• Journal of Science Education
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.225-237
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to explore the perceptions of elementary pre-service teachers regarding their interest in science. A survey was conducted among 187 elementary pre-service teachers enrolled at Non-Metropolitan Area A University of Education. Data collection was carried out concurrently with three elementary pre-service teachers who agreed to participate in online interviews. The survey responses provided by the elementary pre-service teachers were analyzed using a qualitative text analysis method. Interest in science was observed to decrease during middle school, followed by the upper grades of elementary school and then the lower grades. The reasons for the decline in interest in science were interpreted as stemming from negative experiences with science education within the context of individual circumstances in the school setting. Strategies to address the decline and enhance interest in science were discussed across individual, family, school, teacher, local community, and national levels, considering both short-term and long-term perspectives. These strategies encompassed various inquiry activities and experiences related to the field of science, engagement in science-related activities, student-centered instruction, teacher professional development, support for elementary students and teachers, and policy measures. The multifaceted approach and efforts aimed to open avenues for positive feedback regarding science on an individual level and foster experiences related to science were interpreted as part of an effort to counteract the decline in interest in science. Lastly, given the current situation of declining interest in science and the need to enhance students' interest, it was implicitly and explicitly discussed that pre-service teachers should focus on improving their expertise in curriculum instruction. This research, by exploring the conceptual characteristics of interest in science, perceptions of changes, and educational needs related to interest in science among elementary pre-service teachers, is expected to have academic significance as foundational research data for the current status of declining interest in science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.693-718
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• 2010

This study investigated secondary school science teachers' experiences to explore the influencing factors in science teachers efficiency (STE). The participants, thirty three secondary school science teachers who have more than four years of teaching experience, were interviewed about describing each teacher's experience throughout one's years of teaching. The grounded theory introduced by Strauss and Corbin (1998) was used to analyze the data in this study. The results of paradigm analysis revealed that STE is influenced by 125 concepts, 38 sub-categories, and 16 categories. In a paradigm model, the central phenomenon was 'constructing STE', and the causal condition was 'want to be a teacher' as career choice motivation. The contextual conditions that have an affect on the central phenomenon were 'self awareness of the teacher' and 'social awareness of the teacher.' The mediate conditions, which facilitated or restrained the action/interaction strategies, were 'societal tendency', 'school climate', and 'personal context.' The action/interaction strategies to control the phenomenon were 'following the line,' 'identifying effective teaching strategies,' 'taking teacher education programs,' and 'contributing to school improvement.' The consequences were 'teacher's self awareness', 'challenge,' and 'stagnating in teaching.' The overall conclusion drawn from this research is that, the definition of STE is beliefs in science teachers' capabilities to set up objects in some school teaching context and, organize and execute the course of action required to attain these. Additionally, STE has three dimensions of teacher's behaviors: science instructional efficiency, efficiency in engaging students, and efficiency in managing school conditions. This study offers insight into the nature of STE and theoretical framework. These findings may give science teachers and teacher educators the practical knowledge necessary to build effective training programs and interventions that would help increase STE and facilitate effective teaching.

• Archives of design research
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.253-266
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• 2002

Web Based Instruction has its theoretical background in constructivism paradigm of education. According to social changes called information era and thanks to the sophisticated internet mechanism the constructivism in education has been dominant paradigm. In this paradigm information and knowledge are not merely given by a instructor facing the loaners. This system of instruction has n almost every field of discipline introduced. This article aims to examine how far WBI and constructivism are applicable for design education. Richard Branchia predicted that the learner oriented instruction method would become the dominant education system. He stressed an interactivity of the teacher and students. Upon this can the applicability of WBI for design education be affirmed. Furthermore, there is a dozen of successful cases like www.cyberartcenter.com) (www.digitalyeil.co.kr)', http://www.schooleweb.co.kr/, htp://www.startstudy.co.kr/among many others. This article suggests several ways to solve the problems web based design education faces, including the lesson should inevitably combine the outline and of online study.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.925-934
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• 2016

For students, astronomy is not only interesting but also difficult to learn. However, there is a limit in learning astronomy in a school science setting since astronomy is vast subject. Fortunately, science museums can be helpful in overcoming this limitation. Experiences in science museum provide something that any descriptions or illustrations cannot give. Therefore, to maximize the educational effect, it is necessary to look at astronomical exhibits regarding the educational aspects and complement them. For these reasons, the purpose of this study is to investigate characteristics of exhibitions related to astronomy and how much the exhibitions reflect the contents of their science curricula. We selected famous science museums in Korea, America, and Japan and analyzed characteristics of their astronomy exhibition. We analyze these characteristics in the aspects of exhibition technology & media, presentation method and activity types. Also, this study figures out how content of exhibitions are connected to school science curriculum. The results are summarized as follows: First, Science Museums of America and Japan utilize interactive exhibits to raise participation. It implies that Science Museum of Korea needs Interactive Exhibits that provide a realistic experience of the universe. Second, the astronomy exhibits reflect some of the learning elements of their science curricula concerned with astronomy. However, these astronomical contents are included selectively and not according to their required curriculum. It means that many students lack the opportunity to study Astronomy in their schools. Therefore, the astronomy museum must reflect learning elements of science curricula concerned with astronomy in the exhibits.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.87-99
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of biology contents of cyber home learning systems which provided by 16 metropolitan and provincial offices of education. The contents were evaluated by the 9 categories: needs assessment, instruction design, learning contents, teaching & learning strategy, interaction, supporting system, evaluation, ethicality and copy right. The result showed that the contents have advantage in detailed learning goal, useful learning environment, learning activities by level, and various learning parts material, but lack in evaluation method tool for personal learning by level and the latest learning material. Based on this results, it is expected that the barrier of the efficient learning contents should be searched for the complement, as well as the development high-quality educational contents and the management of cyber home learning system.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.403-417
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of integrated education research conducted in Korea and to propose a meaningful discussion for further research. Among the studies conducted for last three years, the relevant 161 research articles were selected, and 236 effect sizes were calculated. Effect sizes were analyzed with different dependant variables including creativity, problem solving ability, academic achievement, inquiry skills, creative personality, scientific attitude, and interests. In addition, effect sizes with different moderating variables, such as characteristics of subjects, sample sizes, class types, core disciplines and publication types, were compared. The results are as follows: The overall effect size of integrated education program produced a huge effect (effect size=0.88, U3=81.06%). Integrated education program showed the highest effect size on scientific attitude among other dependant variables. However, all of the other dependant variables represented more than medium size effect size. Integrated program proved to be more effective on kindergarten pupils and gifted students compared to other school levels and regular students. The effect size for group of less then thirty students were larger than other groups. Programs implemented in after school hours were more effective than in regular school hours. Considering the core subject of program, arts-centered integrated programs showed the largest effect size, while all the others showed above medium effect sizes. Finally, doctoral dissertation showed the highest effect size compared to master's thesis and academic journal articles. Conclusions and recommendations for further research were provided.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.45-61
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to explore students' epistemic goals and considerations in designing an experiment task and to investigate how a shift in the students' epistemology affected their argumentation. Four 7th grade students were selected as a focus group. According to the results, when they designed their own experiment, their epistemic goal was 'scientific sense-making' and their epistemic considerations - the perception of the nature of the knowledge product was 'this experiment should explain how something happened', the perception of the justification was 'we need to use our interpretation of the data' and the perception of the audience was 'constructor' - contributed to designing their experiment actively. When students tried to select one argument, their epistemic goal shifted to 'winning a debate', showing 'my experiment is better than the others' with the perception of the audience, 'competitor'. Consequently, students only deprecated the limits of different experiment so that they did not explore the meaning of each experiment design deeply. Eventually, student A's experiment design was selected due to time restrictions. When they elaborated upon their result, their epistemic goal shifted to 'scientific sensemaking', reviewing 'how this experiment design is scientifically valid' through scientific justification - we need justification to make members accept it - acting as 'cooperator'. Consequently, all members engaged in a productive argumentation that led to the development of the group result. This study lays the foundation for future work on understanding students' epistemic goals and considerations to prompt productive argumentation in science classrooms.

• Journal of Practical Agriculture & Fisheries Research
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.89-104
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• 2021

Based on the TF-IDF weighted value that evaluates the importance of words that play a key role, the semantic network analysis(SNA) was conducted on the self-introduction letter of freshman at Korea National College of Agriculture and Fisheries(KNCAF) in 2020. The top three words calculated by TF-IDF weights were agriculture, mathematics, study (Q. 1), clubs, plants, friends (Q. 2), friends, clubs, opinions, (Q. 3), mushrooms, insects, and fathers (Q. 4). In the relationship between words, the words with high betweenness centrality are reason, high school, attending (Q. 1), garbage, high school, school (Q. 2), importance, misunderstanding, completion (Q.3), processing, feed, and farmhouse (Q. 4). The words with high degree centrality are high school, inquiry, grades (Q. 1), garbage, cleanup, class time (Q. 2), opinion, meetings, volunteer activities (Q.3), processing, space, and practice (Q. 4). The combination of words with high frequency of simultaneous appearances, that is, high correlation, appeared as 'certification - acquisition', 'problem - solution', 'science - life', and 'misunderstanding - concession'. In cluster analysis, the number of clusters obtained by the height of cluster dendrogram was 2(Q.1), 4(Q.2, 4) and 5(Q. 3). At this time, the cohesion in Cluster was high and the heterogeneity between Clusters was clearly shown.