The purposes of this study were 1) to identify cultural characteristics of educational activities
which parents created for their children, and 2) to find out how those characteristics were formed
under what kinds of socio-cultural context.
To meet the goals of this research, literature review and interviews were conducted. Interviews
were conducted in Gwangju and Chonnam area. 17 informants participated in the interviews and the
collected data were analyzed.
According to the study, the socio-cultural contexts of parental culture are summarized as follows;
First, A core element of parental culture was excessive valuing of academic background; parents
supported children's education as a way to conform to the trend of excessive valuing of academic
background. Their "supporting strategies" were different depending on the social status.
Second, The more parents correlated social success with educational success, the more excessive
valuing of academic background had influenced the culture. Parental supporting strategies tended to
be polarized depending on the social status.
Third, Parents worked individually or selfishly rather than working together with other parents in
terms of education for their children.
This study found out that the cultural themes, which inferred tacitly or explicitly with principles
recurrent in the domains of supporting activities mentioned above, are "private education oriented",
"initiating by mothers", and "depending on information". It is important to note that parental culture
was segmented in accordance with social status. Therefore higher class parental culture can be
characterized as strong "private education oriented", intensive "initiating by mothers" and "private
control on information". In contrast, lower class parental culture can be characterized as weak
"private education oriented", "child's autonomy", and "opened approach on information."