• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.44 no.1
• /
• pp.61-73
• /
• 2020

Teachers are the most important factor contributing to determining the quality of education. Therefore, the quality of teachers should be improved to enhance the quality of education. Teacher's competencies are defined as the skills required for teaching profession, that is, the ability to perform not only in teaching activities, but also in guidance and class management. The purpose of this study is to analyze the competencies of science teachers that elementary, middle and high school students want. To this end, 332 elementary, middle and high school students were asked to describe their preferred science teacher's competencies and avoiding science teacher's competencies as an open questionnaire. The resulting concepts were analyzed by semantic network analysis (SNA). The results of this study are as follows: 1) The competencies of science teachers that students prefer varied. This suggests that most students think positively about science teachers. In addition, it is possible to show students the positive or preferred competencies of teachers in various ways. 2) The students wanted teachers to explain the theories and concepts related to scientific phenomena through experiments. They also preferred hands-on activities and experience in science class. 3) The students put emphasis on the class-related contents in the competencies of science teachers. Accordingly, the image of science teachers and science itself should be enhanced through the improvement of science teaching methods and positive attitudes toward students. It is expected that further research on the image according to specific teaching methods of science teachers will be conducted based on the findings of this study.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.40 no.2
• /
• pp.116-130
• /
• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties of science classes experienced by newly appointed elementary school teachers in terms of science content knowledge and teaching method, and to suggest some implications for their effective adaptation. We recorded science lessons conducted by 3 beginning elementary school teachers with less than 5 years experience and also analyzed their classes and interview materials. The results were as follows. First, difficulties that they experienced in science content knowledge was the possession of scientific errors or misconceptions, the lack of awareness and confidence in scientific concepts and principles, and the possession of negative concept about learning materials. Second, difficulties that they experienced in teaching method was the absence of reorganization of the textbook contents, using closed questions, one-sided instructions and explanations by teacher, the application of incomplete analogy, and the lack of understanding about experiment activities. The implication from this study is that beginning teachers need to be provided with curriculum oriented in experiment at teachers college and to participate in various types of educational opportunities.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.40 no.2
• /
• pp.210-226
• /
• 2021

The purpose of this study was to understand what orientations elementary school teachers have related to their science classes, what realities they encounter in real classes, how they overcome their frustrations and failures they experience. We employed a narrative inquiry method and analyzed the experiences of two early career elementary school teachers (Miss Park and Mr. Choi). Miss Park wanted to conduct students-driven inquiry classes, in which students become active investigators, but in reality, she faced herself who conducted teacher-driven classes. Mr. Choi wanted to conduct science classes based on constructivism, but in reality, he encountered himself as a knowledge giver rather than scaffolder. However, rather than giving up their orientations, the two teachers tried to keep them in their own way. It was expected that by understanding what strategies beginner teachers take when their theoretical orientation and ideals are not well implemented in actual educational reality, we could find a clue that will lead to a more successful transition from pre-service teacher to teacher.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.64 no.6
• /
• pp.401-415
• /
• 2020

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that affect the maintenance of the effect of mentoring for beginning science teachers. Mentee teachers for this study were ten mentee teachers who took part in the collaborative mentoring from 2014 to 2018. For this study, the videos of the first and fifth classes submitted during the mentoring program, mentors and mentees' journals, the videos of the classes recorded in 2019, questionnaires about reflection on the mentoring program, and interview materials were collected and analyzed. The result of this study is as follows. First, the reflective thinking was sustained after the mentoring program, and this played a crucial role in maintaining the effects of the mentoring. The group that showed the improvement of RTOP score had reflective thinking and made reflective practice on their teaching. Most participants in the group created the classes of constructivism based on self-reflection on their classes. However, no positive changes in the classes occurred to mentee teachers who couldn't have reflective thinking. Second, reflective practices during the mentoring program exerted a strong influence on the teaching method of mentee teachers. The group of the improvement in RTOP score strived to apply student-centered model of instruction to their classes. It was showed that most mentee teachers in the group kept applying the student-centered model to their classes after the mentoring was completed. These results indicate reflective thinking and reflective practice are crucial factors to the effect of the mentoring and its maintenance.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.84-93
• /
• 2012

We have studied possibilities of Peer Instruction(PI) to train in-service science teachers in elementary and middle schools through both degree of conceptual changes and investigating responses to questionaries. 169 teachers were attended and the subject for training was about light propagation to teach scientific conception about a pin hole camera. 6 conceptests were developed. Degree of conceptual changes was analyzed from results obtained from 24 elementary and 32 middle school teachers among them. On the other hand, answers to questionaries were obtained from 135. Relatively high gain near to about 0.7 in conceptual changes was obtained even though their initial levels were quite low. Interesting point is that elementary teachers have higher initial level and larger gain than middle school teachers. Teachers have very much enjoyed and showed strong support to PI for helping conceptual change, and willing to use PI to their own class. Also they conceived dealing concept in teacher training is very important and evaluated PI very positively for teacher training.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.31 no.8
• /
• pp.1055-1076
• /
• 2011

In this study, we investigated the changes in beginning chemistry teachers' teaching practice without mentoring program and after the implementation of mentoring program. Participants in our study included two chemistry teachers who have less than one year of teaching experience and three mentor teachers. We collected data such as video recordings of teacher's classes, interview, and recordings of mentoring after each class. The results show there were slight changes in teaching contents, teaching procedure, and explanation method without mentoring. On the other hand, there were a lot of significant improvement in classroom environment, teaching contents and teaching procedure, teaching-learning techniques, questioning and feedback, and explanation method after mentoring has been implemented. However, there were no easy changes in the teaching style, understanding of students, and ways of interaction with students in connection with teaching purposes. Based on the results of this study, we explored the possibilities of instructional improvement through mentoring on beginning chemistry teacher's teaching practice. Therefore, we consider that more systematic and long-term mentoring is necessary to improve professionalism in teaching beginning teachers. In particular, we propose mentoring programs reflecting the individual needs of beginning teachers.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.57 no.6
• /
• pp.778-788
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine the change of the beginning science teachers' perception change through the mentoring program. Participants in this study were four mento-teachers, one university professor, two teachers in doctor, two teacher in doctor's or master's course, and four mentee-teachers who had less than three years teaching experience. We performed five times one to one mentoring for a year. We collected data such as video recordings of mentee-teacher's classes, lesson plans, recording of one to one mentoring and transcription, mento and mentee journals, preliminary-interim-post interview and transcription, and RTOP class observation report. Based on the result of this study, five times mentoring over a year changed mentee-teacher's perception and their teaching practice.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
• /
• v.12 no.2
• /
• pp.119-130
• /
• 2019

The TIMSS assessment is conducted every four years, and Korean fourth grade cohort in TIMSS 2011 participated in TIMSS 2015 again as eighth graders, which produced the first achievement data of the cohort group of elementary and middle schools. In this study, in order to investigate the causes of the decline in Korean students' science achievement with grade changes from the fourth to the eighth grade, we analyzed educational context variables such as characteristics of students, teachers, and classroom instructions of the top 5 achievement countries participated in both TIMSS 2011 and TIMSS 2015. According to the results, students' sense of school belonging increased, whereas students' positive attitudes toward science teaching decreased with the grade change from the fourth to the eighth. As for the teacher characteristics, the teacher's professional development activity increased, and the teacher's confidence in science teaching showed similar tendency to the international average. Regarding classroom instruction characteristics, the frequency of inquiry-related science activities was highest at the fourth grade, and lower than the international average at the eighth grade. Based the results, we suggested implications for science teaching and learning as well as further studies including development of differentiated strategy by the school level to improve students' achievement, the necessity of converting into more student-engaging science classes, and the necessity of in-depth study on the teacher related educational contextual variables.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.39 no.1
• /
• pp.115-128
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between mentor teachers' mentoring characteristics and mentee teachers' reflective practices and to investigate mentor teachers' mentoring methods to enhance mentee teachers' reflective practices based on the analysis. The participants were four beginning science teachers and four mentors who have more than seven years of teaching experience. This study compiled mentor and mentee teachers' journals, records and transcripts from mentee teachers' five periods of classes, lesson plans, evaluation forms of lessons, one-on-one mentoring records and transcripts, questionnaires conducted before, during, and after the mentoring program, and a questionnaire about the effects of one-on-one mentoring. The mentoring characteristics of mentor teachers were analyzed based on mentor's interaction methods and the contents and frequency of the support based on teaching feedback. Mentee teachers' reflective thinking was analyzed by being categorized as voluntary self-reflections of their classes and reflections on the support provided by mentor teachers. Mentee teachers' reflective practices were analyzed by utilizing RTOP. The conclusions of this study are as follows: Mentor teachers could promote mentee teachers' reflective practices by eliciting conversation that helped mentees perceive problems in their teaching practices. Mentors' questions evoking mentees' reflective thinking could elicit mentees' spontaneous self-reflection, and it led to the enhancement of self-reflection on mentors' support and reflective practices. When mentors offered the support based on teaching practices while playing a role as a facilitator to help mentees identify and solve problems by themselves, mentees' reflective practices could be promoted.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.30 no.8
• /
• pp.1084-1096
• /
• 2010

In this study, class criticism by elementary school teachers was analyzed on the subject of science classes by beginner teachers. And then the viewpoints and characteristics of the class criticism were investigated. Teachers for class criticism consisted of six members, including two each of low- and high-career teachers. The viewpoints were analyzed in comparison with all the teachers. The subject of class criticism was 'Activity of leaves in plants', which is in the seventh unit of the science textbook for fifth grade elementary students of the first semester. The result of this study was as follows. Teachers criticized the science class mainly with three codes of viewpoints: motivation, inquiry focused on student, and summary of the results, where viewpoints consisted of 18 codes. They criticized the class by factors on a standard checklist and their criticism was characterized by partial situation and context. Low-career teachers criticized the class with the viewpoint in sympathy with the beginner teachers and criticized the class with the viewpoint of recollecting their teaching experience as beginners. While high-career teachers criticized the class mainly overall situations rather than specific matters. The result of this study can be used as basic data for a program of professional development and teacher education for science classes.