) Gradual but consequential approach, 3) Disruptive approach. We conclude that this study of TFA within S. Korea can provide the Korean teacher educators with the opportunity to gain a more transparent, even trenchant, new take on their challenges and come up with the fresh solutions that are mindful of the new trans-national space and mobilities of reforms.