Educational specialist for improving childcare and education with creativity and passion

"The opinions of childcare personnel should feed into the policy"

Gyeongchul Lee, the professor of early childhood education at Seojeong College, the director of Korea Childcare Management Research Institute, and the founder of New Ulsan Nursery School

Teaching children means to give knowledge and to cultivate their personality within the social community. Therefore, some say that childcare personnel should carry out a lifetime study with open-mindedness. Korea's top bilingual magazine Power Korea has heard about the voice of educational specialists through Lee who is walking the road of a creative educator with passion.

Childcare specialist who practices lifetime education with 3 PhDs

Lee said "site personnel must have professionalism in the field and the field-centered policy should be implemented to improve the teaching field. Lee currently is the president of Local Autonomy Research Education Representatives General Alumni Association and is delivering their opinions to the government and political circles such as 'integration of kindergarten and day care center', 'family business succession', and 'financial accountancy rules for private'. For this, Lee is participating in Professional Training for Education, and listening to the special lectures from the chairperson of Health Welfare Committee, and the persons in charge from National Assembly, the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Welfare, and carrying out discussions. This passion might started when Lee had studied for 9 years to obtain PhD in business administration while working for the world's top research center A.C Nielsen as a senior researcher. After this, by Lee taking the charge in management and his wife Misook Kim the principal position, they established New Ulsan Nursery School in Ulsan in 1985. While Lee was running New Ulsan Nursery School and New Ulsan Daycare Center, Lee realized that he could understand the field better if he knew about the eye-level education, and as a result, he obtained a master's degree and a PhD in children related education from Busan University. Montessori  and  Dewey once pointed out the problems of modern teaching by rote, and suggested alternatives emphasizing on the importance of teacher's role to sort out learning experience. That is why Lee also obtained qualifications and knowledge. He also majored in social welfare administration and policy, and obtained a PhD in social welfare with his thesis 'causality model research on variable job attitudes and behaviors of social workers'. Lee so far has 12 degrees in total including 5 bachelor's degrees, 4 master's degrees, and 3 PhD, and has more than 10 welfare and administration related certifications, and is being recognized for his creativity in both theory and practice. Lee is very much interested in quality improvement in education. Because infantile education is usually carried out alongside childcare, there are many interrelationships between management and welfare as mush as education and administration. Lee was an expert at research and statistics and knows well that infantile education needs a long term observation like children slowly growing up. Lee focuses on teachers' qualitative improvement and autonomous supervision as well as parental education. He also widened his spectrum to infantile education, social welfare, management and lifetime education. This is because he wants to promote good teachers under his slogan 'the quality of education cannot surpass the quality of teachers'.

Seojeong College's childhood education achieved the first-class degree from 2014 Ministry of Education's 'Teacher Training Functional Appraisal'

Lee is also active in the integration creative management field as the vice-president of Creative School of Korea's 2nd Alumni Association with his creative mind 'harmony is competitiveness'. The Department of Childhood Education(3 year course) boasts competent professors such as Gyeongchul Lee, who appeared on the cover of 'Weekly People(2014. 8.27)', Geongsuk Kim, who is famous for 'quick witted father' of EBS Children's Education, and Uijeong Seo(dean), and they are doing their best to promote young talents. The department holds presentation and teaching material exhibition every year and draws a positive response. Especially they achieved the first-class degree from 2014 Ministry of Education's 'Teacher Training Functional Appraisal' and this was the result of the passion form the professors and students.

Life dedicated to the social services as an educator, manager and researcher

The index of 2014 Childcare Teachers suggests 63.7% employment rate to nursery schools. Well above this rate, 149 students of the department obtained 2nd Degree Regular Teacher Qualification and Day Care Teacher Certificate, and showed more than 89% employment rate. They encourage students to have various certificates such as Educational Psychology Consultant, Children's Art Teacher, and Data Processing(ICDL and ITQ) so that they can have better competitiveness. Since when but the employment rate has become the standard of judging a university and Lee hopes that student will reborn as highly qualified professionals in creativity and diversity. Lee said "the course is a 3 year course, runs a connected program, and students can move on to a degree level if they take one more year as well as to master's degree." 

Meanwhile the chancellor Hongyong Kim said regarding 'practical-type talents' in an interview with Jungang Iibo(28.08.2014) "currently, high school students' college entrance rate is about 80% but most of them get jobless after graduation. This means that the university did not prepare them properly to get hired. In addition, we are a college which promotes practical-type talents. And the employment rate shows whether we carried out our job properly. Therefore, the employment rate controls our competitiveness."  Seojeong College is more focusing on elite education to provide customized training and facilities which required by the industry. And they continuously invest for this. 

Lee hopes that one day he would like to open an integrated academic society which will focus on each study being integrated with one another. Because if we recognize the relationship between management and policy and if the knowledge and theory have been through discussion and presentation, these can contribute to the development of society. That is why Lee is destroying the borders of learning to deliver his experience and knowledge, to link the communication between education & childcare and management & welfare, and to make politics and society become closer to the welfare field. 'Harmony is competitiveness'. 'Creative education and social contributions'. With these philosophy, Lee is doing his best and we can surly see a big hope in our future education.