Three independent but related studies in this dissertation consider how social conditions, political alignments, institutional arrangements, leadership, media, and rhetoric collectively shape national-level curriculum reform in South Korea. Drawing on the empirical investigation on the 2015 National Curriculum Reform (NCR), the three papers explore different dimensions of national-level curriculum deliberation. Complementing conventional curriculum decision-making studies, this dissertation aims to explore the potentiality of the field of curriculum deliberation, which can gain analytical strength by applying theories in political science. First paper looks at how key participants experienced national curriculum making in a centralized system particularly focusing on their meaning making process. Using constructivist grounded theory, I tried to answer two questions: (a) What meanings do key policy actors make of making national curriculum given their varied experiences? And (b) How do these meanings of national curriculum making relate to the way policy actors actually experience the curriculum making process? Findings show that participants attach variety meanings to the act of NCR and centralized system, the MOE's asymmetric power structures, impacts the deliberative environment in interesting ways. The overarching goal of second paper is to understand how the 2015 NCR was talked about-across supporting and opposing groups-in public deliberation spaces. Specifically, I examined problem redefinition and public persuasion procedures while focusing specifically on the following questions: (a) How the problems are constructed to justify the need for another national-level curriculum reform? (b) Which problem definitions get more public support and attention in Korean educational policy context? And (c) How did consensus form around one of the proposed problem definition? Findings revealed that the 2015 NCR was reframed as: a curriculum that (a) teaches more common contents, (b) is better organized, (c) addresses societal needs, (d) empower local schools and teachers, and (e) meet individual students' needs. The final paper asks: How education reform agenda get public attention in social media? To be more precise, it looks at the role of policy entrepreneurship in the production and circulation of 'a math failure' framing in social media. Using text mining and critical discourse analysis, this paper explores the patterns in the aspects of frequency, word clusters, types of social media outlets, and associations with different user groups. I discuss the significance of using social media as going public strategy for education policy entrepreneurship.
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