• 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.

• 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.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.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.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.189-202
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• 2016

This study aimed to investigate pre-service science teachers' perceptions of significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics. To this end, 82 pre-service biology teachers and 159 non-biology science teachers answered the items to measure the perceptions of significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics. The validity and reliability were examined using Cronbach alpha, two-dimensional rating scale model Rasch analysis, and factor analysis. The finding illustrated that the test items met the benchmark to be valid and reliable test items. Second, pre-service teachers' perception of significance and usefulness of evolution was independent to that of genetics. The level of pre-service teachers' perception of significance and usefulness of evolution was lower than the level of genetics. Lastly, the levels of pre-service teachers' perceptions of significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics were not significantly different across academic years and majors (biology and non-biology). The findings of this study stressed the importance of teaching significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics in pre-service science teacher education program.

• 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.32 no.7
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• pp.1157-1168
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• 2012

This study examined the effect of simulated instruction activities based on a constructivist teaching approach on epistemological belief, science teaching efficacy belief, and teaching motivation. The RTOP (Reformed Teaching Observation Protocol) played a role to guide preservice biology teachers to obtain insights on current reformed teaching and to further practice teaching based on constructivism. The results indicated that preservice teachers changed their epistemological beliefs toward more sophisticated views, especially for 'simple knowledge'. They also improved their science teaching efficacy beliefs, both personal science teaching efficacy belief (PSTEB) and science teaching outcome expectancy (STOE). In addition, these perservice teachers decreased their scores of extrinsic teaching motivation. The Pearson correlation represented the negative relationship between personal science teaching efficacy belief (PSTEB) and extrinsic teaching motivation. After intervention, the preservice teachers mentioned inquiry, active participation and discussion as ideal science teaching methods and qualifications for science teachers.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.134-146
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to examine how elementary pre-service teachers have a perception of 'science'. Especially, this study used photo-narrative method to analysis pre-service teachers' perception of 'science'. Photo-narrative is a way of describing what a study participant wants to say by taking a picture. Participants were 66 elementary pre-service teachers. The results of this study were as follows: First, elementary pre-service teachers used many words such as people, life, everyday as well as scientific terms such as phenomena and principles to explain science. Secondly, the pictures used by elementary pre-service teachers to explain science included household goods, natural phenomena, advanced devices, and living things. Third, elementary pre-service teachers explained science with knowledge of science, knowledge, convenience, and nature of science. As a result of this study, it was found that elementary pre-service teachers recognized that science is closely related to life and that it is necessary for learning. The results of this study can contribute not only to curriculum composition and curriculum content of elementary and middle school science education but also to curriculum development for teacher training.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.617-628
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• 2016

This study aims to explore pre-service biology teachers' value orientation in terms of scientific observation and representation in plant cell microscope observation experiment. This study focuses on the pre-service teachers' value orientation in relation to objectivity. To achieve this aim, we used a hypothetical situation that pre-service teachers should teach tacit knowledge related to observation and representation during the cell observation class. We presented a hypothetical situation to fifty pre-service biology teachers and collected their answer about that hypothetical situation. These answers were categorized inductively based on constant comparative analysis. The result shows that four types of pre-service teachers' value orientation, 'presence confirmation', 'mechanical objectivity', 'students' subjectivity', and 'trained judgement', are confirmed. This result also shows that various value orientation could be reflected on teaching an experiment and tacit knowledge related to the experiment. Also, many pre-service teachers value 'mechanical objectivity' in observation and image representation. Also, pre-service teachers' value orientation and perception of objectivity in scientific practice could have an influence in teaching science, this result could give provide suggestions on science teachers' education in terms of scientific practice.

• 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