シンガポールおよび韓国における才能教育の比較研究 : エンリッチメントとアクセラレーション

Abstract

This paper examines the educational programs introduced to cater to the intellectually gifted and talented students in Singapore and South Korea from a comparative perspective. The governments of Singapore and South Korea are most active in their efforts to identify, select and nurture the brightest students as the most promising national resources for the expected knowledge-based society of the 21st Century. Singapore has adopted in-house special classes for the gifted though the provision of enrichment programs since 1984. On the other hand, South Korea started its efforts by establishing Special High Schools in 1983. It has also chosen an acceleration approach to meet the intellectual needs of the gifted by introducing a law in 1996 that allows students to skip grades and to enter or graduate from the elementary and secondary schools at an earlier age. The paper also discusses the common obstacles the programs are facing in the context of Asian societies, with a heavy educational stress on examination, and Confucius tradition. Finally, the paper attempts a comparative analysis of the differences between the two programs in term of selection, school formation (in-house or separate), approaches (enrichment or acceleration), and social consensus as the model cases of gifted education in the Asian context.