Decision Making and Citizen Participation in Korean and US textbooks: Passage features, cultural differences and comprehension

This study focused on 10-year-olds reading explanations from Korean and US textbooks to discover how well the children could comprehend the materials and what educators from the two countries could learn from one another. Passages from both countries reflected writing patterns in their larger cultures, but the Korean passages had more culture-free features that would enhance comprehension than the US passages. A total of 63 Korean and 57 US 10-year-olds read one of the passages from their own country or a translation from the other country and responded to items to assess knowledge, comprehension, and interest. Possessing background knowledge was positively associated with comprehension regardless of topic or country. Overall, both the US and Korean children comprehended the Korean explanations more effectively than the US passages. Both culture-independent and culture-dependent passage features seem to have contributed to this difference, suggesting approaches to improving instructional materials in civics for students across cultures.