Analyzing the national kindergarten curriculum through text mining

This study aims to examine the changes in the national kindergarten curriculum text through text mining. Semantic network analysis using R was employed for this purpose, yielding the following results. Firstly, consistently High-centrality keywords from the 1st kindergarten curriculum of the 2019 revised Nuri Curriculum were ‘child’ and ‘curriculum,’ with ‘kindergarten,’ ‘operation,’ and ‘development’ also showing general centrality. Secondly, keywords reflecting differences in centrality emphasized in each curriculum period included ‘community,’ ‘play,’ ‘welfare,’ ‘construction,’ and ‘parents.’ The keyword ‘community’ showed High-Centrality in the 1st, 5th, and 6th kindergarten curricula and the 2007 revised kindergarten curriculum. The keywords ‘welfare’ and ‘construction’ displayed High-Centrality in the 3rd kindergarten curriculum. Additionally, the keyword ‘play’ showed High-Centrality in the 2019 revised Nuri Curriculum, and the keyword ‘parents’ showed High-Centrality in the 6th and 2007 revised kindergarten curricula. This study offers implications for future revisions of the early childhood curriculum as a theoretical reference.