Korean Job Discussion Forums

[professordhf]

Dear Fellow Expats,

Next month, I am making a presentation in Los Angeles on foreign teachers in Korea. If you teach, or have taught, at a hagwon, an elementary school, or a secondary school (public or private), your assistance in taking a quick, 10-question survey would be greatly appreciated.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/GWVY3MY

No identifying information is required. The survey is entirely anonymous and should take about three minutes. Your responses will help to educate both foreigners and Koreans about the working and living conditions of foreign teachers in Korea.

You may leave your name and/or email address at the end of the survey, if you are interested in serving as a case study for my upcoming presentation, but this is totally optional. In any event, I will NEVER share ANY identifying information with any third party for any reason.

Thanks in advance. Please feel free to email me with any questions.


Sincerely,

Daniel

Daniel H. Fernald, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
[email protected]

[some waygug-in]

Your survey has some questions that are very difficult to answer for those who have been in Korea for a number of years.

The answers would vary greatly depending on the employment situation and how it changes from year to year.

I also wish there would have been some questions about how foreign teachers (and foreigners in general) are portrayed in the Korean media.

[PatrickGHBusan]

Interesting survey.

But as mentionned above it is odd for long term teachers.

The results will also not be worth much because of the sample size you will end up with. I wonder what use it can be in the context of an academic presentation especially since any trends that come out of it will only be a snap shot and will have no cross-time reference (say if you ran the same survey over a period of 1 year or 6 months).

I would be reluctant to use any data recovered from such a survey in a formal presentation. The data you get will of course not be representative of "foreign teachers in Korea".

Still best of luck with the presentation.

[sirius black]

Good luck with it. I hope some meaningful changes or some of the policy makers in Education in Korea get to see some of the results.

[Wiltern]

It's not wise to announce this on Dave's. There will be a disproportionate number of people who hate their job (and all things Korea) and will express only their negative experiences. For the most part, the people who are content aren't on this forum.

[definitely maybe]

In the future, it may be useful to try to balance a portrayal of how frustration and mistreatment/disrespect in the workplace color the average English teacher's view of Korea. I think you'll find that problems in the workplace are often magnified here because we are living in a foreign country. They tend to seep into life outside of work even more as well. I know this was true for me in my third and final hagwon job. Life in Korea was a bit harder and I was definitely more critical of my surroundings because of my frustrations with work and the constant "in Korea . . ." nonsense that my boss force fed all the foreign instructors when trying to take advantage of us. Situations like that require time and patience to overcome, and most of your first or second-year teachers in Korea are likely to be short on both accounts due to age, experience, and exposure to the culture.

[gypsymaria]

I took the survey. I'm mostly satisfied with my job and life here, at least so far.

I had trouble answering the questions about how Koreans view Western expats, because I only ever hear about these "views" from other Westerners, not from Koreans themselves.

Also, the income question does not have an option for those who make between 1.5 and 2 million won/month.

[lifeinkorea]

[matthews_world]

Surveys and election ballets are exactly the same. You don't have vote for each issue/candidate and you certainly don't have to answer all of the question.

Simply put N/A if they don't apply or if a quesiton is ambiguous in your case then select 'not sure.'

I'm interested in seeing how the results come out. Please post a link to the final findings when finished.

[northway]

[PatrickGHBusan]

[thegadfly]

I began taking your survey, but stopped because of the clearly prejudicial wording in most of the questions. Would it really have ruined your data collection to at least attempt a neutral phrasing of the questions?

Since I am not really in the sample you care about (the over-40, long-timers), I hardly think it matters, though. I mean, really, you break down ages into 2-year or 3-year brackets, then suddenly a decade at 30-40, and every 41-99 year old is in the same group?

I suppose it doesn't matter, but I detest poor "scholarship."

[PatrickGHBusan]

That is because I suspect its not scholarship at all.

The OP just wanted a quick and dirty pound of data to present and reading the survey also gives the impression he wanted the data to say something in particular.

[Binch Lover]

Why is there an option for Indian citizenship, but not Irish citizenship? Typo??

[professordhf]

Many thanks to the people who have taken part in the survey. I sincerely appreciate it.

To those who have been kind enough to comment here, I would like to take a moment to post some quick replies on a few themes, some of which seem to be recurrent.

1. THE SURVEY IS DESIGNED TO ELICIT NEGATIVE RESULTS: I honestly don't see this at all, and strove to make the survey neither a whitewash nor a attempted smear. Only 21% (or 11) of the questions are worded "negatively," and the remaining 79% are worded "positively." If anything, the survey is skewed toward a positive view of Korea (which, full disclosure, is my own view).


2. THE SURVEY INDICATES IGNORANCE OF LIFE IN KOREA. I live in Korea. I have lived here for some time. My wife and children are Korean. I have researched this topic, and this survey is obviously part of that research. I am of course always ready, willing, and indeed eager to be educated.


3. THE SURVEY SEEMS FOCUSED ON YOUNGER TEACHERS. This is true, and is a legitimate criticism. I was operating under the possibly false assumption that most foreign teachers were under 30. I am grateful for the education.

Plus, there is a "N/A" box for a reason.


4. DON'T POST AT DAVE'S. There are concerns that Dave's is not the best place to post the survey. There is certainly some negativity here, but you'll find that anywhere. I'm looking for neither a whitewash nor a smear job. I want to hear from anyone in the target population.

In that vein, I encourage anyone to post the link at any appropriate venue in order to get the best, largest, and broadest sample possible. Email it to your coworkers. The more data, the better. I have posted the link elsewhere, but haven't gotten much anywhere but from Dave's.


5. YOU'RE A HACK PSEUDO-SCHOLAR LOOKING TO DISCREDIT KOREA. In the immortal words of Murphy, "Never argue with a fool. People might not know the difference."


6. WHAT ABOUT THE IRISH?: Good point. Sorry. I'm a typical American "mutt" with German on one side and Anglo-Irish on the other, so I should have known better. Mea maxima culpa. I'll fix it next time.


7. MISC. I'd also add that this was never supposed to be a scientific survey, since there is a self-selecting sample. That's rule #1 (or at least one of the top 5).

It is meant to give more specific focus and weight to anecdotal evidence and other more general comments. That's it.

One or two people have cautioned against my taking the results as authoritative, so please rest assured that I take everything with a rather large grain of salt.


Unfortunately, my memory is far from photographic, and I don't spend much time on these kinds of boards, so if you want to ensure that I do not repeat any of my perceived errors in the future, please email your comments to [email protected]. I will save such messages in a separate folder for future reference.

Thanks again to all who participated, and to all of you who have commented constructively here (whether negatively or positively).