Institute of Educational Science at Mainz University, Germany cooperates with the Kangnam University in Yongin in South Korea
08.03.2010
The German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) grants financial support to the Institute of Educational Science at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany in the framework of its "Mobility and Partnership" program. Mainz University shall use these means to intensify the existent active cooperation with the Kangnam University in Yongin in South Korea. Part of this cooperation is the "Summer School Abroad" and the ongoing student exchange. "Internationality has become an essential component of higher education," the DAAD declares in its rationale for this granting of funds. The financial support is thus meant "to support the long-term establishment of bilateral partnerships with South Korea, to foster the qualification of German and South Korean young academics, and to enhance the internationalization of German institutions of higher education in order to strengthen Germany as a place to go for study and research."
On part of Mainz University it is mainly the work group "Development and Education" under the leadership of Professor Dr. Detlef Garz from the Institute of Educational Science that realizes the partnership with the South Korean partner, the "Institute of Human Development" of the Graduate School of Social Welfare under the leadership of Professor Dr. Hyo Seon Lee. The bilateral cooperation is concentrated on two main aspects: the exchange of students and teachers and the organization of joint courses dealing particularly with questions of qualitative-reconstructive social research. The main important joint research project deals with the Korean 'working migration' to Germany in the 1960s and 1970s and the so-called ‘Second Generation’ raised in Germany as well as with the analysis of the return and further movement of Korean migrants.
Within the framework of the DAAD program "Mobility and Partnership", students and postgraduates of Mainz University will have the opportunity to go to Kangnam University for a month between 2010 and 2012 and to take classes and do research with colleagues there. Likewise, Korean students and postgraduates of Kangnam University will come to Mainz University.