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Can the academic achievement of Korean students be portrayed as a product of ‘shadow achievement’?

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Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of private tutoring expenditure on two types of Korean students’ academic achievements as measured by standardized test achievement and by school performance achievement, applying 5-year data from Korean Educational Longitudinal Study (KELS). It was found that private tutoring expenditure consistently appeared to have statistically significant effects on standardized test achievement. On the other hand, private tutoring expenditure did not have statistically significant effects on school performance achievement. It can be stated that regarding standardized test achievement, some portion of Korean students’ academic achievement could be a product of ‘shadow achievement.’

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Acknowledgments

Many precious comments were received from several people, especially Mark Bray (Chair Professor, University of Hong Kong and Director of Comparative Education Research Centre) and Moosung Lee (Centenary Research Professor, University of Canberra). Several Doctoral students have also assisted, in particular Wonjae Woo. The contributions by many people are gratefully acknowledged and deep appreciations to them all are expressed. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean Government (NRF-2012S1A2A1A01031179).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Education, Kookmin University, Seoul, South Korea

    Hyunjin Kim

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Correspondence to Hyunjin Kim.

Appendix

Appendix

See Tables 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11.

Table 2 Descriptive analysis of 7th grade data
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Table 3 Correlational analysis of 7th grade data
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Table 4 Descriptive analysis of 8th grade data
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Table 5 Correlational analysis of 8th grade data
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Table 6 Descriptive analysis of 9th grade data
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Table 7 Correlational analysis of 9th grade data
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Table 8 Descriptive analysis of 10th grade data
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Table 9 Correlational analysis of 10th grade data
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Table 10 Descriptive analysis of 11th grade data
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Table 11 Correlational analysis of 11th grade data
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Kim, H. Can the academic achievement of Korean students be portrayed as a product of ‘shadow achievement’?. Asia Pacific Educ. Rev. 16, 119–135 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-015-9361-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12564-015-9361-1

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