• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.736-750
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• 2014

The purposes of this study were to investigate concepts of Korean and American elementary school pre-service teachers on combustion, and to compare the concepts of Korean pre-service teachers with those of American pre-service teachers. For this study, concept test on combustion was administered to 23 Korean and 18 American elementary school pre-service teachers. The test composed of 6 items: 'Definition of combustion', 'The reason why a candle in a glass bottle is blown out when the bottle was closed', 'The change of gases in the bottle when a candle burns in it', 'The combustion products of a candle', 'The combustion products of steel wool', and 'The combustion products of a substance'. The results showed that the rates of elementary school pre-service teachers who had scientific concepts on combustion were very low in both Korean and American pre-service teachers' groups, although they were a little different from items. However the rates of pre-service teachers who had partial concepts and misconceptions on combustion were high in two groups. The levels of Korean elementary school pre-service teachers' concepts were a little higher than those of American elementary school pre-service teachers' concepts. The contents and activities on combustion which are in Korean and American science textbooks seem to affect building up their concepts on combustion.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.145-156
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• 2000

Elementary school teachers' understandings about buoyancy were investigated through the questionnaire method. The questionnaire was composed of 4 questions on hydraulic pressure and 8 questions on buoyancy. The questions on buoyancy asked about the correlation of buoyancy with following basic concepts, density of liquid, volume of submerged object and so forth. 295 teachers on the 22 elementary schools in Busan, Yangsan and Gimhae were selected through random sampling method. The results of this study were summarized as follows: On the correlation of the magnitude and direction of hydraulic pressure with the depth of water, a large portion of the respondents had a scientific conception. But on the correlation of hydraulic pressure with density, the relatively small portion of them appeared to have a scientific conception. The respondents, on the whole, had a scientific conception about the correlation of buoyancy with density of liquid. But they seemed to have naive conceptions about the correlation of buoyancy with the volume of a submerged object and with the depth of water, the amount of water in container and the reduced amount of water by the object from container. We found that the respondents were context dependent and tended to search for solutions for the questions of buoyancy using the concept of pressure in the water. From above results, we suggested that in the would-be revised elementary science text book, the contents of pressure in the water should be introduced after the concept of weight in the water was gained.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.514-523
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigation the elementary school teachers' perception in STEAM(Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics) Education. For this study, 93 elementary school teachers who have taught mathematics/science in gifted class were selected and a fifteen items questionnaire designed to elicit teachers' perception of steam education was to administered to them. The major findings are as follows: First, the ratio of teachers who understood a steam education exactly is very low. But teachers have positive thoughts about the need of steam education. Second, teachers thought that steam education has a good effect on elementary education. Third, teachers thought that steam education will be an alternative teaching and learning method. Fourth, teachers have negative thoughts to participate in class work related on steam education. To improve negative attitudes on steam education, incentives for teachers seems to be required. In order to spread steam education among the elementary school teachers successfully, the expansion of school facilities, administrators and staff in mind, improving financial support, strengthening education through the development of content and teaching strategies were analyzed as a challenge.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.152-161
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to diagnose difficulties and problems that the preservice teachers experience when teaching inquiry-based classes in elementary science and to improve their professionalism through prescriptive instruction consulting utilizing PDRE (preparation, diagnosis, reflective implementation, evaluation) model. The result of this study was as follows. First, preservice teachers considered themselves to be lack of scientific knowledge, but this study confirmed that the application of instruction consulting improved their understandings in scientific concepts and principles and corrected their misconceptions. Second, preservice teachers experienced difficulties in variables that might influence the results of experiments, cautions for the experiments and unexpected results of experiments, and this consulting allowed them to gain instruction ability to cope with such circumstances and solve problems effectively. Third, preservice teachers experienced difficulties in applying instructional model into their classes and preparing lesson plans, but consulting actually made limited but positive changes in their abilities. However, from a longer-term perspective, quantitative increase in their teaching opportunities, the development and distribution of example manuals, and the utilization of various class materials provided by the assistant centers for teaching and learning should be achieved side by side.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.39-53
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the conceptual structure of subjects related to matter having pre-service elementary school teachers by applying semantic network analysis (SNA). The analyzed concepts in the subjects of matter were 6 words such as 'atom', 'molecule', 'ion', 'electron', 'matter' and 'particle'. The results of SNA of the concepts are as follows : 1. In the semantic network of 'atom', words having a high betweenness centrality were linked with the words based on both the scientific context and the everyday context. 2. The network of 'molecule' was analyzed to be more organized than the network of the 'atom'. 3. In the network of 'ion', the group of words of the scientific context was distinguished from the group of words of the everyday context. 4. The network of 'electron' was analyzed to be more oriented on electricity and magnetism in the field of physics. 5. In the network of 'matter', the words related to compounds were linked with knowledge of history of science. 6. The network of 'particle' was not structured with words based on particulate nature of matter.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.255-270
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to consider pre-service and in-service elementary school teachers' beliefs about STS (Science-Technology-Society), by investigating their opinions on STS interactions. 222 of the seniors in Jinju National University of Education, namely pre-service elementary school teachers, and 185 of the active teachers in Kyung-Nam Province were selected as the objects for researching these matters. Their beliefs about STS interactions were examined. The results were analyzed with a percentage as an examining tool of TBA-STS(Teachers' Beliefs about Science-Technology-Society). The results were as follows; First, on the nature of science, most of them showed simple opinions. On the nature of technology, most of them also showed simple opinions. most of them recognized the interactions among science, technology, and society affirmatively. They showed simple opinions on the interactions between science and technology. In fact, they didn't recognize the interactions between science and society, but they knew the influence of technology on society relatively concretely. Second, if one consider the cognitive situation or the distributing route of STS, he can easily find that most teachers never or little know it. At present, pre-service teachers learn STS from the lectures in their universities, and in-service teachers get information about it from science magazines/newspapers and training.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.571-582
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• 2005

This study aims to examine primary school teachers' interest and understanding of bioethical issues, and to analyze their perception of bioethics teaching in the primary school education. For this purpose, the questionnaires were constructed. The data were collected from 553 primary teachers in the whole country. Major findings of the studys are as follows. First, most primary school teachers showed high level of interest about bioethical issues, but they had the limited understanding about bioethical issues. Primary teachers showed the highest interest about' respect for human life' and the lowest understanding of 'awareness of current biotechnology' Second, the prior reasons why primary teachers wanted to teach specific bioethical issues in the classes were that 'they were closely related to social phenomena' and 'they were appropriate for enhancing students' awareness of the value of life'. Third, the lack of the teachers' knowledge about bioethics and limited supply of teaching materials were found to be barriers, which prevent them from teaching bioethical issues. The implications of these results are discussed for the improvement of bioethics teaching in primary school education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.518-530
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of pre-service primary teachers' justifying their hypotheses about the brightness of electric bulbs. They conducted their experiments and wrote their experimental results and ideas on their worksheets. The worksheets for generating and evaluating scientific hypothesis were analyzed. Most of them generated the consumption hypothesis and designed the experiments to confirm their hypotheses or directly measure without the change of experimental conditions. The responses for valid experimental designs were $74\%$ of total responses. The $62\%$ of total responses was valid prediction for experimental results. The $60\%$ of pre-service teachers described the experimental results correctly. But other teachers described the biased results or inappropriate results. The $54\%$ of them refuted hypotheses and the $36\%$ confirmed their hypotheses. The theory-based responses were $51\%$ and the evidence-based responses were $47\%$. The $64\%$ of them proposed the possibility of the alternative hypothesis after testing their hypotheses. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for teaching and Loaming in science education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.159-166
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• 2006

Changes in the brain activities following pre-service elementary teachers' learning hypothesis-generation were investigated using the analysis of EEG relative power and EEG coherence. In this study, the experimental group (n=16) were trained using learning methods for hypothesis-generation and the control group(n=16) were trained using learning methods for hypothesis-reception over the course of 8 weeks. EEG was measured before and following the learning process for both groups. Decreased theta ($4{\sim}7.9Hz$)/alpha 1 ($8{\sim}9.9Hz$) power and increased alpha 2 ($10{\sim}l2.9Hz$)/beta ($13{\sim}29.9Hz$)/gamma ($30{\sim}50Hz$) power were showed in the experimental group. Additionally, many changes in brian activities were observed for theta, beta and gamma coherence in the experimental group. In particular, fronto-parietal coherence increased in the experimental group. These differences in brain activities between the two groups suggest that the learning for subjects' hypothesis generation presumably leads to interesting changes in some types of brain activities in pre-service elementary teachers.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.379-393
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to analyze the complexity of scientific reasoning during open inquiry activities of pre-service elementary school teachers. In this study, 6 pre-service elementary teachers who participated in open-inquiry activities were selected. The data of scientific reasoning during their inquiry process was collected from the video recording of reporting about inquiry process and results, their reports and researcher's notetaking. CSRI Matrix (Dolan & Grady, 2010) was used to analyze the complexity of participants' scientific reasoning. The result showed that the degree of the complexity of their scientific reasoning varied in participants. Particularly the low degree of the complexity of scientific reasoning presented in posing preliminary hypotheses, providing suggestions for future research, communicating and defending finding. Also, The more pre-service teachers' epistemology of inquiry are similar to that of scientists, the more complex scientific reasoning represents. This results suggest that teachers should impress on students the importance of doing the precedent study and providing suggestions for future research, and provide a place for communicating and defending findings.