Networking organizations to promote all students’ success: The structure and contents of networks in an educational welfare zone in South Korea and their implications

Abstract

In 2003, the South Korean national government implemented a systematic school social work program known as the Education Welfare Priority Zone Plan (EWPZP). The EWPZP was designed to enable all related educational and social agencies in a zone to serve students in need by situating schools within the communities’ welfare networks. This research project aims to examine the characteristics of educational welfare networks in a target area in Seoul, South Korea, and assess levels of inter-agency collaboration. The authors also suggest that the EWPZP project needs to institutionalize greater collaboration between schools and welfare organizations and to make networks tighter.

Keywords

Education Welfare Priority Zone Plan inter-agency collaboration network analysis social works South Korea

Introduction

In 2003, the South Korean national government implemented a systematic school social work project known as the Education Welfare Priority Zone Plan (EWPZP). By situating schools within the communities’ welfare networks, the EWPZP was designed to allow all related educational and social agencies in a zone to effectively serve students in need (Sung et al., 2008). The idea of zone-based educational welfare is not a new concept. In many countries, educational welfare policies have been promoted in socio-economically underdeveloped areas. Two such cases specifically influenced the implementation of the EWPZP in South Korea: the Education Action Zones (EAZ)¹ in England (Reid and Brian, 2003; Simpson and Cieslik, 2002) and the Zones d’Education Priorities (ZEP)² in France (Hatcher and Leblond, 2001).

International policy transfer, or policy borrowing, is a common phenomenon in education (Ball, 1998; Ochs, 2006). In the development of the EWPZP, the South Korean national government borrowed similar policies from foreign countries and adapted them to fit South Korean schools. For instance, the EAZ in England built networks between schools and social welfare agencies, helped them share information and resources, and encouraged collaboration between agencies to enhance students’ quality of life as well as improve academic achievements of schools in socio-economically disadvantaged communities (Gamarnikow and Green, 1999). Unlike the EAZ, however, the EWPZP does not include the participation from the business sector. The EWPZP does not allow corporations to submit bids for programs because the South Korean government fully funds the Plan. Instead of inviting business participation in the Plan, the South Korean government has hired educational professionals and school social workers. Newly hired staff in the regional offices of education and participating schools help students succeed in school and in life by linking schools with human services, which tightens the educational welfare networks (Franklin and Streeter, 1995; Kim, 2008; Kim and Park, 2007).

This article aims at a) examining and introducing the characteristics of educational welfare networks in a target area in Seoul, Korea; b) assessing overall levels of inter-agency collaboration; and c) addressing some of the ways in which these research findings may strengthen the educational welfare networks. The research questions are: a) what are the structural characteristics of the selected educational welfare networks?; b) how are particular welfare agencies interrelated in the network?; and c) from the research findings, how might policy-makers, social workers, and teachers maximize the service quality of educational welfare networks?

The welfare networks are expected to show a structure of resource distribution and human relations in a given area (e.g. core–periphery structure). Therefore, a network analysis is intended to look at the ways in which the resources and human services flow within South Korean educational welfare networks. If the web of organized affiliations is well integrated, researchers can infer that the present welfare network has the capacity to deliver pertinent services and programs to students in need (Woodard and Doreian, 1994). In analyzing the inner structure of the educational welfare network, this article explores the dynamic aspects of transferring material resources, providing services for clients, and operating joint programs. This article also discusses the implications for educational policy-making.

In the next section, we will briefly describe the history of the EWPZP. In this history, we hope to see how significant collaboration between educators and social workers has developed in the process of better addressing students’ needs.

Background

Brief history of the policy implementation

The foreign currency crisis in late 1997 caused widespread unemployment and serious poverty issues, which resulted in a socio-economic polarization in South Korea. Gaps in income and assets rapidly stratified people on the basis of their socio-economic status. This resulted in the further polarization of educational opportunities. Accordingly, strengthening education systems for all students, especially those from socio-economically marginalized communities in urban areas, became important for securing educational equality and equity among all students. In addition, the political contexts are worth consideration in order to take a broader look at the movement in which the EWPZP is situated. South Korea’s history of democratization movements in opposition to military dictatorship became part of the foundation for the initiation and expansion of the EWPZP (Kim et al., 2010). Many community activists were already settled in underdeveloped urban areas and had worked with concerns of family support, neighborhood safety, health, housing, youth programs and childcare in those communities. These community activists in the impoverished areas have been deeply involved in the EWPZP from the initial stages of the program to the present. This is one of the distinctive characteristics of the South Korean educational welfare system and its building of the networks to deliver services.

After running pilot projects in Seoul and Busan in 2003, the Ministry of Education expanded the program in 2005 to include seven additional areas for the EWPZP. In 2007, the Plan was further expanded to 60 designated areas, only to be increased yet again in 2010 to include 100 areas. Focusing on cooperation among families, schools, and local communities (Kim, 2008), the Plan tried to resolve the educational and cultural inequality in socially and economically impoverished regions or areas.³

In 2008, the groups targeted by the EWPZP were redefined and expanded beyond the economically marginalized students. Accordingly, various groups of students such as free school lunch recipients, students from multicultural families, those who were about to drop out of schools, and underachievers were included. The EWPZP aimed to identify various groups of educationally disadvantaged students and intensively work to meet their needs. In many cases, students were experiencing various disadvantages such as physical and mental illness, psychological and affective disorders, malnutrition, and learning disabilities, so the schools categorized them as students in need of integrated care and provided them with overall support in connection with various agents/agencies outside the school.

The target areas were designated by the government during the demonstration period (2003–4), but many schools, provided they meet the program requirements, have voluntarily participated since 2005. These schools had a minimum percentage of committed teachers who were willing to participate in the program in spite of additional workloads and had higher levels of awareness of the participatory role of a school within a community. Since 2007, the Ministry of Education has designated or invited target schools so that the schools serving large populations of students living in extreme poverty might benefit from the Plan (Kim, 2009). Table 1 shows the current status of the EWPZP by year, beginning in 2003.

Table 1.

Current status of the EWPZP, by years.

Year	2003–4	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009	2010
Numbers of target areas	8 regions	15 zones	30 zones	60 zones	60 zones	100 zones	100 zones
	Seoul (6)	Existing (8)	Existing (15)	Existing (30)	Existing (60)	Existing (60)	Existing (100)
	Busan (2)	New (7)	New (15)	New (30)		New (40)
Qualification	-	Bigger than megalopolis	A city with 250,000 ↑	A city with 250,000 ↑	A city with 250,000 ↑	All cities	All cities
Special funding of the regional governments (unit: USD)	22 million	10.2 million	19.3 million	34.6 million	23 million	46.6 million	28.7 million
City and state’s match fund (unit: USD)	-	4.6 million	13.9 million	24.8 million	24.6 million	26 million	38.6 million
Number of target schools	45	82	163	322	322	679	575
Numbers of target students (numbers of income maintenance recipients)	40,707	75,189	153,178	326,826	304,464	490,081	452,467
	(4758)	(9765)	(16,719)	(35,110)	(27,904)	(40,275)	(35,725)

Note. This table was adapted from Ryu et al. (2011). USD was calculated based on current foreign currency rates ($ 1/USD = ₩ 1081).

Major components of programs

The EWPZP offers six programs: a) learning support, b) provision of cultural experiences (compensation for cultural deprivation), c) psychological and emotional support, d) social services for students, e) parent and teacher support, and f) revitalization of preschoolers’ education and child care systems (Lee et al., 2005). First, the programs for enhancing students’ learning were designed to improve students’ motivation for academic success and to avoid the accumulation of learning deficits (Kim and Park, 2007). Cultural experience programs offer various enrichment programs allowing educationally disadvantaged students to participate in extracurricular activities, club activities, and classroom activities. Psychological and emotional support helps students to build positive self-esteem and establish healthy social interactions. Individual and group counseling, a diagnosis and treatment program for maladjusted students, and mentoring services are integral components to this programmatic focus. Social welfare programs promote students’ health by providing socio-economically disadvantaged students with physical examinations and medical treatment. The program also provides professional support to teachers and educational programs for parents to improve parents’ relationships with their children and the school (Ryu et al., 2011). Lastly, the programs for strengthening preschoolers’ education and child care guarantee opportunities for preschool students to attend high-performing educational programs in target zones (Kim, 2008).

Methods

Social network analysis

Streeter and Gillespie (1992) present two major categories of social network analysis: relational properties and structural properties. Relational properties seek to understand what is exchanged in the networks. Within an educational welfare network, information, funding, resources, clients, human services, and joint programs constitute contents transactions between participating agencies (Woodard and Doreian, 1994). Structural properties enable researchers to understand the ways various agencies link together to form social networks and to identify which agencies are core, peripheral, or isolated. At the level of a total network, density, as a measure of the ratio of actual to potential connections, gives information of how well the networks are integrated. Ucinet 6 for Windows (Borgatti et al., 2002) was used to analyze the data for this article.

Sampling

Researchers visited schools and social work organizations in the Hankang district of Seoul and obtained a list of participating agencies as a sample. Snowball sampling was used to find networks in hidden populations (Carrington et al., 2005; Heckathorn, 1997). In total, 42 agencies participated in the survey: 7 educational organizations (1 regional office of education, 6 schools), 11 social work agencies, 3 public human service providers, 13 youth agencies, 3 NGOs, and 5 medical clinics. The names of organizations and regions discussed in this article are pseudonyms. The survey was completed in July 2010 by the researchers and three trained social workers. We visited each organization and asked questions of relevant personnel based on a questionnaire designed to assess the degree of one’s sharing, partnership, and collaboration with other service providers. The information obtained from the survey questionnaire was used to construct a frequency matrix of formal relationships in resource transfer, service provisions, and joint program development.

Measures

Density and centrality are the major measures in this social network analysis. Measure of density is the number of real connections compared to the number of all possible connections. A measurement of density facilitates an understanding of the overall level of network integration and interconnectedness between organizations because it shows that the more interrelated agencies are, the denser the network is (Jorgensen, 2004). When the linkages within the educational welfare network are well established, better student care is expected. Conventionally, nodes within a network can represent individuals, organizations, and/or groups. In this study, the nodes constitute organizations of schools, youth centers, community centers, clinics, and other welfare agencies. The links between nodes stand for the flow of services, information or resources (Jorgensen, 2004).

A measure of centrality is widely used to analyze social networks. This concept is also important in welfare networks because researchers usually want to identify the most important stakeholders within networks (Everett and Borgatti, 2005). Measuring centrality enables us to assess whether a particular organization in the welfare network is more central to the network than others. Centrality is categorized into three sub-concepts: 1) degree centrality measures the extent to which a node connects to all other nodes in a network; 2) closeness centrality indicates how near a node is to other nodes in a network – in other words, closeness refers to how quickly stakeholders can interact with others (Knoke and Yang, 2008); 3) betweenness centrality measures the distance between one stakeholder and other stakeholder in the network, relative to all participants in the network (Wasserman and Faust, 1994). Betweenness centrality is an important indicator of control over information exchange and resource flow within a network (Knoke and Yang, 2008).

Constructing visual presentations of density and centrality provides snapshots of networks that are somewhat useful in assessing the levels of collaboration between subject member organizations; however, a full understanding of networks is not necessarily possible without a closer investigation of the meaning hidden in the visual presentations. Thus, social network analyses are often supplemented by the data collected through interviews with participants (Deal et al., 2009). This article is also informed by data obtained from interviews with stakeholders to investigate dynamic aspects of the human relationships and resources exchanges embedded in the analyzed networks.

Results

The measures for each network are presented in Table 2. Overall connectedness within the network turns out to be moderate or low.⁴ As a result, the density of the resources transfer is the lowest, while the density of joint program provision in cooperation as a network is the highest. For example, since density is calculated by comparing the number of identified connections to the number of all possible connections, the total network density (9.47%) shown in Table 2 indicates that about one out of 10 possible connections exist in the data. The result seems to reflect the fact that the EWPZP mandates that schools pair collaborative programs with human services agencies. The organizations with high scores for degree centrality are E6 (Hankang Regional Office of Education), E5 (Dooman Middle School), and W5 (Soyang Community Center). For betweenness centrality, E6, W5, and Y5 (Nakdong Evening School) also have high scores, representing their great influence over the flow of social services in the network. These data suggest that educational (E), welfare (W), and youth (Y) agencies are well integrated in the monitoring services flow in the network. The highest scores in closeness centrality were shown in E6, E5, and W5, which means these three institutes are centered in the entire network and located the closest to others.

Table 2.

Density and centrality.

Categories	Measure	Transfer of resources	Provision of services for clients	Joint program	Total
Density		2.44%	4.59%	5.69%	9.47%
Centrality	Degree	W5 (10.00)	E5 (14.00)	E6 (30.00)	E6 (31.00)
		E5,Y5 (8.00)	W5,W6 (13.00)	W5 (13.00)	E5 (20.00)
				E5,Y6,Y5 (12.00)	W5 (19.00)
	Betweenness	Y5 (14.00)	W5 (166.83)	E6 (328.03)	E6 (312.26)
		W5 (10.00)	W6 (107.67)	Y5 (119.35)	W5 (157.29)
		Y12 (4.00)	W2 (73.70)	W5 (84.02)	Y5 (119.12)
	Closeness	W5 (6.76)	E5 (17.30)	E6 (12.09)	E6 (70.69)
		Y9 (6.74)	W5 (17.23)	E5 (11.65)	E5 (65.08)
		E5 (6.70)	Y5 (16.80)	Y5 (11.55)	W5 (57.75)

Note. With regard to centrality, top three agencies are presented in order.

Although the school social work approach is similar to the EWPZP in its provision of school-based services, the EWPZP is distinctive in that under this program educational institutes are central in building up a comprehensive educational support system that is connected with students’ homes and communities (Kim et al., 2010; Yoon et al., 2008). We found that the regional office of education (E5) and Dooman Middle School (E6) are positioned at the center of the network; this finding is consistent with the networking patterns originally intended by the developers of the EWPZP. Even before the introduction of the EWPZP in 2003, under the concept of school social work, there were a few programs to support students from low income families in urban areas; however, these programs placed the burden of solving children’s problems exclusively on school social workers. As a result of this analysis, E6, E5, W5, and Y5 are identified as agencies with high centrality. Because the regional office of education (E6) manages the EWPZP operation funds and coordinates the program, it is found to have the highest centrality. In addition, schools not only benefit from such funding, but also offer financial incentives to community agencies on the condition that they participate in the program. Dooman Middle School (E5) has the highest coefficient, partly because it is the only middle school in the network, which makes it easier for employees to make connections with youth agencies in the joint programs than it is for staff at the four elementary schools in the network. Youth agencies account for a high percentage of the organizations (27%) in the networks. It was also found that W5 (Soyang Community Center) is a core organization. Unlike other community centers, W5 is sponsored by a large, state-run corporation and can afford to operate many programs which elicit the participation of other agencies. For its key role as an evening school, Y5 (Nakdong Evening School) is also identified as one of the most highly connected agencies in the network. Y5 provides students with care and additional learning after school.

Figure 1 illustrates the resource exchange networks in the Hankang area. The networks of resource transferring and sharing in the Hankang area exhibit the lowest density among other criteria, and a number of agencies are not linked within the network.

Figure 1.

The resources transfer network.

Figure 2 shows the service provision network. For service provision, social welfare agencies (W5, W6, and W2) have high betweenness centrality, which implies that human services for clients are mostly provided by welfare organizations (W6, Nakdong Community Center and W2, Hantan Community Children’s Center). In this service provision network, a number of agencies form a partnership – a volunteer or contractual agreement among human services agencies and public schools (Franklin and Streeter, 1995) – through which they share social services. Partnerships between educational welfare organizations and schools can provide at-risk students access to tutoring, mentoring, mental health services, dental services, and other forms of assistance.

Figure 2.

The service provision network.

With regard to the service provision network, the top three organizations (W5, W6, W2) in betweenness centrality are all welfare organizations. The interconnectedness of these organizations with others in the network explains their ability to provide human services. For example, Soyang Community Center (W5), identified as a core agency, offers students learning and youth camping programs (9 elementary and 9 middle school students). It also finances a cultural experience program and a teacher training workshop for the educational (E4), youth (Y8, Y9, Y12), and welfare (W2, W4, W8, W10) organizations. Nakdong Community Center (W6), another key player in the educational welfare networks, provides learning, counseling, home visit, clinical service, camping, financial aid, and family support programs for 23 students (9 elementary, 10 middle school, 4 high school students). At the same time, Nakdong Community Center (W6) received services from 2 clinics (M1 and M3) and other funding sources (E6 and W9).

An analysis of an area’s joint program network indicates how many different organizations collaborate to plan and implement joint programs. Most often, organizations within a network jointly develop programs for students in need. The joint program designed by both school social workers and other welfare agencies assists schools in gaining external resources for students in need. As shown in the joint program network (Figure 3), the regional office of education (E6) takes a core position in actively linking various organizations. This pattern directly reflects the characteristics of the EWPZP’s original design and the leadership of the educational sector, rather than the model of other social welfare plans.

Figure 3.

The joint program network.

One case of joint programming is the Open Classroom program that was held for two weeks during summer and winter vacations. This program was initiated because many children were deprived of both learning opportunities and meals during vacations. A total of 13 agencies participated in the program and, in consideration of transportation and geographical proximity, there are four Open Classroom locations (E3, E5, E1, W6). All the participating organizations applied for the joint program and requested funding from the regional office of education (E6). Participating organizations were supposed to meet at least once a month and the working committee consisted of 11 members (five school social workers, one from Nakdong Community Center (W6), one from Nakdong Networks for Education and Welfare (Y6), and four staff members of the Open Classroom). Later in 2005, the program was expanded to provide night schools and to give small meals and snacks for children during their classes. An average of 120 students at each two-week session participated in the program and 40 adult volunteers taught, cooked, counseled, and cleaned. The Open Classroom program continues to this day.

So far, the meaning of the links and nodes has been discussed based on the networking aspects illustrated via social network analyses. Later discussions will focus on the relational and structural properties of Hankang regional network based on the data gathered via focus group interviews.

Discussion

In this article, two aspects of the networks are analyzed: the structural and relational characteristics. For the structural aspects of the networks, individuals, groups, and the total networks are the units of the social network analysis, and for the relational aspects, the characteristics of contents and the relations are examined. This section first discusses the structural aspects of the Hankang network and later examines the relational characteristics.

Structure of the network

One research aim of the article is to explore the structural characteristics of educational welfare networks and to identify core organizations. In the analysis of the structure of the networks, the Hankang regional office of education (E6) was found to be the center of a complicated series of connections. This is partly because the EWPZP mandated the employment of new staff in the educational division who would take a leadership role in collaboration with other participating agents/agencies. Because project coordinators (at the regional office level) and school social workers (at the school level) have played a crucial role in the structure of the educational welfare networks, the regional office of education is a core organization within the network.

Thanks to hiring project coordinators, community-based organizations have been able to work with schools. Project coordinators are responsible for determining the educational needs in the school and outside community and for addressing these needs in planning and promoting the EWPZP. Project coordinators are also in charge of building association and collaboration between schools and community-based organizations, as well as supporting the operations of the EWPZP task forces. Helping local communities work in collaboration and effectively managing the programs at school units are also among the coordinators’ responsibilities.

School social workers are hired by the participating school units to collaborate with the teachers and the task forces in planning and promoting educational welfare programs. School social workers in the EWPZP are officially called ‘local community specialists’ because the EWPZP intended to emphasize the school social workers’ role in connecting schools with community agencies to provide pertinent services and care for students in need. The active involvement of school social workers ensures that the Plan runs smoothly. School social workers identify and utilize all the resources provided by various human service agencies to meet students’ needs (Kim, 2008; Kim and Park, 2007; see also Streeter and Gillespie, 1992).

A participant in a focus group interview conducted for this study explains that the school social worker is the person who can open the schools’ doors to agencies in the community:

When we looked at schools from outside, schools were the places which were difficult to get into. Schools were not the spaces in which we could work together… . When a school opened its door to us, it became a different story. Schools first suggested that we work together for at-risk students and [indicated] that they wanted to support community-based agencies under the name of the EWPZP.

Given that the school culture in South Korea has been reluctant to open its door to the communities, having school social workers at the boundary between schools and communities is crucial in developing and promoting effective welfare networks (Kim and Park, 2007).

Zoning is another central strategy of the network structure outlined by the EWPZP. Zones represent clustered membership within the same community. The EWPZP was originally designed to include more than four elementary or middle schools so that these schools effectively collaborate within the same community. The mixture of elementary and middle schools in a Zone was intended to ensure the continuity of the project. Encouraging schools and educational welfare organizations to seek joint solutions to joint problems (Halpin et al., 2004), the EWPZP is designed to improve student academic achievement by removing/decreasing social inequalities and closing the achievement gap among students.

Contents of relationship

The EWPZP has been involved in creating tighter networking to a) emphasize teaching and learning for disadvantaged students, b) provide emotional support, c) monitor early intervention, d) offer sound after-school programs, and e) strengthen partnerships between home and school, and also among the social organizations within the communities. EWPZP initiatives within a community’s welfare network aim to make social work resources more accessible to schools. However, the surveys conducted during this investigation indicate that the EWPZP provides only a safety net for students in need. Efforts to link human services to schools are what the EWPZP originally intended as policy goals, but programs in the EWPZP provide for only such basic needs as nighttime care, emergency dental treatment, counseling for at-risk students, tutoring, and mentoring. For a further analysis, the 2010 Program Management Plan by E5 (Dooman Middle School), one of the target institutes of this article, is included (see Table 3).

Table 3.

The 2010 program management plan by Dooman Middle School.

Areas	Names of the program	Names of specific events	Numbers of participants
Learning	Students’ academic progress	Mentoring by college students	20
		Intensive tutoring for academically behind students
		Science world experience
		Academic mentoring by alumni volunteers
	School library revitalization	Book review: Ring the Golden Bell!	150
		Mothers’ book club
		Book exhibition
		The World Book’s Day events
		Awards for great book clubs, bookworms, book reviews
		Treasure hunt in books
		Book essay contests
		Daily book café
		Literature camp with children
		Guest lectures by famous authors
	Career guidance	Career search by classes and grades	30
		Small group field experiences
		Special programs for a better academic atmosphere
	Club activities and academic achievements	12 Club activities	20
		Club activities presentation
		Providing resources and funding
Cultural experiences	School accommodation	Activities for cultural experiences	30
		Journal publications by class
		Programs promoted with local communities
	Extracurricular activities	Funding field trips for social welfare beneficiaries
	Extracurricular activities	Supporting various fieldtrip programs
Psychology and Emotions	Counseling	Counseling and curing maladjusted children	20
		Counseling for special education students
		Classes for peer counseling
		Companion based counseling
		Individual counseling
	Teacher mentoring	Physical activities and hiking based on teacher–student accompanies	20
		Field trips based on teacher–student accompanies
		Teacher mentoring
	Family supporting	Professional education for parents	20
		Continuing education for parents
		Sharing cases about at-risk families
		Family camps
Social services for students	Opening/managing Educational welfare rooms	Emergency care	10~20
		Case management
		The Shared Projects
		Social worker’s awards
		Seminars with social welfare workers and teachers; teacher satisfaction surveys
	Improving health and wellness	Health examinations, including anemia	5~20
		Intensive dental care
		Blood tests support
		Eye exams support

As shown in Table 3, the programs by the EWPZP participant schools focus on improving the academic abilities of targeted students, providing those students with various opportunities for cultural experiences which would not be available in their families, consulting and mentoring to ease their adjustments to their schools, and offering medical support for their health and wellness. According to the interview with a school social worker at Dooman Middle School, the school’s cooperation with local agencies provides students in poverty with a safety net. The following case shows a snapshot of how the EWPZP becomes a safety net.

A girl living with her brother transferred to my school a year ago. Finding a place for them to settle was one of the most urgent tasks… . Supporting them to find ways to solve their economic problems was the next issue. There were many things for us to help them with, but the school alone could not solve all those problems. We notified the community welfare center, the regional civil affairs office, [and] the district office (G1), of their issues, which enabled those agencies to [become directly involved in solving their problems] … The district office offered her brother a job at the city hall provided as a measure to tackle the unemployment problem among young people. To prevent from the possible hunger during the weekend, the community welfare center (W6) provided [them] with [access to] a free packed lunch program. The regional center supporting economically marginalized people helped them install a security window for the girl staying alone at night when her brother was out for a part-time job. The regional food market provided her with clothing and women’s specialty items… . And later the district office (G1) requested possible donations for them from neighboring clinics (M1 and M3) and community centers (W5 and W6) that have worked for youth health and wellness. (Symbols of institution are added by authors in confirmation from the interviewee.)

Owing to the EWPZP, a number of children in poverty have been taken care of by agencies within the welfare networks. For example, college students in the local universities are participating in a one-to-one mentoring program in schools or youth agencies. Local doctors and dentists are giving free treatment and examination for some students who are identified by school social workers. In addition, parents of at-risk students receive lectures on parenting or liberal arts in community centers. Schools have requested youth agencies for counseling and caring for students at risk. So far, the EWPZP has expanded by attracting external resources, operating various programs, and building cooperative networks. The success of the EWPZP is encouraging for those who wish to expand the program throughout the nation.

On the other hand, the EWPZP still needs improvement. The attainment of the EWPZP’s goal ultimately depends on whether communication networks for educational welfare are put in place in the school, and if so, how well they function. A number of participating school social workers pointed out the lack of communication between teachers and social workers within schools. They reported that some teachers do not seem to share the same perception of the EWPZP. It tends to be the case that some teachers do not understand why social workers are hired in the schools. Cooperation is the foremost virtue in the educational welfare program, but there are still many schools without an effective communication structure that enables cooperation between them (Kim, 2008; Sung et al., 2008). Thus, it becomes more important to tighten not only the networks between schools and outside welfare agencies but also the networks within schools.

Furthermore, despite the remarkable development of the EWPZP, it still needs more empowerment programs to support students in becoming conscious of social problems around them, gaining self-confidence in problem solving, and assuming responsibility for fostering change (Kim, 2008). Thus, it is argued that school social workers should employ various strategies to empower target students of the EWPZP to share the responsibility for social change and to recognize their role as subjective agents of such change (Sung et al., 2008). It is very difficult to maximize the social relationship among agencies in a way that allows the program to enhance students’ critical thinking skills, problem-solving abilities, or democratic citizenship. The inclusion of strong empowerment programs such as service learning (Finn and Checkoway, 1998) and photovoice (Catalani and Minkler, 2010) in the EWPZP would be an asset to the whole program (Reid and Brian, 2003; Simpson and Cieslik, 2002).

Conclusion

The South Korean government supports the provision of the EWPZP which requires regional offices of education to hire coordinators and school social workers. This is one important factor in allowing educational organizations to lead the network structure and service flow presented in the educational welfare networks discussed in this article. Most of all, the EWPZP’s strategic mandate requiring participating schools to hire school social workers to serve as local community specialists has been effective in developing and sustaining the welfare networks. Placing the schools in key positions within the framework of educational welfare networks is one of the distinctive strategies of the EWPZP in South Korea. School social workers at each participating school play important roles including assessing the educational welfare needs in the school and local community, finding target students who need support, making close connections among outside agencies, and, finally, providing target students with relevant support as needed. Along with resource transfer and service provision, collaboratively operating joint programs provides a continuum of care because students at risk need a great deal of help in such various aspects of life as health, learning, and family services. In the process, the regional office of education was identified as the core of the network because it coordinates the whole program and functions as a funding source which attracts welfare and youth organizations to the EWPZP. Two larger community centers are located around the center of the network because of their ability to provide needed services. Schools are also well integrated into network.

Considering the quite recent development of the EWPZP, this article shows that the EWPZP networks are integrated among social welfare, youth, and educational organizations. The recent educational welfare system in South Korea is consistent with the principle that improving the education of all children is the responsibility of schools and communities, as well as regional and national governments. The networking of these agencies has been a key issue in implementing educational reforms in many nations (Sipple and Casto, 2010). Owing to the evolution of EWPZP, the boundaries between school-based and community-based reforms have been blurred in the area targeted for this study. The EWPZP also strives to advance students’ academic performance and to enhance the quality of students’ lives, especially among socio-economically and/or academically disadvantaged students. The programs in the EWPZP schools are designed to bring changes to students’ lives, both in their schools and outside communities by facilitating fluid collaboration between multiple systems.

On the other hand, despite a number of positive outcomes in the educational welfare system brought by the EWPZP, the resulting analysis indicates that the networks could still be made tighter. Thus, this article suggests some points for improvement. The educational welfare networks in which schools, communities, and various social organizations work together are crucial to the well-being of these students. Specifically, the extent to which a community’s welfare network is well integrated improves its service provision and resource sharing. In order to perform this task effectively, the welfare network in the Hankang district needs to implement more collaboration between organizations. In doing so, it is crucial to tighten the networks of these organizations in order to provide substantial care to children in need.

In this respect, one possible reason that the level of networking in the Hankang district fell short of expectation is the lack of teacher support for social welfare in schools. According to participants of the focus group interview, a number of schools still do not work on positive terms with social workers of community organizations partly because of a dichotomous perception of schools and social work agencies (Kim, 2011; Park, 2011). Schools tend to limit their job description to ‘teaching’ rather than ‘caring’ even though it is commonly accepted that caring is a prerequisite for good teaching (Chaskin, 1995; Klem and Connell, 2004; Woolley et al., 2009). For this, the EWPZP has suggested regular meetings of program representatives from community organizations and schools to strengthen the welfare network (Lee et al., 2005). Kim and Park (2007) also suggest joint professional development as a means to increase collaboration among organizations. The EWPZP project, by means of the joint professional development, should be reformed to afford its administrators the power/resources to provide the staff of each organization with training, workshops, or professional development activities to encourage participation. This reform would facilitate communication between social welfare agencies, including educational organizations.

This investigation also found that the Hankang district works as an educational welfare zone in collaboration with the community’s youth agencies in such joint after-school programs as tutoring, mentoring, camping, and nighttime care, but still lacks empowerment initiatives. It should be noted that the educational welfare zone has high number of impoverished students who often feel powerless. Wilson et al. (2008) suggest that after-school youth programs should include empowerment plans that promote social action and civic participation. Since students living in poor communities are often exposed to harsh realities, a simple program is not the best strategy to help students to overcome the troubling elements of their lives. For this reason, the youth programs in the EWPZP need to include empowerment activities. In this regard, it is important to remember that social workers are not mechanics who fix problems, but gardeners who help students to grow by their own efforts (Allen-Meares, 2010).

Notwithstanding, the EWPZP in South Korea has contributed to the development of local children’s welfare networks that were previously nonexistent or, at best, loosely constructed. The EWPZP offers a crucial safety net that prevents at-risk students from experiencing life-threatening conditions. Furthermore, the EWPZP aims to connect the schools, social organizations, and entire communities to resolve the region’s chronic problems of unequal educational opportunities through community partnership. The EWPZP is a new addition to the international efforts to build a cooperation model between schools, families, and welfare agencies in the belief that the tighter networks are, the more effectively the educational welfare systems perform their roles.

Footnotes

Funding

This research was partly supported by Research Leave Program of Kyung Hee University.

Notes

Author biographies

Youl-Kwan Sung is Associate Professor of Education, Graduate School of Education, Kyung Hee University, South Korea.

Jung-Sook Kim is Assistant Professor of Department of Education, Woosuk University, South Korea.

Mi Ok Kang is Assistant Professor of Department of Secondary Education, Utah Valley University, USA.

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