Factors and causal structures of pre-service elementary teachers about the critical thinking and the scientific literacy competency were investigated in this study. The third grade university students and the first grade university students in the metropolitan city participated in this study. The factor analysis method and the structural equation modeling method were used for the data analysis, and the following results were obtained. First, the third grade university students and the first grade university students recognized 'inquisitive thinking' factor and 'reflective thinking' factor as factors of the critical thinking, and 'scientific explanation' factor and 'evidence-based conclusion' factor as factors of the scientific literacy competency respectively. Second, the third grade university students showed more the influence from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'scientific explanation' factor and from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'evidence-based conclusion' factor than the first grade university students.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of reasoning in which $3^{rd}$ grade elementary school students form ideas, design experiments, and interpret the results to solve problems in small group argumentation. For this purpose, 12 3rd-grade students' small group argumentations including experiments were observed. The researchers analyzed students' pre- and post-open questionnaires, field notes, and video recordings of small group argumentation. The results of the research are as follows. First, in the initial opinion formation process, a hasty unification of opinions and a transformation of inquiry problem occurred. In the design and execution of experiments, verification experiments and unplanned and arbitrary experiments were performed. They also selectively noticed or accepted claims, evidence, interpretation, and criticism. They could distinguish between the condition and the cause, but they were confused by using inaccurate terms and tended to keep the initial opinions when interpreting the results and drawing conclusions.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceptions of the students about professionalism on the elementary teachers' science teaching through network analysis of keyword. For this study, questionnaires were conducted to elementary school students. The collected data were translated by coding and data cleaning. And then analyzed by Gephi 0.9.2 program as a tool of the network analysis. The results of this study were as follows: Top 5 words in betweenness centrality were 'smart, experiment, fun, various, and student understanding'. There was some difference of perceptions of students according to personal backgrounds(gender, grade and interest toward science class). Based on the result of this study, implications to improve elementary teachers' science teaching professionalism were suggested.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the conceptual structure of subjects related to matter having pre-service elementary school teachers by applying semantic network analysis (SNA). The analyzed concepts in the subjects of matter were 6 words such as 'atom', 'molecule', 'ion', 'electron', 'matter' and 'particle'. The results of SNA of the concepts are as follows : 1. In the semantic network of 'atom', words having a high betweenness centrality were linked with the words based on both the scientific context and the everyday context. 2. The network of 'molecule' was analyzed to be more organized than the network of the 'atom'. 3. In the network of 'ion', the group of words of the scientific context was distinguished from the group of words of the everyday context. 4. The network of 'electron' was analyzed to be more oriented on electricity and magnetism in the field of physics. 5. In the network of 'matter', the words related to compounds were linked with knowledge of history of science. 6. The network of 'particle' was not structured with words based on particulate nature of matter.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of lesson planning of pre-service elementary teachers to develop scientific communication skills for elementary school students. For this purpose, lesson plans and lesson planning journals written by the 53 pre-service teachers were collected and analyzed. The results of the research were as follows. The pre-service elementary teachers used an implicit and contextual approach to develop scientific communication skills. Teaching and learning activities for enhancing scientific communication were mainly conducted in words or in writing. There were many activities expressing elementary school students' thoughts and presenting the results of experiments in the lesson plan. There were many cases in which the pre-service teachers' lesson plans did not include the evaluation of scientific communication skills. In their lesson plans, there are a lot of mutual activities between teachers and students, team and whole students, and inter-students within teams together, and students' individual activities from requests of teachers. We found that the pre-service teachers had various difficulties when they planned the science lesson to develop scientific communication skills. The pre-service teachers were less likely to refer to specialized materials related to science education when planning their classes.

The purpose of this study is to explore how pre-service elementary teachers perceive and use smart learning environments. For this purpose, 23 pre-service elementary teachers who took theory and practice in a science education course were asked to develop lesson materials using smart tools and make a self-report questionnaire. These data were categorized in an instructional, exploratory, and interactive approach, depending on how they guided students to access knowledge and information. As a result of the study, pre-service teachers perceived the smart tools as the exploratory and interactive learning tools to be used for students to actively search for and interact with data and knowledge. But in developing lesson materials, they usually used the smart tools for resource sharing and communication in the instructional manner. In conclusion, the gap between their perception of smart tools and lesson materials, and the educational implications will be discussed.

The visualization materials in science textbooks are very important in students' learning. Recent visualizations are increasingly emphasizing the importance of infographic visualizations. The purpose of this study is to analyze the visualization materials in $5^{th}$ and $6^{th}$ elementary science textbook focusing on infographics. Visualization materials were classified into infographic and simple illustration. Infographics were classified into 8 sub-types. Findings are as follows. First, infographics were 19.0%, and simple illustrations were 81.0% among elementary textbooks' visualization materials. The portion of infographic varied by content areas. In Biology and Earth Science area, the portions of infographic were high. Second, several types of infographics were used in elementary science textbooks. Timeline infographic were the most frequent, and emphasis infographic, concept mapping infographic, comparison infographic were used frequently. The most frequent types of infographic were different by content area. Third, infographics used more than simple illustrations in the role of concept explanation. Educational implications on science textbook's infographics were discussed.