• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.107-122
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to review the literatures on the evolutionary perspective on education and to draw the educational implications for science education. This study addresses on several topics as follows: our common misunderstandings about the evolutionary perspective on education; children's inherent knowledge and abilities, their learning about the evolutionarily novel knowledge and abilities in school, their difficulties in academic learning, and the instructional strategies to cope with the difficulties; and the implications for science education from the evolutionary perspective. The evolutionary perspective on education has provided new insights how culturally important information is transmitted across generations in the past hunting-gathering societies and the modern societies, and how children's inherent motivational and behavioral dispositions affect their academic learning. In addition, the new perspective on education can be used to generate empirical hypotheses about children's science learning, and with the further research, could lead to useful implications and ultimately improve educational outcomes.

• 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.37 no.4
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• pp.747-761
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze differences in the teaching practices of biology teachers according to their awareness of the importance of evolution. For this purpose, two teachers who experienced study of evolution and recognized its importance, along with two teachers with no experience in evolution education in the comparison group, were included in the sample. To observe teaching practices, two classes each on biological evolution and non-evolution were selected, recorded and transcribed. The content analyzed included the teachers' view on evolution education and teachers' evolution concepts reflected in teaching practice. As a result, the level of understanding of the teachers' evolution concept was unrelated to teachers' awareness of the importance of evolution. Instead, each teacher would not feel the need for religious beliefs or awareness of the importance of evolution to have a negative impact on the awareness of the importance of evolution. Inexperienced teachers tend to reject the retraining opportunities to recognize the importance of evolution. In addition, inexperienced teachers were only superficially aware of the evaluation and improvement of evolution presented in textbooks and curricula. In actual teaching practice analysis, inexperienced teachers' utilizing ratio of the evolution key concept was higher than that of experienced teachers. Only experienced teachers were aware of the misconceptions presented in their execution and described the causes that appear in these misconceptions. Teachers who recognized the importance of evolution were widely using the key concepts of evolution, as well as more practical in preventing the misconceptions related to evolution forms. It indicates that biology teachers who do not realize the importance of evolution in biology education need to experience explicit and practical education programs as well as instructional materials on evolution.

• 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.32 no.10
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• pp.1537-1550
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• 2012

This study aims to explore the differences between Korean and United States college students regarding their degree of religiosity, interest in, understanding and acceptance of evolution, and the effects of their interaction on these variables. A total of one thousand and fifteen Korean and US biology majors and non-majors college students participated in this study and a sub sample of 516 students were randomly selected for statistical tests. The results illustrated that Korean college students harbored significantly lower degrees of religiosity and interest in evolution but significantly higher degrees of knowledge and acceptance of evolution than US college students. The path analysis uncovered that the knowledge of and interest in evolution played a mediating role between religiosity and acceptance of evolution. Korean college students' interest in evolution was less correlated to other variables than US college students' interest. The acceptance of evolution was less predicted by knowledge of evolution in the Korean biology major sample than in the US biology major sample. The acceptance of evolution was predicted more by religiosity in the Korean non-major sample than in US non-major sample. This study suggests that future Korean science curriculum for evolution needs to enhance the degree of students' interest in evolution. In addition, future Korean science curriculum needs an instructional strategy in developing students' ability to make scientific decisions, such as the acceptance of evolution, without interference from their personal religious belief.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.691-707
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• 2015

This study aims to develop biology teachers' education program based on argumentation activity about core concepts of evolution and to analyze the characteristics of core concepts of evolution learned during the program. The eight core concepts of evolution in this study were variation, heritability of variation, competition, natural selection, adaptation, differential reproductive rate of individuals, changes in genetic pool within a population, and macroevolution. The performances of teachers participating in the program were compared before and after argumentation activities; consisting of seven sessions on the eight core concepts of evolution. The process of the program was specially designed by learning cycle model for teacher education, consisting of seven phases: identification of the task, production of a tentative argument, small group's written argument, share arguments with the other groups, reflective discussion, final written argument, and organization by an instructor. Participants in the study were two pre-service biology teachers and four in-service biology teachers. The results suggest that biology teachers reduced the teleological explanation for biological evolution and improve its adequacy after the intervention. Teachers lacked the opportunity to discuss variation, heritability of variation, competition, and macroevolution because science textbooks lack information on the concepts of biological evolution. The results of this study suggest that because the argumentation program developed for teachers helps to improve understanding the concepts of evolution and to reduce inadequate conceptions in biology, teacher education programs using argumentation activity and eight core concepts of evolution will play a role for efficient evolution education for biology teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.470-483
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• 2003

This study analyzed the evolutionary content in 13 textbooks developed from the first to the 6th high school biology curriculum, The content analysis of textbooks, which were delineated nine component, was performed on the 80 evolutionary categories, According to the result, the proportion of the total evolutionary content in textbook increased from the textbooks developed by the Ist curriculum to the textbooks developed by the 6th curriculum, but the proportion of 'main narrative' in total evolutionary content was gradually decreased. It also showed that biology curriculum and points of view of textbook writers influenced on the proportion of evolutionary contents. On the whole, the topics of analysed textbooks exhibit insufficient diversity, Any categories- 'group selection', 'gene selection', 'gaps in fossil record', 'co-evolution', 'punctuated equilibrium', 'mosaic evolution', 'place of labor in human evolution', 'human race differentiation', 'criticism of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", and 'human activities affecting evolution' - were not treated and others - 'theory of neutralism', 'theories of major episodes(excepting extinctions) found in the geologic time scale', 'sympatric speciation', 'clinal and area-effect speciation', 'polyploidy and evolution', 'gradualism' and 'evolution and origin of mammals' - were treated very lightly, the most emphasized topic was 'phylogeny in general' and 'formation of precells', 'miscellaneous' in the order of emphasis. 'Theory of natural selection' was lightly treated as just one of evolutionary theory though it should be emphasized as major theme of evolution. Also, the law of recapitulation, of which biologists doubt the validity, was discussed as an evidence of evolution in some textbooks. And the agents of genetic equilibrium disruption like genetic drift and migration were treated as of little importance. On the basis of above result, it was suggested that the textbook writers introduced the more meaningful evolutionary topics focused the theory of natural selection in explanation of evolution and evolution theory.

• 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.

• 대학교육
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• s.182
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• pp.12-13
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• 2013

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.239-252
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to develop an evolutionary STEAM education program based on the brain and to analyze its effects on scientific interest and scientific creativity of elementary school students. Four different topics based on four scientific fields (Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science) were derived from the science textbook under the 2015 revised curriculum to build a brain-based evolutionary STEAM education program. The research subjects were 90 fourth graders of S-elementary school located in Gyeonggi Province, Korea and they were divided into an experimental group of 45 students and a comparative group of 45 students. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, according to the independent samples t-test of scientific interest, no statistically significant difference were found between the two groups, but the brain-based evolutionary STEAM education had meaningful effect on improving 'interest in scientific learning' and 'anxiety about scientific learning'. Second, according to the paired samples t-test of scientific interest, the experimental group had significantly improved 'interest in science' but on the other hand, there was no effect on the comparative group. Third, scientific creativity and originality of the experimental group were significantly higher after the class than that of the comparative group. Fourth, although there were some significant differences between the two groups in scientific creativity after the class, both groups had improved scientific creativity between the results of pre and post test. Based on these results, we discuss implications for science education and STEAM education research.