Exploring Problem Representation and Governmentality in Educational Policies for Multicultural Students and Students with North Korean Backgrounds

This study examined educational policies that target multicultural students and students with North Korean backgrounds and label them as ‘problems’ and how this problem framing produces and operates a specific form of governance over these student groups. To this end, the study collected and analyzed relevant policy documents using Bacchi's WPR approach. The findings reveal that, through the construction of problems concerning students, parents, and teachers, educational policies for multicultural students and students with North Korean backgrounds become relegated to objects of support rather than subjects of education, marginalizing them during educational participation and activities. Furthermore, these policies exhibited differences in problem framing, approaches to solutions, and the construction of governing discourses, functioning as mechanisms to legitimize governance over each group. Based on these findings, this study discusses alternative possibilities for policy discourse to steer educational policies and practices for multicultural and North Korean background students toward a more inclusive future.