• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.8 no.5
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• pp.67-87
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate childcare teacher's knowledge of child safety education. In this study, Novak and Gowin(1984)'s concept map was applied to investigate knowledge of safety instruction. Forty teachers working at child centers were completed the concept map. The results of this study were as follows: First, Teachers used 194 higher concepts. 'Safe action in dander situation'(77.8%) was most frequently used higher concept and followed by 'traffic safety('35%). Second, Teachers used 1,270 dependent concepts. Third, there was significant difference in density according to frequency of safety instruction. These results can be meaningful to decide the contents of child safety instruction for teacher's education and as a basic data for teacher's education.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.18 no.7
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• pp.316-324
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to identify the relationship between the self-concept of nursing teachers and teacher efficacy and to determine differences in the level of self-concept of nursing teachers. The research results were as follows. Firstly, the relationship between the self-concept of nursing teachers and teachers efficacy showed that there was a positive correlation between self-concept and general/individual teacher efficacy. Secondly, the observation results on the variations of the teacher efficacy depending on the level of the self-concept of nursing teachers noted the positive correlations and general-, individual teacher efficacy. Self-concept showed a higher correlation with individual teacher efficacy than general teacher efficacy. In summary, the research confirmed the definite correlation between the self-concept of teachers and teacher efficacy.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.42-53
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• 2010

Identifying students' misconceptions by teachers is the primary step in using constructivist teaching strategies. We investigated how secondary science teachers were aware of students' misconceptions about the particulate nature of matter and analyzed the total number of differences of predicted misconceptions by their background variables. We also investigated how they addressed students' misconceptions in their instruction, and how necessary they thought it was to identify students' misconceptions for teaching science concepts. A survey was administered to 87 science teachers at 28 middle schools in Seoul. Teachers' predictions were compared with the misconceptions of 240 seventh-grade students. The teachers, as a group, identified almost all the misconceptions held by the students. However, they were unable to predict which types of misconceptions were more frequent. The total number of misconceptions predicted by the teachers who had careers of less than 10 years, possessed Master's degrees, or majored in chemical education was significantly higher. Although most teachers stated that knowing students' misconceptions was needed for their instruction, they rarely and simply addressed them in their instructions. Many techers faced misconceptions in classroom activities, and only few teachers found them through publications relating to students' misconceptions, teacher preparation courses and/or in-service training programs. Educational implications are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.449-457
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• 2014

Recent studies have shown that teachers should have be aware of and understand students' misconceptions, which is one of the major components of PCK. However, teachers often have difficulties in understanding misconceptions and in applying appropriate instructional strategies to change misconceptions. Thus, we designed a method course for pre-service teachers (PSTs) adapting the concept of "teacher as researcher". In the course, PSTs conducted research to investigate students' misconceptions in physics. Twenty-five female PSTs participated in the study. They went through the research process including creating question items, administering items to their target populations, collecting and analyzing student responses, and writing a research paper. Data source included individual interviews with the PSTs, field notes during classroom observation and PSTs' research papers. The results were as follows. First, the PSTs confirmed students' misconceptions and learning difficulties in physics. They experienced discrepancies between their conjecture and research findings. Second, PSTs developed the sophisticated understanding of students' misconceptions and appropriate teaching strategies. Third, the research experience provided the PSTs opportunities to reexamine their physics content knowledge while creating items and explaining scientific concepts. They realized that physics teachers should develop sound understanding of physics concepts for guiding students to have less misconception. Lastly, they realized the necessity of being a teacher as a researcher.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.6
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• pp.567-578
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• 2022

In this study, we examine whether the description of the elementary science curriculum guide, the concept of evolution, and the beliefs of teachers affect the teaching practice in classes related to adaptation of elementary school teachers. First, we examined the alternative concept among the sentences described in the bio-adaptation-related unit of the 2009 Elementary Science Curriculum Teacher's Guide and identified the effects of this description on the teaching practice of elementary school teachers. Next, six elementary school teachers were classified according to the results of the evolutionary concept test paper and the evolutionary belief test paper, and based on the class recording data and interview data, whether there is a difference in teaching execution. As a result, it was confirmed that there were a total of 18 descriptions corresponding to the concept of evolutionary alternatives in the analysis of instruction descriptions, and that these descriptions influenced elementary school teachers' adaptation concepts and teaching practice. Next, the group with high and low levels of evolution differ in the areas of "recognition of importance in the unit, distinction between adaptation concepts in the general sense and adaptation concepts in the biological sense, errors in the class," and "recognition of evolutionary education needs in the elementary curriculum." This study is meaningful in that it qualitatively confirms the research on the evolution concept of elementary school teachers, which has been approached quantitatively, and in-depth, confirms how the description, evolution concepts, and evolutionary beliefs affect elementary school teachers' biological adaptation concepts.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.328-339
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the astronomy-related concepts formed by elementary school pre-service teachers and analyze the distribution of misconceptions. The study was conducted on 43 pre-service teachers enrolled in the second year of an elementary teacher training college located in the central region of Korea. As a result of the study, first, pre-service elementary school teachers' misconceptions about astronomy concepts showed a diverse distribution. In particular, pre-service elementary school teachers still had misconceptions regarding seasonal changes, which were pointed out in many previous studies. Second, pre-service elementary school teachers had formed concepts at the level of simple memorization of astronomy concepts and were having difficulty applying the concepts they knew to various cases. Based on these research results, future astronomy-related education should be directed toward understanding astronomical phenomena through the application and application of various cases rather than simple memorization, and astronomy education in teacher training courses and teacher training should also reflect this content.

• Korean Journal of Child Education & Care
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.267-277
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• 2018

Objective: The purpose of the study was to examine public kindergarten teachers' concept knowledge on inclusion education and to compare concept knowledge by teacher types (general teachers with experience of inclusion, general teachers without experience of inclusion, and special teachers). Methods: The subjects, sixty early childhood teachers in public kindergarten, were asked to draw concept maps illustrating their understanding of inclusion education for young children. The collected concept maps were analyzed using the methods utilized by Novak and Gowin (1984) as well as You and Kim (2018). Results: The results were as follows. First, 209 superordinate concepts were shown, and they were categorized into 13 representative superordinate concepts. Second, 1,585 subordinate concepts were shown. Among them, partial inclusion, complete inclusion, and teacher cooperation were frequently used. Third, contents of concept knowledge on inclusion education varied by teacher types. Conclusion/Implications: Discussions were included to support and enhance early childhood teachers' content knowledge on inclusion education for young children with special needs.

• School Mathematics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.223-240
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate the preservice elementary teachers' knowledge of division through open-ended problems focused on the following perspectives in understanding division : connectedness between procedural and conceptual knowledge as well as the knowledge of units. Results indicates that the preservice elementary teachers showed low level of understanding of division such as the making word problem including division of fractions and the identification of the units in division operation.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.59-79
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to make an analysis of the conceptual diagrams of early childhood teachers about education for happiness in an effort to suggest the possibility and guidelines of this education. The subjects in this study were 100 teachers at kindergartens and daycare centers located in the city of Busan and South Gyeongsang Province. Out of them, 50 teachers each were selected from the kindergartens and the daycare centers. The conceptual diagrams drawn up by the early childhood teachers were analyzed to find out the numbers of superordinate concept, the number of content element, characteristics, hierarchy and density. The findings of the study were as follows: First, as for the content of education for happiness, superordinate concepts appeared 364 times in the conceptual diagrams of the kindergarten teachers, and there were 21 superordinate concepts overall in their diagrams. Second, concerning the content of education for happiness, superordinate concepts appeared 296 times in the conceptual diagrams of the daycare center teachers, and there were 18 superordinate concepts in total. The findings of the study showed that the kindergarten teachers had a better knowledge on the concept of education for happiness than the daycare center teachers, and that there was a difference between the two groups in what they considered valuable in relation to the content of education for happiness.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.729-737
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• 2016

Natural selection is the core idea of evolution that pre-service biology teachers need to understand to solve diverse biological problem. This study aims to investigate the level of Korean pre-service biology teachers' understanding of natural selection by comparing their knowledge with their Chinese, American, and German biology major undergraduate counterparts. In particular, this study focuses on two conceptual components of natural selection (i.e., ecology and genetics). This study used a total 1226 pre-service biology teachers and biology majors' data. The instrument measuring the understanding of natural selection concepts was Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection, which consists of ten ecology concept items and ten genetics concept items. The Rasch model analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, and univariate analysis of variance were used for the statistical tests. The result reveals that the level of Korean pre-service biology teachers' understanding of natural selection were similar with Chinese undergraduates' understanding and significantly lower than American and German undergraduates.' In the first year student data, the level of genetics concept of Korean pre-service biology teachers were significantly lower than Chinese and German students. In the fourth year student data, the level of ecology concept of Korean pre-service biology teachers were significantly lower than American and German students. Based on these results, the ecology concept education and balanced natural selection concept education are discussed.