KDI - Korea Development Institute - RESEARCH - Research Areas

Summary

Policy Study KOR Teacher Retraining Strategies for Early Childhood Education and Care Integration: Focusing on Teacher Learning Communities

With impetus, the government of South Korea is advancing the integration of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services starting this year. This policy initiative aims to merge daycare centers and kindergartens to eliminate disparities in quality between these institutions and establish a standard of excellence. The goal is to ensure that all young children benefit from superior education and care services, regardless of their enrolled institution. Daycare centers and kindergartens influence early childhood development, and parental choice between the two can impact children's developmental outcomes. Currently, dual-income status, household income, and proximity to the institution are determining factors for parents' choice of institution, highlighting how family socioeconomic status influences a child's developmental trajectory.

The integration of ECEC services involves qualitative considerations, including operational hours and days, evaluation systems, child-to-teacher ratios, parental fees, meal and snack costs, facility size, and the system for teacher training and qualifications. However, there are concerns that this integration could lead to reduced working conditions and diluted standards for teacher qualifications. These concerns have fueled opposition, especially among kindergarten teachers, despite the point that establishing new benchmarks and redesigning the system are both seen as reasonable and anticipated.

In this context, this study examines the role of learning communities formed by daycare and kindergarten teachers in fostering acceptance of ECEC integration through peer group mentoring. It also explores whether these teacher learning communities can mitigate psychological stress associated with teacher roles, enhance professionalism, and promote a collaborative organizational culture in a similar manner as seen within homogeneous institution types. Based on the findings, the study argues that it is essential to expand forums for teachers to share insights and engage in dialogue reflecting the unique challenges and conditions of daycare centers and kindergartens for the successful establishment of ECEC integration. Moreover, it underscores the importance of reforms in teachers' working schedules, promotion criteria for qualifications, and retraining methods as key to energizing these teacher-learning communities.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Women’s Career Interruptions and the Declining Fertility Rate in South Korea

In South Korea, more women are postponing or forgoing childbirth due to concerns about career interruption. Their conscious decision to refrain from motherhood is estimated to be responsible for about 40% of the decrease in the fertility rate. In the face of the world’s lowest fertility rate, Korea needs to overhaul its policies to better support work-life balance, enabling parents to maintain their careers while raising children.

- Traditional economic theory explains the decline in fertility rates as a result of the increase in women’s opportunity costs.

- Since the 2000s, a positive correlation between women’s labor force participation rates, income, and fertility rates has been commonly observed in high-income countries, which appears to be closely associated with the extent to which women (mothers) can balance work and family life.

- South Korea’s low fertility rate may have stemmed from the disproportionate burden of childcare on women, combined with the persistent difficulty in balancing work and family life, leading women to postpone or forgo childbirth.

- If the presence of children significantly affects women’s probability of career interruption, the number of women who forgo childbirth while maintaining their careers due to these concerns may increase.

- If young women choose to have children, their probability of career interruption increases by about 14%p, leading to a higher likelihood of experiencing a substantial level of economic loss throughout their lifetime.

- Since the mid-2010s, Korea’s total fertility rate has rapidly decreased, as the gap in career interruptions based on parenthood status has widened.

- Recently (2013~19), the gender employment gap has narrowed. Still, this converging trend has been limited to the young without children, ironically increasing the women’s opportunity costs for choosing to give birth. This increased child penalty is estimated to account for about 40% of the overall decline in the fertility rate.

- Policies aimed at preventing career interruptions for women with children are expected to contribute to raising the fertility rate by reducing the number of women who delay or forgo childbirth.

- Policies that mitigate career interruptions for women with children can increase labor supply and prevent the erosion of irrecoverable human capital, thereby not only helping to raise the fertility rate but also promoting macroeconomic growth.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Improving Elementary Childcare System in Women’s Growing Economic Participation

□ Despite women's growing economic participation, female employment rates vary considerably across age groups. Women in their 30~40s exhibit the lowest rates, mainly due to the lack of policy support targeting women with dependent children in elementary school. The Korean government has sought to address this by expanding public childcare, but problems like childcare void and high dependence on private education persist. Amid rising social demands for childcare services, taking policy actions to enhance the quality and quantity of public childcare and overhaul its legal framework is of vital importance and requires immediate attention.

- By design, Korean childcare support policy mainly targets younger children, and the relative shortage of elementary childcare services is a hurdle to economic activity for women with dependent children in elementary school.

- Policy efforts for better elementary childcare services are vital to properly respond to women’s growing economic participation

- As elementary childcare classes focus on caring and after-school programs on learning, educational benefits among students differ.

- So far, Korea has no clear policy direction for childcare and a fragile legal foundation for elementary childcare services.

- It is important to figure out why participation in private education rapidly rises after 3 p.m. while it is low in elementary childcare classes.

- Suppose short regular school hours are extended to equip better schools as care providers and induce students to sue public childcare after dismissal. In addition to solving the lack of childcare, it may be possible to reduce dependence on private education with additional educational opportunities.

- If the discussion on increasing regular class hours is to focus on resolving the childcare gap, there should be an in-depth analysis of the use of after-school hours.

- Childcare policies in major countries have progressed in the direction of incorporating learning from supporting child's wellbeing.

- Korea’s care policy needs a proper legal basis and social consensus among stakeholders.

- When children attend elementary childcare classes, mothers are 7.8%p more likely to participate in economic activity and work for extra 4.7 hours per week on average, while they are 8.5%p less likely to use private education.

- On the other hand, among the users of afterschool programs, no statistically significant effects were observed in terms of women’s economic participation, working hours, and the use of private institutes.

- Extended hours of the regular curriculum may not deter the use of private institutes.

- In order to achieve the intended effect of longer regular school hours, authorities need to take policy actions for a significant quality upgrade of school childcare services.

- The function of care services needs to be redefined by establishing a legal basis for operating elementary childcare classes and after-school programs within the Framework Act on Education and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

- Elementary childare services need to stay open for longer hours and more applicants.

- Elementary childcare services need a quality upgrade.

- The approach of strengthening the childcare function of schools by increasing the regular school hours needs to be considered in connection with the current care policy.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Child-centered, Play-based Education and Future Competency

□ The child-centered, play-based curriculum enhances young children's problem-solving skills and socio-emotional competences. As such, in order to firmly establish it within the education system and bolster its effectiveness, guardians and teachers must collaborate to support children’s play activities, and a mutually beneficial learning community for teachers must be built.

- To improve adaptability, education must focus on enhancing students‘ problem-solving skills.

- In the child-centered, playbased curriculum, children experience the problemsolving process via selfdirected play with their teacher’s support

- Support from teachers should be based on the children’s play experiences in and outside of the classroom.

- For the new curriculum to take hold, a sufficient number of execution examples and analysis of its effects on children’s competences are needed.

- Class critiques, which provide actual examples of the curriculum in operation, were conducted as a form of teacher training.

- The training was designed to improve teachers’ educational beliefs, knowledge, and practices.

- The training improved the teachers’ ability to execute the child-centered, play-based curriculum.

- Teachers found it difficult to share the children’s experiences in the classroom with their guardians and to discuss measures on supporting the children’s development.

- Teacher training in the form of class critiques was effective in improving children’s cool executive function and socioemotional competences.

- Executive function is a problem-solving skill and a psychological competence with which individuals combine and apply accumulated information to fulfill a goal while controling their impulses and establishing an action plan, putting it into practice, and attempting a different strategy when the first fails.

- Executive function can be divided into working memory, inhibition, and cognitive flexibility.

- Teacher training enhanced children’s inhibition and cognitive flexibility.

- Executive function can serve as an indicator for children’s problem behaviors and emotional control as well as their future experiences e.g. resilience, maintaining a job and marriage, health, income, and the crime rate.

- Teacher training improved children’s extrinsic and intrinsic problem behaviors and socio-emotional competences e.g. emotional self-control.

- The child-centered, playbased curriculum creates an environment that can foster children’s executive function.

- The execution of the curriculum enhances children's executive function and improves their socioemotional competence either directly or via the executive function.

- For the curriculum to take root and to be more effective, class critiques should be conducted in greater numbers, and collaboration is needed between teacher and guardians to support children’s play.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR A Study on Education Innovation and Competency: Focusing on Kindergartens

With the rapid developments in AI, robotics and biotechnology, among others, our children will witness jobs being created and becoming obsolete at ever-increasing speeds. Indeed, although the impact of the changes in science and technology cannot be accurately predicted and reflected in education at present, the labor market will most certainly continue to evolve and reshape.

Accordingly, education systems today must focus on teaching students how to self-learn new skills and knowledge in order to solve problems. To that end, rather than unilaterally imparting the answers, teachers should guide their students through questions and encouragement, and provide and share the necessary resources and experiences while also building on their own knowledge. In other words, it is no longer about how much you know but about how you organize, apply, and expand on what you know.

The same is true for early childhood education. Children should be allowed to lead the learning process while teachers participate as co-learners, communicating their thoughts and forming shared knowledge. In December 2017, the government announced plans to innovate early education, and mandated the implementation of the revised child-centered and play-based Nuri curriculum (2019) in all nurseries and kindergartens from March 2020. The curriculum was previously based on teacher-led education programs wherein teachers prepare contents which are introduced through play activities. The revised version, however, enables voluntarily learning through play with assistance from teachers who respect the children’s individual experiences, interests and curiosity. A child-centered curriculum is premised on the belief that children can direct their own learning and that individuality and uniqueness should be respected. Here, individuality refers to recognizing the differences between children and uniqueness to respecting their personal experiences. According to the revised Nuri curriculum, early childhood learning should aim to cultivate mental and physical health, autonomy, creativity, aesthetic sensibility, and the ability to coexist rather than merely transferring knowledge. Meanwhile, play-based education centers around play activities that do not pursue any pre-planned goals, and allow children to initiate and voluntarily enjoy learning―that is, daily play becomes the process and means of education.

In a child-centered, play-based curriculum, which emphasizes individuality, initiative, spontaneity, enjoyment, and process, teachers observe their students’ learning processes to design activities that would encourage them to explore and resolve problems that pique their interests, either on their own or with teachers and peers. Ideas can also be suggested to help expand reasoning. Teachers are invited into the children‘s voluntary learning process, and they contribute by sharing their thoughts to broaden and deepen the children’s learning. They must then develop a gradual assistance plan by observing the children’s play, and how their teaching plan is reflected.

However, introducing the curriculum will not be an easy feat. Firstly, not only do teachers lack the experience of managing such a curriculum, but there is a lack of cases to which they can refer to. Secondly, even if teachers are willing to undertake the curriculum, the response from parents may not be favorable. Parents who send their children to early education institutions expect their children to be taught the necessary study skills before they enter elementary school. As such, gaining their approval, especially when the effects of the curriculum are still unclear, will be difficult. Despite several studies proving that child-centered, play-based education has a positive effect on academic achievement in the short-term, the overriding view is that there are no effects or that it is only effective in the mid- to long-term through enhanced motivation, creativity and confidence. As aforementioned, the revised curriculum does not focus on academic achievement. Rather, it takes a comprehensive approach that involves not only a successful school life but also a successful life in general as well as problem-solving skills. In this context, children’s executive function is considered to be a significant performance indicator that can encompass the effects. Once teachers are able to receive the proper training, and when the cause-and-effect between teachers’ ability to implement the curriculum and children’s executive functions has been firmly established, more case studies and reference materials can be complied and concerns over the necessity of the curriculum will be eased.

Accordingly, this study analyzes the effects of training teachers to strengthen their ability to implement a child-centered, play-based curriculum on the level of implementation; the development of children’s executive functions and related competences and; parental burdens.

The subjects of the analysis were the children, parents and homeroom teachers of eight public kindergartens in Sejong-si. As a city with a short history, many believe that Sejong’s school districts have yet to be fully established, and all of its kindergartens are publicly funded. Moreover, because parents can enroll their children in any kindergarten in the region, there are no obvious disparities between the children’s capabilities or their family backgrounds. The Sejong City Office of Education was asked to pair kindergartens that are closely located, and have similar establishment dates and exposure to curriculum policies to minimize the heterogeneity. A briefing session was held by researchers for interested kindergartens, and only those whose teachers unanimously agreed to join the project were selected. Thanks to this process, the teachers were highly receptive, and when the samples were divided into control and treatment groups, those in the latter readily signed a confidentially agreement to prevent any information leaks to the former. The preliminary survey was conducted in June-September 2018, and the main survey in September 2018-November 2019. The study was launched in the middle of the school year to avoid any intentional allocation of teachers. A willing group of children was selected from classes for three to four year olds in 2018―and the study continued until they moved up a class (four to five year olds) in 2019. The teachers were chosen from those in charge of these classes and the parents were those whose children were already selected for the project. The teacher training (for the treatment group) was provided from November 2018 to June 2019, and data was collected immediately before and after the training program, and four months after. The two follow-up studies helped to confirm whether the effects of the training were immediate, and whether they were still evident four months after training had ended.

Summary

Research Monograph KOR A New Direction in Korea’s Service Industries A New Direction in Korea’s Service Industries

Despite the remarkable achievement of entering an era that boasts 30,000 dollars per capita, the Korean economy faces growing concerns over whether the quality of life is one of an advanced country, and whether the current growth strategy is still viable as we move forward. Indeed, the rapidly changing global environment has exposed Korea’s vulnerabilities, and the stagnation in major exporting industries, which have long driven growth, has stalled job creation. Further still, the number of jobs is expected to increasingly diminish in the long-term due to slowing growth, low birth rates, population aging, and technological progress.

One solution to secure sustainable and inclusive growth is to bolster the service industry; a vital component of the national economy which accounts for more than half of the national GDP and about 70% of total employment. However, current productivity is so low that little contribution has been made to economic growth and the creation of quality jobs. This underscores the significance of the service industry and the role it plays in improving quality of life and building a better future.

This study aims to present measures to drive growth and job creation, and to enhance the public service sector which is expected to be in growing demand. To that end, the problem areas and current status of five service industries―child care, lifelong learning, elderly care services, healthcare and tourism―are identified, and overseas cases are analyzed in-depth to draw the policy implications and introduce a direction for practical short- and long-term measures.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Strengthening the Quality of Care Centers for Young Children

□ Public concern over the quality of child care has risen in recent years, deepening the distrust of child care centers. To assure parents of their children’s safety and well-being at care facilities, consistent and full access to the operations of centers must be guaranteed. Based on this openness, parental participation should be encouraged in regards to the decision-making process on care quality as well as active parent-teacher interaction to devise programs that could help children develop essential future skills. It is also important that the detailed results of center evaluations are placed in the public domain to enable the evaluation and accreditation system to contribute to enhancing the quality of child care. Furthermore, teachers should be provided with training programs.

- In response to the growing concerns over the quality of child care, the government has consistently increased the number of public centers and mandated evaluations and accreditation.

- If local public and accredited centers had sufficient placements and parents were satisfied with the quality of care, mothers would more likely use child care and continue their careers.

- According to an analysis of the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families, an increase in the capacity ratio of local public and accredited child care centers has no impact on maternal employment and use of child care facilities.

- Every child deserves good quality care at any type of facility.

- In Norway and the Netherlands, parents are guaranteed involvement in center operations to improve qualitative transparency, and evaluations are not only diagnostic tools but opportunities to enhance the capabilities of both teachers and parents.

- At the same time, ECEC programs prioritize the children’s development and happiness and are designed to flexibly provide various programs that meet educational needs in consultation with teachers and parents.

- Only when parents have access to budgetary details and consistently observe the quality of care can they substantially participate in the decisions over quality.

- The ‘Curriculum and interaction’ and ‘Care environment’ categories are classified as care practices. As such, abstract evaluations will not be able to motivate centers to seek improvements.

- The evaluation reports for these categories must contain detailed descriptions of child care practices and their meaning from the perspective of child development.

- Child care centers should be provided with consultation services and leadership training for managing staff if teachers exhibit varying abilities in executing care programs.

- As parental participation becomes more active, programs may overly emphasis the faster acquisition of knowledge.

- Problem-solving skills, a key future ability, can be developed when children voluntarily engage in activities that spark their interests, communicate with others in this process and then apply their experiences to real life.

- To consistently support children’s self-directed learning at home and at the center, parents and teachers must actively communicate with each other and build a consensus on the ideal care program and operation.

- If a program demands more resources than what is subsidized by the government and additional support from the parents, the operations committee can hold deliberations to decide on raising the fees.

Summary

Policy Study KOR Maternal Employment and Child Care: Korea’s Experience

Concerns are on the rise over the quality of child care as reports of child abuse increase across Korea. And while the majority of parents prefer public child care centers, it has been found that the probability of abuse in such centers is higher than in private facilities. Abuse cases have been reported even at top-tier centers, raising doubts over the effectiveness of the evaluation and accreditation system.

Under the circumstances, this study analyzed the effects of the ratio for the capacity of child care centers (all types) and accredited centers to total resident child population (hereinafter capacity ratio) on maternal employment and use of child care, using panel data from the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women and Families. In cases where the parents are comparatively satisfied with the public centers and accredited facilities in their area, women were more likely to participate in economic activities or use child care centers if the capacity of the public and accredited centers was larger than the population of resident children. During the data-analysis period, the evaluation and accreditation system was applied only to child care centers, not kindergartens, and as the care service for the 0-2 age group is available only in child care centers, this study used panel data on women with children aged 0-2.

Preceding studies have stated that parents’ decision to participate in economic activities and to use care centers is affected by the cost and supply of child care services. Simply put, even if the cost is low, maternal employment or care center use will only rise if the supply of care services is sufficient. Accordingly, this study also looked at the data on the relationship between local governments’ limit on necessary expenditure and maternal employment and use of child care. The fees that parents pay to child care centers consist of care costs and necessary expenditures, and while the former is determined by the household’s economic status, children’s age, survey year and employment status of the parents, the latter is wholly borne by the parents.

The empirical analysis found that the average of the probability of child care use did not change when the center’s capacity ratio increased in a residential area but decreased when the monthly limit of necessary expenditures rose. The average of the probability of maternal employment was found to have no affect on the center’s capacity ratio, while it decreased when the monthly limit of necessary expenditures rose. Similar results were obtained when the capacity ratio of centers was analyzed in terms of their establishment and accreditation types. The results suggest that women with children aged 0-2 tend to stay away from maternal employment or child care even if the capacity ratio of public centers and accredited facilities increases in their residential areas. This appears to be due to the fact that the high quality care expected from parents is not yet generally available in spite of their significantly reduced child care costs following the adoption of free child care programs. To effectuate improvements in maternal labor force participation through the supply of child care, efforts should go beyond cutting costs, and qualified high―tier facilities should be made affordable to parents. On the other hand, the monthly burden of necessary expenditures of parents has had an adverse effect on decisions over maternal employment as well as the use of child care centers. Thus, plans should be developed to expand the number of desirable centers while also upgrading the quality of overall care and seeking measures to reduce parents’ financial burden. If proper child care service is provided at a reasonable price, it could incentivize women to engage in economic activities and ease their concerns over child safety and development.

Based on these analyses, this study presents suggestions on improving the quality of child care and reducing the burden of necessary expenditures with regards to setting child care fees; parental participation in operating child care centers; the process of evaluating and accrediting centers; requirements for establishing child care centers and; the autonomy in operating child care programs and the Nuri curriculum.

Summary

Policy Study KOR The Effects of Work-family Balance Policies in Korea and Policy Implications

Korea’s fertility rate dropped to record lows in 2005, prompting the government to take action by drawing up a master plan to deal with the low fertility rate and aging population. However, despite continued efforts, the fertility rate has stalled at 1.2 children since 2010, with expectations of an unprecedented low of 1.04 in 2017. Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate for women has stood at the 60% range for the past decade, which is lower than in other major countries.

Low fertility and labor force participation rates seems to be related to women avoiding having children and taking career breaks due to the poor accessibility to the work-family balance policy and the heavy burden of housework and child rearing. Accordingly, using the Korean Longitudinal Survey of Women & Families (KLoWF) data, this study conducted an empirical analysis on the effects of the work-family balance policy and sharing of the housework with a spouse on the fertility rate and women’s labor force participation rate. The results were then applied in presenting policy suggestions to enhance the balance between work and family and encouraging more men to become active in the home.

Firstly, the analysis found that maternity and parental leave respectively increase birth intentions and women’s desire to participate in the labor market. This implies that as much as maternity leave affects women’s decision to have children, parental leave is also critical to them in continuing their careers.

However, under the current system, only those with employment insurance are eligible for paid maternity and parental leave. In other words, this means that the current system cannot be extended without increasing the number of insured workers. Accordingly, more workers should be encouraged to voluntarily join the employment insurance system in order to reduce blind spots. And in doing so, it is important to promote the fact that the system is a primary social safety net that provides income security in case of unemployment, and is needed to enhance vocational abilities in response to changing labor market conditions. In cases where the employer fails to report the status of employees―and employees lose their eligibility to receive paid maternity leave―the employee has the right to receive the pay through the insurance eligibility check system. Indeed, such information need to be promoted broadly and actively. Furthermore, more efforts must be made for labor support, such as that provided by the Seoul Working Mothers Support Center which provides information on employment insurance benefits including maternity and parental leave and offers counselling and advice for difficulties in using the benefits.

A more fundamental way to resolve the blind spot issue is to correct the two-track imposition and collection mechanism in the employment insurance system. Under the current mechanism, Korea Workers’ Compensation & Welfare Service imposes the insurance pay while the National Health Insurance Service collects the pay for employment insurance as well as other forms of social insurance. However, the National Tax Service (NTS) would be more appropriate in terms of a more convenient collection system and effective enforcement through an efficient link between the NTS’ income tax data and employment insurance data and integration of the reporting of tax income and payment. Insurance premiums can be imposed by linking the NTS’ statements for daily-worker wages with the Ministry of Employment and Labor’s (MOEL) work conformation reports. However, realistically speaking, this ex-post application is hardly possible for small-sized firms and non-regular workers as their status changes so often. Not only that, when reporting their income, employers have a strong incentive to report employees’ wages as an expense in order to reduce their taxes, but little incentive to report to employment insurance. This is because employers are rarely penalized when they fail to report insurance status or total wages, and there are no penalties if the employer pays the employment insurance pay in full.

In addition, it is assumed that there are a large number of women who are insured but have to leave their jobs because their employers do not grant them maternity leave. The MOEL initiated a smart labor inspection in June 2016 which, in connection with the National Health Insurance Service's pregnancy and childbirth database, identifies workplaces with pregnant employees and monitors those suspected of withholding maternity leave, discouraging its use or wrongfully terminating employees for reasons including pregnancy, childbirth and child rearing. So far, about 55,000 women workers were found to have left their jobs during pregnancy while only a few workplaces were inspected and found to be in violation of the law. Accordingly, the smart labor inspection needs to be broadened by connecting the data from employment and health insurance, which would create conditions that better enable access to maternity and parental leave.

Meanwhile, of the total housework hours by a married couple, it was found that the proportion of the husband’s working hours was in positive relation to the wife’s desire to work but had nothing to with the desire to have children. Considering the fact that the data used in this study defines housework as labor required solely to maintain a household, except that for care, it is possible that a couple could have additional children only when the proportion of the husband’s participation in child rearing increases. So, in order to increase husbands’ housework hours, they must be encouraged to take advantage of their parental leave. Men who take leave are more likely to engage in longer hours of housework which implies that it is useful in dismantling the traditional gender role beliefs. In Korea, fathers who take a parental leave after mother are given a bonus for the first three months; called parental leave bonus for fathers. This bonus, however, is not awarded to those whose spouses are not receiving employment insurance or granted maternity leave. The majority of women who are of childbearing age are institutionally and substantially in the blind spot for parental leave. As such, if encouraging men to take parental leave is the underlying goal of the bonus for fathers, it would be more effective for the bonus to be given to men actually taking parental leave, regardless of mother’s use of parental leave.

According to a survey on men with parental-leave experience, the biggest concern was a decline in wages. If this is considered together with a general tendency of men to take shorter parental leave than women, another measure worth considering would be to heighten the income replacement ratio of shorter parental leave by men. This could help enhance income security, hence, more men would be encouraged to take parental leave. Such adjustments to the period and income replacement ratio are worth considering since Korea’s income replacement ratio is in the lower range among OECD members while the leave period for men is the longest.

Women’s sustainability in part-time jobs was found to decrease in both voluntary and involuntary cases. However, their desire to have children increases when the part-time work is voluntary. This helps to assume that an increase in voluntary part-time jobs will increase the fertility rate.

To enhance employees’ satisfaction with and engagement in part-time work, the payroll and benefits should be given in proportion to the hours worked. This means that the system to reduce working hours for parents during child nurturing period must be settled fully. For better access to the system, companies and management must make the effort by adjusting critical working hours and work exchange program schedules so that employees are able to collaborate with each other seamlessly. Thus, in order to educate companies on adjusting work schedules and distributing performance gains, etc., they should be provided with the know-how to using replacement workers for example allowing existing employees to take charge of professional tasks while replacement workers engage in other tasks.

There are, however, complaints from companies that maternity and parental leave and reduced working hours are difficult to implement since the programs place a huge burden on the remaining employees, and replacement workers are difficult to find; such complaints may be partly due to a poor understanding of support programs. Therefore, it is also necessary to promote the programs more actively to alleviate concerns relating to the work-family balance policy.

This study also found that support from grandparents has a positive impact on women’s desire to have children but has nothing to do with continuing economic activities. This is probably because it is relatively easy to find someone who can do the housework but difficult to find an institution or person who can provide reliable child care services.

To improve the quality of child care, the process of training care teachers must be completely reformed. The current methods of child protection are mostly focused on detecting child abuse cases based on parents’ reporting or through CCTV and imposing punishments. However, the focus must shift to verifying and advancing the quality of pre-service teachers so that all forms of abuse are stopped at the initial stages by training teachers. At present, the child care teacher certificate can be attained by anyone who completes the curriculum at university or child care education centers. But, proficiency in child care through interactions with infants and toddlers, relationships with parents and management of child care programs was found to be high among those who majored in child care and childhood education. Meanwhile, the level of proficiency was similar between high school graduates and university graduates who majored in different subjects. In this regard, training systems should be modified into a subject-focused system at universities in order to strengthen the expertise of teachers while non-university institutions should be transformed into ones that provide continuing professional education and fosters assistant workers, instead of training teachers.

Lastly, women’s desire to continue to participate in the labor force was found to decrease in line with plans for children while their desire to have children increased when husbands are against their working. Such findings are due to the belief that it is not realistic for women to maintain both work and rear children. It is hoped that more will have a better understanding of the fact that women’s participation in the labor market and having children at the same time is possible only when the access to work-family balance policies is made easier and more satisfactory.

Summary

KDI FOCUS Improving Parental Roles and Education for Early Childhood Development

□ Spurred by the recent series of child abuse cases that have been brought to light, the Korean government released a parental education package to promote the participation in and effectiveness of parental education programs. Early childhood linguistic and socio-emotional development are related to parental role indicators such as maternal depression, parental stress and style and the home environment. As such, to improve parental roles, it is important to enhance the use and effectiveness of parental education materials by integrating resources such as booklets and videos at different ministries and provide parents with the necessary skills that are in line with the child’s age and situation. Furthermore, it is necessary to expand parental education programs with expert counselling and guidance to help parents cope with their respective child care needs and improve their parenting skills.

- In response to the series of child abuse cases that have been brought to light, the government released measures to promote parental education.

- To promote participation and interest in parental education, it is important to clarify the relevance of the parental role in child development.

- The parental role can be measured via maternal depression, parenting stress and styles, paternal involvement in child care and home environmental stimuli test results.

- Early childhood linguistic ability is related to fathers’ parenting stress, parental style and interaction capability and their education level.

- However, no relevance has been observed between early childhood linguistic ability and household income.

- Early childhood socioemotional ability is related to maternal depression, parenting stress and style and their interaction capability.

- However, no relevance was observed between early childhood socioemotional ability and parents’ education level and household income.

- Frequency of paternal involvement in child care is irrelevant to early childhood linguistic and socioemotional development.

- Improving parental roles can reduce the gap between children's linguistic abilities that have been affected by the parent's education levels.

- Parental education should be designed to enhance the quality of paternal parenting, instead of increasing the quantity.

- It is most beneficial to the linguistic and socioemotional development of children when parents maintain responsiveness and are less demanding as their children grow older.

- It is necessary to increase the use and effectiveness of parental education materials by integrating resources such as booklets and videos at different ministries and providing the necessary knowledge and skills that suit the children’s age and respective situations.

- More parental education programs are needed that provide expert counselling and guidance to help parents cope with their respective child care needs and improve their parenting skills.

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