• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.297-310
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• 2021

This study explores the characteristics of within-school and across-school science teacher professional learning communities (hereafter, PLC) qualitatively. In-depth focus group interviews were conducted with science teachers belonging to seven PLCs within the science core school and three PLCs across schools. Interview questions include identity and motivation, major activities, and outcomes of PLC, as well as shortcomings and support plans for PLC. The results include both within-school and across-school science teacher PLCs formed for professional development related to science teaching and learning. Both science PLCs participated in the study showed the characteristics of a 'practice community' that developed a cooperative relationship through reciprocal participation, focusing on shared issues among members. Regarding issues, within-school PLCs focused on microscopic problems such as curriculum reconstruction of subject-matter, while across-school PLCs focused on macro problems such as teacher professional development. Regarding activities and roles as PLC, within-school and across-school science PLCs shared such features as collaborative professional development, and interpersonal education such as mentoring for novice teachers. In terms of PLC's influence and outcomes, science teacher PLCs has a positive effect not only on the teachers themselves, but also on the students and the teacher culture in the school. In addition, science teacher PLCs need improvement of the physical conditions for community operation, and software support such as protocol provision for PLC operation and joint research or re-education with universities. In particular, joint research between universities and science teacher PLCs shows the future orientation of the PLC as an 'inquiry community'. Based on the results, the necessity of active support for science PLC, the necessity of developing a cooperative system between science teacher PLC and universities, and ways to spread the PLC of science core schools to that of general schools were proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Educational Facilities
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.20-26
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• 2010

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.5
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• pp.825-833
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• 2017

The Korean Ministry of Education has emphasized human resource development with creative and convergent ability for future science and technology development. Korean STEAM Education aims to enhance students' interest and their understanding of science and technology as well as to develop students' creative problem-solving skills. Through STEAM R&E project, students experience self-directed research in order to solve the problem in the context of everyday life. In this study, we aim to find out whether the creative leader competency of high school students changed after they experienced the STEAM R&E project. The creative leader competency consisted of three domains: cognitive, affective, and societal domain. We measured the creative leader competency using the questionnaire scales. The questionnaire was administered to 612 high school students who participated in the 2016 STEAM R&E project. Pre- and post- test scores were collected, and we analyzed it. We compared the mean difference between pre- and post- test scores as well as the mean differences among science high school, gifted school, science core school, and general high school. From the result, we found that all student' creative leader competency improved after participating in the STEAM R&E project in all three domains. The result also showed that students' test scores of science high school and gifted school showed no significant mean differences, while student's scores of both science core school and general high school improved significantly. From the results, we concluded that STEAM R&E activities could be an effective tool in cultivating creative leader competency, especially for general high school students and science core school students. We also suggested that further researches are needed to find how we could enhance students' creative leader competency.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.117-134
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• 2003

In Japan accumulating intellectual assets by enhancing science and technology is the only way to survive the global competition. To enhance science and technology, it is important to improve science literacy the public and to foster human resources for science and technology, Therefore, MEXT (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology) is now working with various projects. One of the projects for attaining the purpose is Science Literacy Enhancement Initiative. This initiative is a brand-new package of several projects to enhance math and science education in high and middle schools including (1) Super Science High school (SSHs) and (2) Science Partnership Program. The purpose of this study was to investigate concretely about the situation of promotion of SSHs paying attention to three high schools (TAKASAKI high school, HORIOKA high school and RITUMEIKAN high school) specified as SSHs. Furthermore, some suggestions about gifted education were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.279-293
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• 2019

This study investigated the effects of national science leading school programs on students' positive experiences about science (PES) and teachers' perceptions of curriculum implementation factors affecting students' PES. For this study, Test for Indicators of Positive Experiences about Science (TIPES) was administered to a total of 11,488 students from 117 national science leading schools and 1,315 students from 50 normal counterpart schools. In addition, a total of 105 teachers were given a survey asking their curriculum implementation levels and perceptions on importance and performance levels of each identified factor that was known to influence students' PES. Students' total PES scores and scores in five sub-components of PES were widely varied across science leading school program types. In general, participating teachers reported common curriculum implementation factors that most positively affected students' PES including 'science-related activities out of school,' 'student-centered research projects,' 'ICT-related materials' and 'performance assessment.' Based on these results, implications for science education were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.287-296
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• 2004

The purposes of this study were to analyze the problems of elementary science instruction, especially in experiment and observation, and suggest the directions to improve current elementary science instruction in terms of teaching methods and strategies. Data from instructions implemented by 7 elementary teachers were used to extract the problem of elementary science instruction. According to the results of instruction observation, such problems as follows are identified: 1) shortage of discussion regarding results of students' activities, 2) insufficiency of interactions among teacher-student/student-student, 3) shortage of guidance for students on observation, 4) absence of explanation on apparatus, 5) teachers' insufficient knowledge on science, 6) inappropriate use of teacher-made worksheets. Desirable directions for the improvement of present elementary science instruction were proposed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.163-170
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• 2022

This study investigated and analyzed the social and emotional learning components of middle school science, and high school integrated science and science inquiry experiments, which are common subjects that all students must complete. The subjects of analysis were 139 achievement standards of science and curriculum and 496 activities included in textbooks. The research results are as follows. In the case of curriculum achievement standards, 'cultural understanding' was hardly included among the seven science and social-emotional learning elements, 'numeracy' and 'creative thinking' appeared high in middle school, 'critical thinking', 'social technology' and 'ethical understanding' were included with high frequency in high school. And in the case of textbook activity, the tendency of social-emotional learning elements in middle school and high school was similar. 'critical thinking', 'creative thinking', and 'social skills' were mainly provided, while 'ethical understanding' and 'cultural understanding' were reflected in a limited way. In order to cultivate the elements of overall social-emotional learning, it is necessary to specify the achievement standards of the curriculum or to supplement the textbook activities and teaching-learning process.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.337-346
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• 2020

In this study, we investigated the characteristics of students participating in Science Core high schools classes and their relevance to Positive Experiences on Science (hereinafter, PES), and factors causing PES, presented by the students of Science Core high schools. A total of 20 students and five teachers in four regions across the country participated in the in-depth interview, which were conducted with the focus group of students first, and then in-depth interviews with teachers. Based on the interview results, we explored teaching and learning experiences helpful to the PES, assessment experiences resulting in the PES, and ways to support Science Core high schools to enhance their PES. Students and teachers of Science Core high schools argued that students' participation will increase only if they engage in classes while drawing attention within the range that students can understand, students' PES such as scientific interest can be improved through experiments in which students choose topics or design their own exploration process, science competencies such as science problem solving ability and scientific thinking ability should be developed through exploratory experiment activities that fit the nature of science, etc. In addition, regarding ways to improve and support Science Core high schools to enhance PES, securing science class hours, restructuring the contents of science elective courses, and necessity of maintaining Science Core high schools are suggested. Based on the research results of science high school students' PES, ways to improve the PES of general high school students are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.725-739
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• 2022

This study aims to analyze what elementary school pre-service teachers focused on and what challenges they faced in designing and producing a guided science inquiry program based on augmented reality (AR) and to provide some implications for teachers' professionalism and teacher education. To this end, focusing on the cases of pre-service teachers who designed and created AR-based guided inquiry programs, the researchers extracted and categorized the pre-service teachers' focus and challenges from the program design and production stages. As a result, in the program design stage, the pre-service teachers tried to construct scenarios that could promote students' active inquiry process. At the same time, drawing on the unique affordances of AR, the pre-service teachers focused on creating vivid visual data in a 3D environment and making meaningful connections between virtual and real-world activities. The pre-service teachers faced challenges in making use of the advantages of AR technology and designing an inquiry program due to a lack of background knowledge about CoSpaces, a content creation program. In the program production stage, the pre-service teachers tried to make their program easy to handle to improve students' concentration on inquiry activities. In addition, challenges of programming using CoSpaces were reported. Based on these results, educational implications were discussed in terms of the pedagogical uses of AR and teachers' professionalism in adopting AR in science inquiry.

• Journal of Korean Home Economics Education Association
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.61-77
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• 2005

This study focuses on the current practices and teacher's perceptions of highschool Home Economics Education in Busan, Ulsan and Kyungnam area. Data were collected from 70 teachers with the questionnaire by mail. The results were following : 1. Home Economics have been teamed at schools of class rooms mere than 31, women's high schools and public schools. Teachers more than $70\%$ have operated and lessoned with 4 or 5 among 5 sectors of subject matters, especially emphasized family${\cdot}$human development and food${\cdot}$nutrition sectors. The most difficulties were the shortages of student's interest and reference books. 2. Teachers have cognized highly the connection of Technology${\cdot}$Home Economics and Home Economics, but evaluated lowly the job-course education among the H.E's goals. 3. Necessities of HE were evaluated highly, but student's interests by teacher's judgement lowly. Manual theses of clothing${\cdot}$textile and housing sectors have needs to alter partly. 4. Subject matters to add for the near future revision were related to dissatisfaction of H.E's matters. Teachers cognized problems about the excess, overlap, old-fashioned and irrelevant deepen levels of subject matters.