A Critical Content Analysis of Multicultural Education in Korea’s Secondary English Curriculum: Comparing the 2015 and 2022 Revisions

Responding to a rapid rise in multicultural student populations-from 2.1 % in 2010 to 6.8 % in 2023-this study examines how South Korea's secondary English Curriculum has evolved in its approach to multicultural education.We conducted a structured content analysis of two official Curriculum documents, coding 256 sentence-level segments from the 2015 revision and 131 segments from the 2022 revision, across three domains: educational goals, teaching-learning methods, and evaluation techniques.Two independent coders achieved strong reliability (Cohen's = 0.81).In the 2015 Curriculum, 84 % of teaching-learning segments were lecture-textbook-centered, and only 3.5 % involved ICT-supported collaboration.By 2022, lecture-based segments had fallen to 53 %, while ICT-supported collaborative activities had risen to 10.7%.References to empathy and conflictresolution skills remained minimal (1.2 % vs. 1.5 %), and paper-based tests (multiple-choice/shortanswer) disappeared entirely, replaced by rubric-and portfolio-driven assessments.The 2022 revision also embeds precise, measurable intercultural-communicative-competence objectives-such as "design and present culturally responsive dialogues"-that were largely absent in the 2015 revision.These findings reveal a decisive curricular shift toward competence-oriented and technology-enhanced pedagogy.To ensure these curricular innovations translate into authentic intercultural learning, we recommend targeted professional development for teachers in ICT-enhanced project-based learning and intercultural rubric application, systematic calibration workshops to standardize assessment quality, and mixed-methods empirical classroom studies to validate and refine practice.This study contributes to bridging the gap between policy and practice in multicultural education.