• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.181-191
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• 2007

The purposes of this study were as follows; to investigate elementary school teachers' understanding of scientific inquiry, experiences in learning/teaching, their educational experience of scientific inquiry, and to study the difficulties they experience in teaching scientific inquiry methods to elementary students and their suggestions for future inquiry materials. For the purposes of this study, 157 elementary school teachers participated in a survey and 10 teachers were interviewed in-depth in relation to their ideas and experiences of scientific inquiry. The results show that most elementary school teachers had a lack of understanding of scientific inquiry skills, and lacked educational experiences of inquiry methods in general. They generally perceived the 7th science text-books as being inappropriate and inadequate for teaching students scientific inquiry processes. The educational implications are discussed to help practitioners implement scientific inquiries successfully through the various types of teaching materials and professional developments.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.474-483
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• 2010

In this study, we investigated preservice elementary school teachers' awareness of students' misconceptions about several science topics, and the variables influencing their awareness. Seniors (N=106) from an university of education were asked to predict elementary school students' misconceptions on science topics such as phase changes and dissolution. Their conceptions about teaching and learning were also measured. The results indicated that the preservice teachers' predictions about the kinds and/or the ratios of students' misconceptions were different from those reported in previous studies. The low level preservice teachers in terms of the degrees of possessing traditional conception about teaching and learning predicted more students' common misconceptions. The degrees of preservice teachers' constructivist conception about teaching and learning and their major, however, did not significantly influence the numbers of common misconceptions predicted.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.451-464
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• 2010

This study examined the perception of teachers and students on the practice of elementary science class. For this study, an examination tool was made by extracting characteristics of good science class through precedent study investigation and revising it in a questionnaire form of a Likert scale, and conducted to 194 elementary teachers and 320 elementary students. As a result of the study, teachers generally perceived science class positively and teachers with career more than 6 years thought it more positively than them with career less than 5 years. Consequently students have a substantially positive perception level about the practice of the elementary science class, and students of 3th and 4th grade perceived science class positively than 5th and 6th grade in all domains. Finally when analyzing perception difference between teachers and students about the practice of the elementary science class, it appeared that students perceived science class more positively than teachers in most questions.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.465-473
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of scientific inquiry-based peer teaching experience on pre-service elementary teachers' science teaching efficacy, anxiety to science and attitude toward science. The participants of this study included 118 pre-service teachers. The pre-post paired t-test design was implemented to examine the effect of this program. In addition, the semi-structured interviews were carried out for investigating their changes of affective characteristics. The result of this study showed that inquiry-based peer teaching provided pre-service teachers with the opportunities to enhance their science teaching efficacy and attitude toward science and reduce their anxiety to science. The findings imply that it is possible to meaningfully change elementary teachers' affective characteristics when effective strategies are adequately adopted.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.504-513
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• 2011

The preservice elementary teachers' achievement goal orientations(mastery/ability-approach/ability-avoidance/work-avoidance goal) for science teaching were measured. The student teachers(91 males and 127 females) tended to have the mastery or ability-approach goals rather than the ability-avoidance or work-avoidance goals for science teaching. The male students were more learning focused than were the females, while the female students reported stronger work-avoidance goal orientation than did the males. This study also examined how the preservice teachers' achievement goal orientations were related to their science teaching efficacy beliefs(personal science teaching efficacy belief/science teaching outcome expectancy). As expected, the results showed that there were significantly positive relationships between the mastery or ability-approach goals and science teaching efficacy beliefs, while the significantly negative relationships were found between the ability-avoidance or work-avoidance goal and personal science teaching efficacy belief. The educational implications and future directions were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.32-46
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to examine preservice elementary teachers' understandings and instructional strategies about children's science misconceptions. The participants were sixty senior students from a national university of education located in the midwestern area of Korea. A questionnaire, developed on the basis of Gomez-Zwiep's semi-structured interview questions, was used. The results of this study are as follows: first, many of the preservice teachers showed appropriate understanding of 'definition of misconceptions' (96.67%), 'examples of misconceptions' (78.33%), 'resistance to change of misconceptions' (71.67%), and 'impact on instruction of misconceptions' (91.67%), except for 'sources of misconceptions' (45.00%); second, although almost all the preservice teachers (96.67%) appreciated the necessity of identifying children's misconceptions before instruction, 43.33% of the preservice teachers did not show appropriate understandings on when and how to identify children's misconceptions; third, most of the preservice teachers (81.67%) were generally aware of instructional strategies to address children's misconceptions.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.316-325
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to analyze elementary school teacher' expectation and reality before and after science experiment in-service training program. The surveys for before and after in-service training were conducted among 231 elementary school teachers who participated for science experiment in-service training. 5 elementary school teachers who took part in surveys were interviewed after training. The results of this study are as follows: First, teachers' interest for science increased regardless of willingness to training participation through science experiment training. Second, discussion for science teaching strategies were not enough while the training recognized with experiments and lecture of instructors mainly. Third, teachers prefered alternative experiments and practical experience of experiments to lecture and basic experiments based on textbook. Forth, assessment of teachers in training must be improved.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.86-92
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• 2010

Although constructivist assessment has been emphasized by many science educators, most elementary school teachers are still not familiar with this. In order to investigate the causes of this problem, we examined the perceptions of pre-service elementary school teachers toward constructivist science assessment and the relationships among the perceptions toward constructivist science assessment, the views on science teaching and learning, science teaching efficacy beliefs, and the perceptions toward constructivist science learning environment. Analyses of the results revealed that the perceptions of pre-service elementary school teachers toward constructivist science assessment were higher than those of the elementary school teachers reported previously. The results of a stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that the views on constructivist science teaching and learning and personal science teaching efficacy beliefs were the significant predictors of the perceptions toward constructivist science assessment.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.113-126
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• 2013

In this study, the researcher aimed to increase productive reflection of pre-service elementary teachers through reflective journal writing and discussion after science peer teaching practice. 'Productive reflection' involves consideration and analysis of interrelationships among aspects of teaching including learners and learning, subject matter knowledge, assessment, and instruction. During 8 week efforts, productive reflection has increased gradually in both individual journal and class discussion. However half of individual journals didn't show productive reflection even in the final stage. This implicated that development of reflective thinking is an achievable but progressive change. By describing the progress in discussion and participants' responses on journal writing and discussion activity, this study shed light on practical ways of enhancing reflective teacher education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2018

Factors and causal structures of pre-service elementary teachers about the critical thinking and the scientific literacy competency were investigated in this study. The third grade university students and the first grade university students in the metropolitan city participated in this study. The factor analysis method and the structural equation modeling method were used for the data analysis, and the following results were obtained. First, the third grade university students and the first grade university students recognized 'inquisitive thinking' factor and 'reflective thinking' factor as factors of the critical thinking, and 'scientific explanation' factor and 'evidence-based conclusion' factor as factors of the scientific literacy competency respectively. Second, the third grade university students showed more the influence from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'scientific explanation' factor and from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'evidence-based conclusion' factor than the first grade university students.