• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.276-285
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to observe five teachers' science classes and analyze the patterns of their analogies. To analyze the data, investigator triangulation was used, and the results were as follows: First, among the patterns of analogy used, expressions of similes and metaphors were utilized by all the teachers; teachers with over ten years' experience used adult's daily phrases, and teachers with under ten years' experience tended to use anthropomorphism. Regarding pictorial analogies, these manifested themselves in the sixth period, while teachers with over ten years' experience drew a simple picture about circulation of water, teachers with under one year's experience made additional materials for their analogy and they put an emphasis on the concept of the circulation itself. Teachers tended to use analogs according to their interests; teachers who majored in science education used pictorial analogies for further study. Second, the patterns emerging from the correspondence of the analogy manifested themselves in all the teachers equally, but they have no relation to the teacher's background. Third, routine analogy and artificial analogy appeared equally in consideration of degree of artificiality among the patterns of the analogies used. Regarding routine analogy, most teachers tended to look for analogs from things and experiences from themselves or their own backgrounds rather than those of the students. Regarding artificial analogies, teachers tended to purposely choose analogs to help students to understand; energetic teachers sometimes failed to choose appropriate analogs because they approached the topic with too much intensity. While a teacher who lacked experience and interest in science used many expressions of analogy, a teacher who felt some degree of constraint rarely used expressions of analogy. Fourth, most of the teachers used analogs familiar to their own experiences but students often found understanding these analogs difficult. Therefore, teachers need to make greater efforts to utilize analogs which are especially familiar to students when they attempt to explain science concepts.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.79-92
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school teachers', students' and their parents' perceptions of new experimental grade $3{\sim}4$ science textbooks and teacher's guides developed by revised national science curriculum. 63 teachers, 436 students and their 448 parents were selected from 9 elementary schools selected as model schools, and were administered the questionnaires of the perceptions of the new science textbooks and/or teacher's guides. The results revealed that many teachers had a rather positive perception of the teacher's guides. In addition, most of the teachers, students and their parents, especially the students and their parents than the teachers, perceived positively the new science textbooks. They also had various views of the strengths and weaknesses of the new science textbooks and/or teacher's guides upon cognitive and motivational/emotional/affective aspects. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.303-315
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze elementary teachers' science class objectively and quantitatively using Mobile Eye Tracker. The mobile eye tracker is easy to wear in eyeglasses form. And experiments are collected in video form, so it is very useful for realizing objective data of teacher's class situation in real time. Participants in the study were 2 elementary teachers, and they are teaching sixth grade science in Seoul. Participants took a 40-minute class wearing a mobile eye tracker. Eye movements of participants were collected at 60 Hz, and the collected eye movement data were analyzed using SMI BeGaze 3.7. In this study, the area related to the class was set as the area of interest, we analyzed the visual occupancy of teachers. In addition, we analyzed the linguistic interaction between teacher and students. The results of the study are as follows. First, we analyze the visual occupancy of meaningful areas in teaching-learning activities by class stage. Second, the analysis of eye movements when teachers interacted with students showed that teacher A had a high percentage of students' faces, while teacher B had a high visual occupation in areas not related to classes. Third, the linguistic interaction of the participants were analyzed. Analysis areas include questions, attention-focused language, elementary science teaching terminology, daily interaction, humor, and unnecessary words. This study shows that it is possible to analyze elementary science class objectively and quantitatively through analysis of visual occupancy using mobile eye tracking. In addition, it is expected that teachers' visual attention in teaching activities can be used as an index to analyze the form of language interaction.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.416-425
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• 2016

As curriculum statements require addressing ethical and social issues which are raised by modern science and technology, the ability to perceive ethical and social issues regarding science is necessary for teachers to introduce socio-scientific issues (SSI) in their science class. The purpose of this study is to explore elementary school teachers' ethical sensitivity on SSI and attempts to give implications for teacher education. To explore the ethical sensitivity in the context of SSI, the revised version of the Test for Ethical Sensitivity on Science (TESS) was used. Two socio-scientific issues (genetic engineering and radioactive waste) were provided to read and write down five possible questions they believed should be considered before reaching a decision. Data was collected from eighty-two elementary school teachers in Korea. To analyze the ethical sensitivity, the responses including ethical considerations were analyzed by situation and ethical issues. The result showed that 81 out of 82 teacher participants provided at least more than one ethical consideration on each scenario of this study. However, not many teacher could raise various ethical issues and situation that ethical issue might occur. There were only a few teaches who could consider all the situations, 'process of scientific research', 'application of science and technology', and 'science influenced by society', that ethical issues might occur. Especially, teachers failed to consider that the ethical issue can occur in the situation when science is influenced by society. Based on the results, we suggest that during teacher education teachers need to experience finding various ethical issues that can occur in the context of SSI and especially considering the ethical issues when science is influenced by society.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.85-94
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perspectives of pre-service elementary teachers on science education of future by using Draw-A-Science-Teacher-Test Checklist and open-ended questionnaire. The subjects of this study were 136 pre-service elementary teachers. The results of the research are as follows. The pre-service teachers thought that the physical environment reflecting the latest science and technology for science education will be developed in the future. However, few respondents indicated that student-centered equipment or a free and creative classroom environment would be provided. Second, they predicted that there would be changes in teacher's activities due to the introduction of advanced facilities and equipment, but most of the other teachers' activities were thought to be similar to those of current teachers. Third, the pre-service elementary teachers thought that a variety of new technologies would be used in science education and science teachers would mainly teach high-technology, IT technology, science knowledge, and newly discovered science concepts. In addition, we found that pre-service elementary teachers' images were more 'teacher-centered' than 'student-centered'. These results show that pre-service elementary teachers are expected to utilize the latest science and technology actively in science education in 2030 and that it will lead to changes in the physical environment, teachers' activities, education contents, and teaching and learning methods. In addition, they viewed acquisition of science concept as an important goal of science education in the future and had different points of view from the current science education curriculum and scholars' emphasis on educational research for the future.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.217-230
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to help elementary teachers to design systems for small group study to improve the efficiency of both teaching and learning in science education. This was done by examining how teachers form and manage a small group study, and by observing students' perceptions regarding small group study. For this study, an in-depth interview was conducted with 8 elementary teachers and 8 sixth grade elementary students chosen according to their levels of class participation and scientific achievement. The results showed that although elementary teachers preferred a group of 4 students, 6 students were randomly picked to form a group due to the physical aspects of the educational environment in most of the cases examined. It was also found that when the small group was composed of students with different personalities rather than according to their level of achievement, this better encouraged research activities and fostered scientific attitudes as compared to educating solely for the transference of scientific knowledge. On the elementary students' part, a change of perception on their new role and skills of interaction was also required. Elementary students preferred to compose small groups so that they resembled a group of close friends, and from their perspective, small group study was useful, interesting, time efficient, and helpful to each other in studying science.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.327-345
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• 2013

This study aims to investigate how pre-service elementary school teachers understand 'something scientific', 'being scientific', 'scientific events' and 'scientific questions' through semantic network analysis. To achieve this purpose, this study carried out a central analysis of the frequency and density of words and the degree of connection between key words, a concentric analysis, a click analysis and a common network analysis through text semantic network analysis by using NetMiner 4.0 Program. Based on the results of these analyses, this study came to the following conclusions. Firstly, in perceiving 'something scientific', pre-service elementary school teachers recognized 'verification', 'objective' and 'experiment' as most important words. In other words, they perceived that main grounds for something scientific should be provided through clear facts, possible to be verified and accompanied by an exact and logical theoretical system. In regard to 'being scientific', they perceived 'explanation', 'objective' and 'verification' as most important words, while having a traditional point of view that science is a set that can be explained objectively. Secondly, in regard that the term, 'observation', is contained in 'scientific events', they showed a high rate of understanding it as a scientific event. In regard to scientifical reasons, they showed the highest frequency of 'observation', and for unscientific reasons, they showed the highest frequency of 'behavior'. In perceiving 'scientific questions', they showed the highest frequency of determining bacteria-related questions as scientific. As a reason why they thought as scientific, they mentioned 'observation' most frequently like 'scientific events', while mentioning 'value judgement' as a reason why they thought as unscientific most frequently. From the results of integrated network analysis, this study found out that words pre-service teachers commonly used in stating scientific events or scientific questions were overlapped with words they mentioned for scientific events or scientific questions. As a result, it was found there were many pre-service teachers having interpreted scientific words without clearly distinguishing scientific events or scientific questions.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.96-108
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate how prospective elementary school teachers perceived teacher's inquiryoriented teaching practice, with an emphasis on students' scientific explanations based on scientific evidence. For this study, 94 prospective elementary school teachers were participated. 14 among 94 participants had chances to intensively experience this particular teaching methods for 15 weeks. All of the 94 participants observed the intended science teaching practice for 4th graders in two different elementary schools, which utilized the science talks emphasizing students' scientific explanation activity. For quantitative data analysis, they were asked to provide their reaction to the science teaching methods after their classroom observation. For qualitative data analysis, 5 among the participants, who had relatively long term experience with this teaching practice, were chosen to interview in order to understand their individual reasons of the ways they perceived about the inquiry-oriented teaching methods boosting students' scientific explanation. The results show that the prospective elementary teachers generally thought the emphasis of students' scientific explanation based on scientific evidence could enhance young elementary students' science content understanding, stimulate their curiosity/interests, and further develop their ability to engage actively in scientific discussions. However, some prospective teachers tended to think that the science teaching. methods would not be effective in terms of managing science classes, though. This study concludes that the prospective teachers tended to hold an endemic dilemma. On the one hand, they had their clear preference to the inquiry-oriented teaching practice as the most ideal teaching methods. On the other hand, they also had their persistent hesitance in using these methods due to their fear that elementary students might not adequately grasp the important science content when engaged in scientific discourse through an inquiry-oriented class.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.227-239
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to improve the practice of performance assessment in elementary science education and to support it according to the levels teachers' concerns. So this study was conducted by applying CBAM which is based on teachers' concern, which was designed for the investigation of the elementary science teachers' concern, their performance level, intellectual understanding, status of performance. and stage oi awareness and the connections between these factors. The study involved 311 elementary school teachers in the city of Seoul. The result of this study was as follows: First, the stage of teachers’ concerns performance assessment in science marked 49.5％, indicating that about half of the teachers was staying on the informative stage which could be generally occurring in the beginning of performance the curriculum innovation. The level of performance marked 33.8%, which was regarded as the stage of elaboration. For the category of intellectual understanding, most of the teachers didn’t fully understood the performance assessment. Regarding the status performance, 90.4％ of the teachers were implementing the assessment at the state of knowing the purpose of it. However. 40.5% of the teachers didn't fully understand the specific characteristics of the assessment. Also, the results of analyzing the teachers’ awareness on science performance assessment indicated that they have slightly positive positions. Secondly, the result of analyzing the stages of concerns for the assessment, based on the elementary school teachers' personal background, levels of implementation, and their intellectual understanding showed that the concerns were significantly different with the categories of their workplaces(p<.05). Finally, the result of analyzing the relationship among the concerns for the science performance assessment, levels of implementation and intellectual understanding indicated that there were significant differences in levels of implementation with the degree of intellectual understanding (p<.001).

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.420-436
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analysis the elementary teachers' and students' views about the difficulties in teaching and learning in geology units of elementary school science. For the purpose of this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with seventeen elementary teachers who have serviced more than three years, and with sixteen elementary students located in Cheongju City. The interview questions were developed through Seidman's step to acquire a reliability in the interview data with triangulation, then in-depth interview questions were modified and completed through pre-interview after constructing the trustworthiness of interviewees. In-depth interviews were performed in applying the analytic induction method and the interviews were recorded. From the interviews, we found that elementary teachers' views about the difficulties in teaching geology units; teachers' inner difficulties, the difficulty of lab activities, the problems of rock samples, the problems of curriculum in geology units, the difficulty of the geological feature, the problems of the cramming education, the lack of the opportunity for the speciality, and so on. And the students have the views about the difficulties in learning geology units; the difficulty of the unit contents understanding, the problems of learning by heart, the lack of the interest, the lack of materials, the problems of rock samples, the difficulty of the field learning, and so on. Based on the results, the study suggested that an interesting lab activities should be included in the geology units and taught in the geological field trip to help elementary school students more fully comprehend contents of the geology units.