• Journal of Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.246-259
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service biology teachers' perception of the evolution. This study was to compare the views of pre-service biology teachers with no religion with those of christian preservice teachers. Subjects were 77 pre-service biology teachers who enrolled in an university and graduate school of education located in Seoul. The instrument of this study was a questionnaire which consisted of 14 items on 2 domains: the nature of science, the origins of human beings. The key results are as follows. Most pre-service teachers showed highly understanding of the characteristics of science. However pre-service biology teachers still possessed naive views on the distinction of law and theory. In terms of the methods of science, many of the pre-service biology teachers considered scientific theories to progress through the accumulation of observation and experiments or through changes and modifications in existing theories. Compared with the pre-service teachers with no religion, christian pre-service teachers had conflicting views and misconceptions about the origins of human beings. The factors of religion were found to be one of the important barriers which prevent them from understanding the origins of human beings. The results suggested that the education program for pre-service biology teachers integrating the concepts and development process of the scientific knowledges should be effective for understanding the nature of science. For pre-service biology teachers, It is important to understand conflicting views of the christian pre-service teachers who understand creationism as a science.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.252-273
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• 2009

Due to the importance of biotechnological literacy, the educational community in fields such as technology education, science education, and agricultural education has acknowledged the importance of biotechnology instruction for secondary school. Although recognized as a content organizer in the field of technology education, the actual teaching of biotechnology has not been broadly implemented in technology education classes. In the perspective of expectancy-value theory, technology teachers' motivation is the key factor for affecting the biotechnology instruction. This study investigates Korean technology teachers' motivational beliefs toward biotechnology and its instruction and their perceived ability and value toward biotechnology learning contents. To measure their motivational beliefs and attitudes, a composite on-line survey (fifteen motivational beliefs items, eight biotechnology content items, and related demographic items) was developed. Based on 114 Korean technology teachers' responses the researcher performed a descriptive analysis, independent t-test, and factor analyses (exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis using M-plus 5.0 and SPSS 16.0). Korean technology teachers' abilities toward eight biotechnology contents indicated lowscores while their values were relatively high. Through the independent sample t-test by two demographic variables (gender and professional development), this study found several significant differences in the perceived value. As a preliminary finding of exploratory factor analysis, fifteen items was separated into two motivational constructs of expectancy (6 items) and value (8 items). One item (item #6) was eliminated due to the cross loading. The final findings of this study may have significant implications for professional development regarding biotechnology and its instruction (both in-service and pre-service training) of technology teachers. Also, the confirmatory facctor analysis supported the preliminary finding. Finally, this study recommends that a validity test for other population, investigation for motivational sub-constructs, and in-depth investigation toward biotechnology instruction.

• 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.

• 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 Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.801-814
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to find out whether pre-service biology teachers' biological meanings of competition and adaptation is the same as everyday meanings to understand natural selection and evolution. Fifty three pre-service biology teachers answered written tests and thirteen of them were interviewed. The tests on general meanings on competition and adaptation, tests on biological meanings on competition and adaptation and tests on natural selection were administered. Questions on semi-structured interviews were composed of only biological meanings about competition and adaptation. Analyzing data through four steps, pre-service biological teachers' general meanings on competition and adaptation were compared with the definitions of Korean dictionary and compared with biological definitions. Pre-service teachers' alternative conceptions about biological competition and adaptation were classified and the alternative conceptual types were checked when explaining natural selection and evolution. They realized competition is battle for intention or purpose like everyday meaning of competition. However, they didn't realize adaptation happen in the population level. They thought that adaptation, like in everyday life meaning, is getting suitable to environment for survival on an individual level. By relating adaptation to evolution, they thought that long-lasting adaptation become evolution. This study has significance with respect to suggesting the alternative concepts of competition and adaptation based on effective evolution teaching from constructivism viewpoint and highlighting the importance of the concepts of biological competition and adaptation, which have been concerned rarely for a long time.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.767-778
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• 2014

Many biologists and various educational associations define evolution as a unifying theme as well as a central idea in biology. In this study, teacher education programs were developed as 18-hour courses on understanding the unified role and significance of evolution in biology, and their effectiveness was tested. As factors for the program content, enhancement of the acceptance of evolution, reinforcement of the conception of evolutionary theory, and recognizing and practicing evolution as the unifying nature of evolution were considered. Hands-on activities, self- and peer-evaluation, and projects based on the small teams including frequent questioning and feedback by instructors were considered methodological factors. Six in-service biology teachers and seven pre-service teachers took part in the programs of the graduate school of H university to testing their effectiveness. They were effective in improving the acceptance of evolution, the understanding of evolutionary mechanism, the perception on the unified role of evolution. The programs also induced a positive change in self-evaluation for knowledge of evolution and perception on importance of evolution in biology. Subsequent studies on whether the changed perceptions of the teachers who participated in the programs reflect on their biology classes in secondary schools after finishing the graduate program are required.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.147-158
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• 2016

This study examined the changes of preservice biology teachers' NOS pedagogical content knowledge through two consecutive science methods courses: NOS understandings; attitudes toward teaching science; difficulties of NOS teaching; NOS teaching strategies; and views of orientation of NOS teaching. During the science methods course I, the preservice teachers engaged in discussions and reflections on what science is and how scientific knowledge has produced, drawing NOS aspects from episodes of history of science, and planning the lessons cooperating NOS instructional objectives. Then the next semester, through the science methods course II, the preservice teachers had a chance of the simulated teaching by adopting NOS teaching and learning activities in the context of the secondary biology context. The preservice teachers, further, reflected on their NOS teaching. The results showed that the preservice teachers constructed the NOS pedagogical content knowledge. They significantly improved their views of NOS and its teaching(p<.05) after the science methods course I, and retained their understanding after the science methods course II(p>.05). The preservice teachers mentioned the difficulties of teaching NOS in the secondary biology context, and further suggested effective NOS teaching methods in their reflective journals.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.636-646
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to confirm secondary biology teachers' recognition about cell and gene concepts that should be taught in biology according to each school level and to classify the concepts into essential, optional and non-essential ones. We developed a questionnaire in consultation with 5 biology professors after selecting some biological concepts from some data about the recommendations of BSCS, biology, study for the connection with biological contents in each school level. This survey was conducted to biological teachers in secondary schools (146 individuals) from all over Korea for studying the concepts of the cell and gene in elementary and secondary schools. The results of this study revealed the following: The number of essential concepts in the cell and gene domain increases as the school levels go up. Moreover, secondary biology teacher recognized that there must be much more cell and gene concepts that should be taught in elementary and secondary schools compared to those suggested in the science curriculum and BSCS' recommendation.

• Proceedings of the Zoological Society Korea Conference
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• 2003.08a
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• pp.221.1-221
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• 2003

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.887-900
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• 2011

Teachers use explanations to communicate important scientific ideas to students. Consequently, all biology teachers should be evaluated to determine how effective they are at constructing and communicating biological explanations. Open response questions are required to detect pre-service biology teachers' abilities to communicate robust and accurate scientific explanations. Nevertheless, multiple-choice questions are typically preferred by educators because of the common drawbacks of using open-response instruments, such as scoring time, inter-rater scoring disagreements, and delayed feedback to test takers. This study aims to measure pre-service biology teachers' competence in building scientific explanations and to investigate how accurately multiple-choice questions predict the results of open-response questions. One hundred twenty four pre-service biology teachers participated in the study and were administered 20 multiple-choice items and three open-response items designed to measure the accuracy and quality of their explanations of evolutionary change. The results demonstrated that pre-service teachers displayed higher competence when tested with multiple choice items than when tested with open response items. Moreover, scores derived from multiple-choice items poorly predicted the scores derived from open-response items. Multiple-choice items were also found to be poor measures of the consistency, purity and abundance of conceptual elements in teachers' evolutionary explanations. Additionally, many teachers held mixed-models composed of both scientific and naive ideas, which were difficult to detect using multiple-choice formats. Overall, the study indicates that multiple-choice formats are poorly suited to measuring several aspects of biology teachers' knowledge of evolution, including their ability to generate scientific explanations. This study suggests that open-response items should be used in teacher education programs to assess pre-service teachers' explanatory competency prior to being permitted to teach science to children.