Suggesting Interdisciplinary Teacher Education for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: Korean
Perspective
Hee Chan Lew (Korea National University of Education)hclew@knue.ac.kr
Fourth Industrial Revolution and Education
Nowadays, Korea’s interest in the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" is growing. It is the revolutionthat will cause dramatic changes, not only in the field of industry, but also in our everyday lives
through the fusion of ultramodern technologies. In the new society, education demands newchallenges that are quite different from what we have seen so far. In addition to teaching
students how to understand and utilize fragmentary knowledge, we need to teach students theconnection among the various curricula, and the complex relationship which changes the humanways of thinking and living. And education should provide various information for students tocope with the rapid changes in their future job market.
As technology changes, AI robots will be in charge of many things that human beings havedone so far. Education should develop soft skills such as sociality, sensitivity, empathy, challenge
to adventure, and networking, as well as the ability of critical thinking and problem solving.
Current Issues in Teacher Education
In order to develop the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution continuously, it has long beenargued that the educational methodology for students should be integrated rather thancompartmentalized as it is now (Ministry of Education, 2012, 2015). However, there is no serious
debate on how to train teachers who will comprehensively manage schools. Currently, theteacher education system trains teachers with isolated viewpoint of each subject under thecompartmented department system. In the sense that the Fourth Industrial Revolution is nothing
but an era of convergence, the present compartmented teacher education system should bechanged. This paper intends to introduce the convergent teacher education method which
Convergence Education Research Institute of Korea National University of Education has recentlycarried out.

Korea National University of Education
Korea National University of Education is Korea's only comprehensive teacher training institution.
It trains all pre-service teachers from kindergarten to high school and provides almost all kindsof in-service training programs, and is responsible for the nation’s new principal training andnew mentor teacher qualification programs. As the center of Korean teacher education, it
received Triple A in both graduate pre-service and in-service programs as well as undergraduate
pre-service program at the evaluation for the 5th teacher training institute conducted at the endof 2018.
Being located near the Sejong city, the new administrative capital of Korea, the KNUE is accessible
within 2 hours from anywhere in the country. It is coordinating perfectly not only with the Korea
Institute Curriculum and Evaluation, the Korean Educational Development Institute, 17 city andprovincial education offices and the Ministry of Education, but also the Korean Teachers'
Associations Federation and the Korean Mentor Teachers' Association.
Convergence Education Research InstituteTo present a new paradigm of convergence education for the cultivation of human resources
required by future society and to nurture teachers capable of cultivating convergent talents,
Convergence Education Research Institute was established in 2016 to play the role below.
Development and operation of convergence teacher education program and activity materials
It develops a variety of convergence teacher education programs to provide opportunities forstrengthening the convergence capacity of the pre-service teachers, and conduct various
activities-oriented education so that they can develop various convergent contents by themselvesand have the ability to conduct convergence education when they become a school teacher.
Students participate in a variety of courses offered at Convergence Education Research Instituteand have a variety of convergence education experiences and complete credits.
Establish mentoring system for pre-service teachers
In order to nurture pre-service teachers required in the future society, it establishes a mentoring
support system in cooperation with the National Council of Mentor Teachers with expertise inmanaging classes. If there is a request for a training course program for each department, theconvergence education research Institute invites mentor teachers who have previous researchand guidance experience in the convergence education to help pre-service teachers develop aninterdisciplinary teaching ability.
Hold student & teacher festival, teacher forum or workshop to support free semester system
It holds a free semester system festival where students and teachers participate together tospread the free semester system that the Korean government conducts nationwide and a forum
or workshop to improve teachers' job guidance skills for junior high school students .
Support the convergence education and free semester system policy of the Ministry of Education
It conducts various in-service teacher training programs to support various policies for theconvergence education and free semester system promoted by the Ministry of Education andplays a role of advising the Ministry of Education, city and provincial education offices, and eachschools on convergence education and free semester system.
Development of convergence education students program and collect responses from the field,
It develops the convergence education programs that can be used in actual education field
during the free semester of the first year of junior high school and collects responses from thefield about whether teachers have led to a positive change in students' convergence capability.
Convergence Education Philosophy of Convergence Education Research InstituteConvergence education is to foster people who can communicate with various fields in theirown positions and who have the ability to accept different ideas from themselves and connect
creatively with an open mind.
For such education, it is necessary not to teach fossilized knowledge in a systematic way but toguide learners to compare and connect various knowledge by contacting situations, contexts
and various preconditions in which knowledge is made. This is the only way for mutual
coexistence of society members and the continuous development of society, nurturing thecreativity needed in the era of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and solving the current social
contradiction that forces competition and efficiency only.
Convergence education is an education that realizes learning in life by understanding that society,nature and the world are all connected together organically based on the basic knowledge ofhumanities, society, science and technology cultivated in a balanced way. To this end, educational
experts from various fields should constantly communicate with each other and carry out jointresearch.
Teaching and learning facilities for convergence education
Although concrete and practical efforts are urgently needed to develop the convergencecapabilities of middle and high school students in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, there is nosuitable classroom application model related to teaching-learning facilities or curriculum that will
support teachers’ who are in charge of students’ efforts to develop the capabilities related to theFourth Industrial Revolution.
As a result, due to the lack of capacity of current teachers who are in charge of public education,some parents rely on private tutoring for convergence education, which is essentially a blockadeof students' education opportunities related to the Fourth Industrial Revolution in difficult
circumstances.
Currently, there are Maker Space and FAB Lab as various convergence education facilities acrossthe country, but most of them are for young entrepreneurs and college of engineering students,
so it is not enough to support the education activities for pre-service teachers and current
teachers.
The KNUE has a plan to establish the “Future Education Experience Center” at the school fromthe viewpoint of realizing the urgent educational welfare and in terms of realizing the educational
capacity of the pre-service and in-service teachers.
The Center consists of five areas: Future Career Experience Zone, Immersion Experience Zone,
Future Classroom Zone, Maker Zone, and Research Support Zone. The Future Career Experience
Center consists of career inspection and consultation, reference room for career experience,
future career experience room as a space to foster teacher career guidance capacity and support
students' own career design in the occupational world and society rapidly changing into the 4th
Industrial Revolution.

The Immersion Experience Zone is a space that provides the opportunity to understand,experience and utilize the advanced technology according to the Fourth Industrial Revolution, toenhance the future education capabilities of pre-service and in-service teachers, and an advanced
technology exhibition and experience space that visitors can participate in the exhibition whichfunctions as a test bed of the Edutech technology business.
The Maker Zone consists of maker lounge, prototype room, wood design room, art design room,
software room, research & support room which are the key elements of the maker space, as atest bed for promoting the “maker space movement” and presenting a standard model of themaker space education in the community and public education.
International Exchange and Cooperation
As Charles Dickens, British novelist of the Victorian age said, the best and the worst, wisdom andfoolishness, faith and doubt, light and dark coexist when revolution rises. It is the only way forscholars and teachers in various fields to open their minds and have serious and keen discussions
not to move in the wrong direction. Convergence Education Research Institute has been pursuinginternational cooperation with the LUMA Center of Helsinki University and the University of UPI
in Indonesia for the past three years. In the future, it will expand and continue international
cooperation to exchange ideas of convergence education with South America and SoutheastAsia.
Establishment of a 5-year teacher education plan
The current four-year teacher training system has many problems in order to train teacherscapable of linking and integrating curriculum. This is because there is a shortage of education
period to build diverse knowledge and experience for the convergence education beyond thecontents of one curriculum under the training system that operates the current
compartmentalized curriculum. In addition, in order to teach convergence education, 8 weeks ofpractical teaching of the current system must increase to more than 15 weeks. A minimum of
five years of teacher training is required to develop a teacher who can perform a new kind of
convergence education well. The added one-year course can be used to foster the design abilityof an integrated curriculum along with practical convergence capabilities by providing
opportunities for various heuristic convergence education experiences for convergence andexpanded teaching practice opportunities.
The Korea National University of Education is closely consulting with the Ministry of Education,city and provincial education offices to seek change as a future five-year teacher education
university and revision of related laws.