Park, Hyunjoon

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Disciplines
Inequality and Stratification
International and Comparative Education
Sociology
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Korea Foundation Associate Professor of Sociology and Education
Introduction
CONTEXTS MATTER: HOW DO SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES AFFECT CHILDREN’S EDUCATION? In contemporary societies, schools and families are two social institutions that are most relevant for children’s education. However, the ways in which schools and families affect children’s education are contingent upon contexts of institutional arrangements of educational systems, public policy, and demographic changes. My cross-national research using large-scale international data of student achievement such as PISA has shown how educational stratification at the individual and school levels is mediated by national contexts of structural features of educational systems such as differentiation and standardization, and state involvement in family welfare. My recent work examines how schooling environments shape students’ educational outcomes 1) by exploring impacts of homogeneous, standardized Korean education on educational inequality and 2) by investigating potential benefits of single-sex schooling among high school students in Korea. Another contextual factor that has important implications for children’s education and well-being is family change. I am interested in consequences of rapid family changes for children’s well-being in societies which have weak public welfare systems and conservative family norms, and therefore where family changes should have particularly important implications for children.
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2007 - 200912010 - 20198
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  • Publication
    Editors’ introduction: Emerging issues for educational research in East Asia
    (2010-05-12) Hannum, Emily C.; Park, Hyunjoon; Goto Butler, Yuko
    In recent decades, globalization and regional integration have brought significant economic and demographic changes in East Asia, including rising economic inequality, growing population movements within and across borders, and the emergence or renewed geopolitical significance of cultural and linguistic minority populations. These trends have coincided with significant changes in family formation, dissolution, and structures. How have these changes played out in the diverse educational systems of East Asia? In what innovative ways are East Asian governments addressing the new demographic realities of their student populations? This volume offers a snapshot of key educational stratification issues in East Asian nations, and their evolution in conjunction with changing student populations. Scholars of Japan, China, and Korea in this volume address issues ranging from curricular adaptations to globalization, to persisting and new forms of educational stratification, to new multiculturalism in educational policy. In addition, authors consider the ways that migration is shaping education in the city-states of Hong Kong and Singapore. Collectively, the pieces in this volume represent a first attempt to investigate national responses to critical regional trends.
  • Publication
    Who Are Korean Millennials?: Living Arrangement (Living Alone)
    (2016-12-19) Park, Hyunjoon; Choi, Jaesung
  • Publication
    Who Are Korean Millennials?: The Retreat from Marriage
    (2017-01-24) Park, Hyunjoon; Choi, Jaesung
  • Publication
    Causal Effects of Single-Sex Schools on College Entrance Exams and College Attendance: Random Assignment in Seoul High Schools
    (2012-01-25) Park, Hyunjoon; Behrman, Jere R; Choi, Jaesung
    Despite the voluminous literature on the potentials of single-sex schools, there is no consensus on the effects of single-sex schools because of student selection of school types. We exploit a unique feature of schooling in Seoul, the random assignment of students into single-sex versus coeducational high schools, to assess causal effects of single-sex schools on college entrance exam scores and college attendance. Our validation of the random assignment shows comparable socioeconomic backgrounds and prior academic achievement of students attending single-sex schools and coeducational schools, which increases the credibility of our causal estimates of single-sex school effects. Attending all-boys schools or all-girls schools rather than attending coeducational schools is significantly associated with higher average scores on Korean and English test scores. Single-sex schools have a higher percentage of graduates who attended four-year colleges and a lower percentage of graduates who attended two-year junior colleges than coeducational schools. The positive effects of single-sex schools remain substantial, even after taking into account various school-level variables such as teacher quality, the student-teacher ratio, the proportion of students receiving lunch support, and whether the schools are public or private.
  • Publication
    Growing Educational Differentials in the Retreat from Marriage among Korean Men
    (2014-09-05) Park, Hyunjoon; Lee, Jae Kyung
    Applying discrete-time hazard models to person-year data constructed from 1% microdata sample of 2010 Korean Census, we explore how men’s education affects their transition to first marriage, and how the relationship between education and marriage has changed across three 10-year birth cohorts of Korean men born from 1946 to 1975. Currently, there is only limited knowledge on how education is related to marriage formation and how the effect is contingent upon macro contexts of education, economy, and family among East Asian men. We find that the high educated delay marriage until later ages but catch up to the extent to which they are eventually more likely to marry than the low educated. There is a continued trend across cohorts toward the delay and avoidance of marriage at all educational levels. However, the trend of retreat from marriage has been more substantial for men with high school or less education compared to men with a university degree, leading to growing educational gaps over time in marriage. We discuss the findings in the contexts of deteriorating economic prospects of Korean men with lower education and also the declining pool of potential spouses for the low educated.
  • Publication
    Literacy Gaps by Educational Attainment: A Comparative Study of 19 Countries
    (2007-01-01) Park, Hyunjoon; Kyei, Pearl
    Using data of literacy skills among adults aged 26 to 35 from the International Adult Literacy Survey, we compare the degree of literacy gaps between those who completed tertiary education and those who did not graduate from high schools across 19 countries. The result of ordinary least square regression shows that although those with a higher level of educational attainment tend to have a higher level of literacy skills in all countries, countries substantially vary in the degree of literacy gaps by educational attainment. The cross-national variation in the literacy gap is mainly driven by between-country differences in the level of literacy skills among those who did not graduate from high school. The result of two-level hierarchical linear models, furthermore, shows that the cross-national variation in the literacy gap by educational attainment is in part attributable to between-country differences in standardization of educational systems and the extent to which adult education and training are offered to the low educated. We discuss theoretical and policy implications of the findings for addressing inequality of literacy skills.
  • Publication
    Who Are Korean Millennials?: Demographics
    (2016-12-02) Park, Hyunjoon
  • Publication
    Who Are Korean Millennials?: Educational Attainment
    (2016-12-13) Park, Hyunjoon
  • Publication