The Impact of Critical Social Incidents on Teachers’ Curriculum Implementation: Korean Elementary Teachers’ Struggles for Student Learning

Abstract This study explores how recent social incidents publicly debated in South Korea have influenced elementary teachers’ curriculum implementation. Korean teachers have long been practical agents of educational change, but incidents involving violations of educational activities, student safety, school responsibility, and classroom risks have led them to reconsider teaching in relation to risk. Based on a qualitative case study of ten elementary teachers, this study examined how curriculum implementation changed after such incidents and what conditions are needed to sustain meaningful education. The findings show a shift toward defensible curriculum implementation: teachers reduced unpredictable activities, weakened educational interventions, strengthened procedures and documentation, reconstructed difficult knowledge in safer ways, and reduced curriculum sharing with parents. These changes reflected teachers’ reinterpretation of relational, emotional, situational, and experiential elements of teaching as potential risks. The study argues for a shift from Teaching-for-Learning to Teaching-as-Learning and for shared responsibility for teachers’ educational judgment.