Academic activities are systematized through internal logic of science itself and also influenced by external factors such as formal and/or informal contacts, communication, and recognition among scholars. In order to explore the situations, problems and trends of an independant discipline, therefore, it is necessary to inquire academic norms, academic communication networks, and reward systems in a scientific community. Moreover, under the scientific conditions today, in which such a basic issue as 'identity crisis' of the science(including science of education) is discussed, are requested the scientific theory-oriented efforts that examine the situations and trends of academic activities in relation to the formation and transition of schools(congregation of scholars who share idiosyncratic and same theoretical perspectives, methodological assumptions etc. at a certain period). As a result of these efforts, an unique discipline is reorganized newly and developed continuosly in terms of scientific principles and paradigms.
The purpose of this study is to investigate the present conditions and trends of ademic activities performed by Korean curriculum scholars from August 1945 to June 1991, and to clarify the process, meanings and future directions of them. Especially, the study focused on the cocitated frequency and relation of 50 leading curriculum scholars within bibliographies of 355 Korean curriculum literatures in analyzing the conditions and trends of the academic activities in Korean academic community of curriculum.
The major technique employed in this study is cocitation 'analysis. Cocitation analysis, one of the central field of the Bibliometrics, is the peculiar method for measuring intellectual communication and influence in the academic community. With the matrix of Pearson's rs as input set, the researcher proceeded to mapping, clustering and catergorizing 50 curriculum scholars. The groupings that emerge are generally interpretable as subfield of curriculum.
An overall examination of the cocition analysis result shows following implication for the understanding of the inner intellectual structure of the discipline of Korean curriculum. In the Korean curriculum community, there are many leading curriculum scholars who have been performing diverse academic activities. Also, these curriculum scholars may organize research groups through formal and/or informal contacts and communication with one another. But, unexpectedly, some leading collaboration groups are classified into the same research group. Consequently, it is presumed that the academic activity of Korean academic community of curriculum is carried out research groups formed by scholars who graduated from and serve at the same university of institution rather than scholars who hold the same researcd paradigm.