• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.34-48
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• 2024

With the global rise in interest in competency-based education, the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea outlined six core competencies in the 2015 revised curriculum, essential for future society's 'creative and convergent talent'. This study introduces an HTE-STEAM constellation education program designed to develop the core competencies outlined in the 2015 revised curriculum and address the limitations of hands-on astronomy education. The program's effectiveness was assessed through a pilot test. The program was implemented at G Library, an out-of-school education site in Cheongju-si, Chungcheongbuk-do, targeting students from 3rd to 6th grade. The study's results include: First, the HTE-STEAM program significantly impacted all aspects of the STEAM attitude test except for 'self-concept', particularly influencing 'science and engineering career choice', 'consideration', and 'communication'. Thus, it has led to positive outcomes in the cultivation of future society's core competencies, including 'creative thinking skills', 'communication skills', and 'community skills'. Secondly, the HTE-STEAM constellation education program, despite covering the challenging concept of spacetime, was deemed easy by many students. Observations of students applying the spatial concepts they learned by using teaching aids suggest that the program was effective in enhancing students' understanding of the spatial structure of the sky and the universe. Additionally, this program aligns with the 2022 curriculum's updated standards for understanding the sky's spatial structure. Consequently, the HTE-STEAM constellation education program positively cultivates future society's core competencies and serves as a valuable complement to night observation practices in schools.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.374-388
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service physics teachers' perceptions on the physics education major curriculum. We surveyed 15 junior, and 13 senior college students of physics education major in an university in southern part of Korea. Among them, 24 participants(86 %) took the physics 1 course in high school and 22 participants(79 %) chose the physics 1 in their Korea Scholastic Aptitude Test. The responses showed that the most necessary part in pre-service students' learning was the understanding of high school level physics(36 %), and the understanding of introductory level physics(29 %). In the wish list of courses to be open, high school level physics course was ranked first among seven options by 61 % of respondents. Also, there was some concurrence among respondents in opinion of the necessity for understanding introductory physics. Students felt difficulties in understanding it especially owing to the lack of problem solving skill and comprehension. They added that the sufficient explanation of core concepts should be the first action in the innovative plan. Most participants of pre-service physics teachers hoped to have the revised major curriculum which could help their understanding of high school level or introductory level of physics. However, there was a gap of opinions between the group of students with completion of the high school physics 1 & 2 course and those with non-completion of them. The approach of changing major curriculum with consideration of learners' needs was recommended because the number of students with completion of the high school physics course would probably be decreasing rapidly under these circumstances such as the application of new national curriculum, the reduction of the number of the elective courses in Korea Scholastic Aptitude Test and so on.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.289-301
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• 2015

This study noted that elementary school students were unable to accurately comprehend the principles of moon phase changes and that teachers themselves lacked a full understanding of it as well. Therefore, this study classifies conception types through 161 5th grade respondents and suggests how to change students' conception types through the use of reconstructed teaching and learning materials (that have been developed in existing studies). It verified the changes in the learning achievement of 129 5th grade respondents and analyzed how to think about reconstructed teaching and learning materials through four teacher respondents and four 5th grade respondents from the same study. The results of this study are as follows: First, the conception types on moon phase changes were classified into C and W types. W types consisted of W1, W2, W3, W4, and W5 types. Students had difficulty in understanding the principles of a waxing crescent moon and first quarter phase changes. Second, the group taking classes, which implemented reconstructed teaching and learning materials, showed greater improvement in learning achievement posttest and long-term tests compared to those who have not. Finally, teachers and students reacted positively to the reconstructed teaching and learning materials as shown in exit survey results. In conclusion, it is suggested that teachers are better off utilizing reconstructed teaching and learning materials so that elementary school students may fully understand the principles of moon phase changes rather than just memorizing the results.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.479-490
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to develop an argument-based modeling strategy, utilizing writing and argumentation for communication in science education. We need to support students and teachers who have difficulty in modeling in science education, this strategy focuses on development of four kinds of factors as follows: First, awareness of problems, recognizing in association with problems by observing several problematic situations. Second is science concept structuralization suggesting enough science concepts by organization for scientific explanation. The third is claim-evidence appropriateness that suggests appropriate representation as evidence for assertions. Last, the use of various representations and multimodal representations that converts and integrates these representations in evidence suggestion. For the development of these four factors, this study organized three stages. 'Recognition process' for understanding of multimodal representations, and 'Interpretation process' for understanding of activity according to multimodal representations, 'Application process' for understanding of modeling through argumentation. This application process has been done with eight stages of 'Asking questions or problems - Planning experiment - Investigation through observation on experiment - Analyzing and interpreting data - Constructing pre-model - Presenting model - Expressing model using multimodal representations - Evaluating model - Revising model'. After this application process, students could have opportunity to form scientific knowledge by making their own model as scientific explanation system for the phenomenon of the natural world they observed during a series of courses of modeling.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.151-161
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• 2020

The 'core concepts', 'generalized knowledge', and 'skills' are newly introduced in the 'contents system' of the 2015 revised national curriculum, and the 'skills' are not clearly defined in the science curriculum. There is a problem of uniformly presenting 'skills' in all 'areas' of science subjects. In this study, it was intended that the teachers' clear understanding of the 'skills' and the philosophy of the revised curriculum would be applied to the school classrooms through the critical problem recognition and consideration of 'skills' newly introduced in the 'contents system' of the 2105 revised science curriculum. First, we reviewed 'science and engineering practice' in the NGSS, which was a reference to the introduction to the curriculum, and identified the problems of 'skills' presented in the science curriculum. It also analyzed critically by comparing 'skills' and 'practices' with other subjects and previous curriculum. Based on this critical analysis, we suggested the following. First, introduce 'skills' items that can implement scientific key competencies, and clearly define each item. Second, present 'skills' that are appropriate according to the subject, 'area', 'core concept', and grade(group) and describe in detail how to apply 'skills' and, third, present 'skills' directly in 'achievement standards'.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.373-386
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• 2016

This study aims to investigate the kinds of content and science communication included in the exhibits and the exhibition panels in order to suggest a direction of desirable educational development in the nuclear power information halls in Korea. The four local nuclear power information halls in Korea and the nuclear power science center in Japan are selected as the subject. The results of this study show that the 'conceptual' exhibits are a dominant topic among the four topics of contents, and the concept (CON) and interest (INT) are found as the most dominating component of science communication. Meanwhile, the nature of science (NOS), awareness (AW), enjoyment (ENJ), and opinion (OP) components are little exhibited. The findings of this study indicate that the nuclear power information halls can be more professional to enhance scientific literacy, as the informal education institutions, providing information of nuclear energy and radiation on various perspectives for visitors to make decisions by themselves and to improve their scientific attitudes and understanding of science communication. In addition, the limited science communication can be fully reinforced by docents or commentators. Further research needs to investigate the development of a specialized program to produce professional docents or commentators.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.579-595
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• 2022

This study is a qualitative case study of secondary science teachers who are doing educational activities in YouTube. In particular, this study attempts to interpret this case based on Foucault's concept of 'Heterotopia', which means a space that allows for private freedom or deviance by reflecting various utopias without the norms and constraints from every day or real space. Five secondary science teachers who voluntarily opened a personal channel on the YouTube platform and actively uploaded their own videos related to science education participated in the study. In order to understand the experiences of five secondary science teachers, data were individually collected through semi-structured in-depth interviews, and the collected data were analyzed using qualitative case study method. For valid interpretation of the study, we also referred to the video contents, teacher training materials, and teaching and learning materials produced by the participants. As a result of the study, seven themes were revealed: 'Desire for one's own unique educational activities,' 'Youtube as an extended classroom space,' 'Expanded network of relationships beyond the classroom barrier,' 'Satisfaction of desire for recognition and experience of identity as a YouTuber,' 'Tension between the educational space and the YouTube,' 'Space to be reborn as a craftsman,' and 'Finding one's own direction as a Teacher-YouTuber.' Given those findings, we found that the identity and desire of secondary science teachers, which were limited in the existing secondary schools and classrooms, was expanded in a new space called YouTube. In addition, we suggested that YouTube could be a space where science teachers can realize their own ideals and feel the joy. And simple regulating teacher's behavior in Youtube space only based on norms and standards shared in traditional educational space would rather hinder their healthy construction of identity and growth.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.63-73
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• 2004

This study investigated the effect of cooperative learning on the middle school students’ conceptual change of atmospheric and water cycle and also examined the verbal interaction patterns in a cooperative group. The study also analyzed the relationship between the verbal interaction and students’ conceptual change in the cooperative learning situation. Two classes from a middle school were selected as an experimental group (cooperative learning group, n = 37) and a control group (traditional learning group, n = 37), respectively. The experimental group was taught by STAD cooperative learning model and received collaborative skill training. The results of the study can be summarized as follows: first, there were no significant differences in conceptual change between the two groups. As for the middle-achieving students on the pretest, however, the score of the cooperative learning group was significantly higher than that of the traditional learning group. Secondly, verbal interaction in the cooperative learning situation mainly happened among high- and middle achieving students. In addition, the students who were successful in undergoing conceptual change had more frequent verbal interactions than the students who were not. The study suggests that it is more important to interact between a teacher and students than to interact between the students and students in order to correct students’ misconception.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.175-188
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to develop an Earth systems-based earth science module and to investigate the effects of field application. The module was applied to two classrooms of a total of 76 second-year high schoolers, in order to investigate the effectiveness of the developed module. Data was collected from observations in earth science classrooms, interviews, and questionnaires. The findings were as follows. First, the Earth systems-based earth science module was designed to be associated with the aims of the national Earth Science Curriculum and to improve students' Earth science literacy. The module was composed of two sections for a total of seven instructional hours for high schoolers. The former sections included the understanding of the Earth system through the understanding of each individual component of the system, its characteristics, properties and structure. The latter section of the module, consisting of 4 instructional hours, dealt with earth environmental problems, the understanding of subsystems changing through natural processes and cycles, and human interactions and their effects upon Earth systems. Second, the module was helpful in learning about the importance of understanding the interactions between water, rock, air, and life when it comes to understanding the Earth system, its components, characteristics, and properties. The Earth systems-based earth science module is a valuable and helpful instructional material which can enhance students' understanding of Earth systems and earth science literacy.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.762-771
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to make a suggestion for the direction of writing textbook by comparing and analyzing the contents about 'Adiabatic Change' in earth science I textbooks. For this study, six textbooks were chosen among the eight government-authorized earth science I textbooks that were in general use in schools. Based on the researcher's preview of the six chosen textbooks, three categories were established as a criteria for analysis of the contents of 'adiabatic change': definitions, illustrations, and experiments. Thirty five preservice secondary teachers participated in analyzing the six textbooks based on the above three categories. Each of the six books was given an alphabet from A to F. The analysis results were as follows: Textbook A was turned out as the best textbook in the category of definition, textbook C as the best in the category of illustration, and textbook B as the best in the category of experiment about the concept of 'adiabatic change'. However, each of the six earth science textbooks showed an insufficient part in one way or the other. The results imply that the inaccurate and inappropriate information would not only make the students difficult to understand the adiabatic change but also lead them to some level of misconceptions. Therefore, there need to reconstruct the contents of textbooks to be more systematic, accurate, and complete.