Korean Job Discussion Forums

[professordhf]

I forgot to speak to the request by "matthews_world" that I post the results. I will of course be very happy to do so, and am gratified by the request. I plan to close the survey on or about February 5, so there are still several days, but once the survey is closed, I'll post either a link to the results (if surveymonkey.com lets me do that), or at least a fairly thorough summary of the results.

In the meanwhile, please send the link around to anyone who teaches at a hagwon, elementary school, or secondary school.

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

Thanks again to everyone who has either taken the survey and/or made constructive comments there. Such helpful feedback (positive and negative) is sincerely appreciated.

Cheers!

[Riker]

I don't trust Americans that say "cheers" ...

[lifeinkorea]

[thegadfly]

21% were phrased negatively and 79% were phrased positively? Why not go for 100% phrased neutrally? If the phrasing of your survey question pushes the result to a positive answer or a negative answer, then the question needs to be redesigned. "You understand, right?" will often get agreement, even when the person does not understand -- positive phrasing, skewed results.

An example from your survey:

"My students treat me with respect" is a better phrasing than "My students treat me the same as they would a Korean person."

The former phrasing directly asks what I would imagine you want to know -- the treatment of foreigners as teachers -- without adding in all the other variables. In the majority of schools I have worked in, I have been treated with MORE respect than most of my Korean co-workers, by administration, staff, students, and their family members. This has to do with a lot of factors, including my own background and experience, the value the school perceives in me, the reception of my teaching by students and their families, and the standards to which I hold myself and my students.

Honestly, I would not permit my students to treat me with the disrespect I have seen students show to Korean teachers, and have even stepped in to correct especially egregious behavior toward Korean co-workers, and even toward parents (parents are always welcome to sit in on classes at my school, and many parents choose to make use of that opportunity). I have corrected, scolded, and even punished students for the way they have behaved toward their parents while in my classroom -- and I am pretty sure that the parents are "Korean people." No, those students did not treat me like a Korean person -- they treated me with respect.

...so although I am accorded a proper level of respect in my job, or even treated well, I would have to strongly disagree that my students treat me the same as Korean teachers -- they don't. I would have to strongly agree that they treat me with respect, however....

I realize that I am not the norm, but if another teacher is accorded more respect at the school, it does NOT mean it is because of the teacher's race -- it could be a host of other factors. The neutrally-phrased question avoid conflating race with those other factors, unless the point of your survey is to conflate race with the host of other factors that cause problems for people working in Korea....

[huck]

It seemed to me that a lot of the questions were Western stereotypes about Korean stereotypes. All of the questions about "All foreigners do drugs" "Foreigners are sexually promiscuous" "Foreigners are to blame for Korea's woes" etc. are based on random, very infrequent Korean articles that are reprinted in English and talked about on websites such as this one....But the phrasing of those questions are insinuating that ALL Koreans or even the majority of the Koreans think that..

I didn't like them. I'm not sure what your goal is, or what results you're hoping to get, but that set of questions was not done for well...or for a good reason, I think.