• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.88-97
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate explanations of science textbooks and science teachers' conceptions related to freezing point depression phenomenon. Seven kinds of middle school science textbooks and five kinds of high school chemistryII textbooks were analyzed for the purpose. The teachers' conceptions were searched by a questionnaire developed in this study. The subjects were 146 science teachers. The explanation types of science textbooks were divided into two; 'Description of the phenomenon' and 'Vapor pressure lowering'. The explanations in most of middle school science textbooks and high school chemistryII textbooks belong to 'Description of the phenomenon' and there was no explanation of the reason. The graphs related to depression of freezing point were diverse, too. Most of the science teachers also did not have scientific conception. The percentage of the teachers who thought that the cause of freezing point depression was blocking of solute in solution was high. But the teacher could not find meaningful relation the 'Blocking of solute' explanation represented for elevation of boiling point with depression of freezing point. It is insisted that entropy concept is need to explain depression of freezing point phenomenon in this study.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.471-478
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• 2010

This study analyzed the vocabulary level in the 'Water' unit of chemistry I textbook. It also analyzed its relevance to the 11th graders' vocabulary level. The main tool for analyzing vocabulary level was SWA(Science Word Analysis) program which was referenced the Standard Korean Dictionary and Graduated Vocabulary of Korean Language Education. The results in this study turned out to be as follows: The distribution of scientific vocabulary level increased from Level-1 to Level-3 and showed a tendency to decrease from Level-3 until Level-5. The average percentage of Out of level is the largest as 37%. The highest percentage of non-scientific vocabulary was Level-1. The distribution of non-scientific vocabulary level decreased progressively. The Level-5 and Out of level are used 18% averagely. So, there are 6 vocabularies of Level-5 and 82 vocabularies of extra-level inappropriate in scientific vocabularies. And there are 53 vocabularies of Level-5 and 145 vocabularies of Out of level inappropriate in non-scientific vocabularies. Therefore, the overall state of textbooks for grade 11 students are reasonable. But there are a great many vocabularies inappropriate for them. Those should be used minimum, and to be changed to the 1-4 of level vocabulary as stated in the student's level of understanding of appropriate vocabulary.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.87-102
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to analyze vocabularies used the section of 'Living Earth' in 11-grade Earth science textbooks with the Science Word Analysis (SWA) program and to investigate the vocabularies selected by the 11th grade students as difficult ones. For the purpose, we extracted the Earth science vocabularies from six textbooks, and classified into the scientific and non-scientific vocabularies with SWA program based on the standard Korean language dictionary. Also, we investigated the difficulty of each vocabulary by using questionnaire to three hundred sixty students. From the results analyzed with the program, it was found that the frequency of the scientific vocabularies out of the level was the largest any other level in all textbooks. And from the survey, most of the vocabularies selected by students as difficult to understand were classified into out of the level. From these results, it were suggested that the students' cognitive level should be considered in developing science textbooks and difficult vocabularies should be replaced to easy ones within the limits of changeless in the meanings.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.72-86
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to examine what epistemological beliefs pre-service teachers have about science depending on the situation, and to explore in-depth changes in epistemological beliefs through disciplinary reading. For this purpose, 77 essays written by pre-service elementary school teachers after reading Feynman's 'the meaning of it all' were analyzed using an inductive analysis method. As a result of the study, the epistemological beliefs of pre-service teachers were divided into two situations: 'science in subject learning' and 'science in daily life', and the epistemological beliefs formed in the 'science handled by scientists' situation were analyzed after reading the book. Each situation was divided into sub-categories of 'Impression of Knowledge', 'Source of Knowledge', 'Justification of Knowledge', 'Variability of Knowledge', 'Structure of Knowledge', and 'Value of Knowledge Acquisition' to reveal differences in sophisticated beliefs and naive belief levels. As a result, it was derived that Feynman's science lecture influenced pre-service teachers in terms of establishing new perspectives and recontextualizing existing epistemological beliefs. This study is meaningful in that pre-service teachers' scientific epistemological beliefs may vary depending on the situation, and that the scope and depth of epistemological beliefs may be expanded to include scientists' beliefs in science through disciplinary reading.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.659-667
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• 2004

The purposes of this study were to examine the middle school science textbooks published according to the 7th curriculum by analyzing overall structure of the books and STS contents, and to diagnose the current status of STS education in science classroom through interviews with teachers and students of the middle schools. It was found that STS approaches were of increasing importance in the science textbooks, however, they were not popular in the science classes. STS topics in the middle school textbooks were related mostly to 'applications of science' and 'social problems and issues', and few of the topics were related to 'cooperative work on real problems', 'multiple dimensions of science' and 'practice with decision making strategies'. Major barriers of STS education implementation in middle school science classroom were identified as follows; difficulties of assessment, teachers' insufficient cognitions and experiences regarding STS education, perceptions of students and parents that prefer didactic lecture methods and working on exercises. Desirable directions for the improvement of present status of STS education in middle school science classes were proposed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.165-175
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to analyze the use of analogies in high school science textbooks in explaining abstract science concepts. For this study, the analogies used in high school science textbooks of the 7th science curriculum were analyzed. The analogies were classified into the six following types: the nature of shared attributes, representation, analogy/target abstraction, number of analogies, with and without specified use of analogy, and casual relations. A total of 189 analogies were found in the 7th science textbooks. This means that 16.9 analogies were used for each book. In analyzing the analogies, we found some analogies were appropriate, while others were ambiguous and inadequate in explaining the various science concepts. The number of analogies used varied considerably according to the publishing company and the science domain. For more effective understanding of various science concepts, it is necessary to develop more analogies and research the application of analogy.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.387-397
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• 2002

Understanding the surrounding plants (SP) by the high school students was compared with their abilities of intelligence (SI) and attitude (SA) in science education. 276 students attending 11 grade high school in the city of Incheon selected for this work were tested for SP and their abilities of SI and SA. The rates of SP were observed to be not related to the personal properties of student but to the abilities of total or science achievement scores made throughout school life. The abilities of SP were, by linear regression, calculated to be dependent upon the some components or variables of SI or of SA. Particularly, the abilities of SP were closely related to the abilities of picture matrix and vocabulary, but not to those of scientific logics among variables of SI. Also, the abilities of SP were calculated to be positively related those of scientific attitude, but negatively to science anxiety in SA. As based on this work, the SP was strongly suggested to be helpful for students 'intelligences or for students' learning in their life.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.343-357
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• 2015

The present study aims to analyze the extent of the use of STS contents in the areas of 'Evolution of Life' and 'Health of Humanity and Scientific Technology' in 'Science' textbooks and to determine whether they meet the goals of the curriculum revised in 2009. The analysis of the 7 types of textbooks according to the STS topics areas indicated big differences between textbooks as little as 16.67% and as much as 58.33%. Also, among the topics associated with STS, 'Space Development and National Defense' and 'Environmental Problems' were not included. In the STS activity areas, the areas of 'Structured Debate,' 'Interpretation of Data,' 'Research and Investigation' showed great frequency. On the other hand, the STS activity areas of 'Field Activities,' 'Problem-solving and Decision-making,' 'Role Playing,' 'Simulation,' 'Case Study,' and 'Research Design' showed small frequency. Analysis of the STS contents for each area indicated 67.57% for the contents relevant to 'the applicability of science' accounting for the largest part whereas 'Understanding of Occupations related to Science' accounted for 1.63%, showing a great difference in their frequency. Seven standards except 'the applicability of science' were included each contents beyond 10% or less than 10% proportion. The STS contents included in the life science area of the 7 types of convergence-style 'Science' textbooks for the high-school accounted for an average of 20.75%, from as little as 12.35% to as much as 26.90%, depending on the publishes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.429-438
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• 2022

In this study, we propose a way to improve science teacher expertise through infographics creation teacher training program by analyzing the infographics types focusing on the Earth Science subject of the 2015 revised curriculum, and inspecting the teachers' utilization of graphic tools. The data visualization characteristics of Earth Science textbooks were analyzed, the execution results of the infographics creation teacher training program were presented, and a survey on science teachers' change in perception and competency of infographics. As a result of the Earth Science textbook analysis, diagram-type, map-type, and comparative analysis-type infographics were frequently used, and were mainly presented as text-assisted-type infographics. The infographics creation teacher training program was conducted five times for 112 science teachers to create the complete, text-assisted, incomplete, and gradient-type infographics. Incomplete infographics for development of evaluation questions were most needed. Although many science teachers recognize the importance of infographics, they lacked the competency to create high-quality infographics because there were no training opportunities for infographics creation. After completing the training, 74.1% of teachers felt that the quality of developments of supplementary textbooks and evaluation questions had improved, and answered that it was helpful in re-educating knowledge and improving teaching-learning methods. Based on the research results, ways to improve science teacher expertise through infographics creation teacher training program were suggested.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.611-625
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• 2009

The purpose of this research is to investigate the characteristics of beginning science teachers' subject matter knowledge (SMK) as revealed in their classroom teaching methods. In this research, we explored six beginning teachers' classroom teaching episodes on the 'work and energy' unit. Using open-ended interviews with the teachers and group discussions taking place on a regular basis to analyze and compare the classes of six beginning teachers, we extracted the features of beginning science teachers' SMK. Using grounded theory methods, the characteristics of beginning science teachers' SMK drawn from this research are: (1) beginning teachers' positivistic epistemology on science, (2) claiming the teacher's authority based on rich subject content knowledge, and (3) beginning teachers' science elitism. These epistemological characteristics are realized such PCK as (1) representational errors caused by the teacher's own science misconception, (2) doing harm to students with too much content knowledge, (3) sporadic content presentation lacking a focus, and (4) surplus class hours with lack of effective science teaching explanations. Suggestions for alternative perspectives on science SMK are presented by experienced teachers. In conclusion, science teachers' SMK is necessary, but not sufficient, for effective teaching. Science teachers' SMK does have an effect on science teaching, mediated by other types of teacher knowledge. The beginning teachers need a systematic support to transform their SMK into a viable PCK.