• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.442-453
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• 2016

The aims of this study are to develop a STEAM program focused on the appearances of birds' beaks and insectivorous plants and to identify its influence on elementary students' basic scientific process skills, creative problem solving ability and affective domain. For these objectives, the STEAM program was developed by reorganizing contents of the appearances of animals and plants in the units of 'Life of Animals' and 'Life of Plants' from 2009 revised national science curriculum for 3th and 4th grades. The developed STEAM program was applied to twenty nine 3th grade students of J elementary school located in S city. As a result of applying the STEAM program, the experimental group in this study showed significant improvements of the creative problem solving ability, scientific process skills and affective domain compared to the control group's scores. Therefore, development studies on STEAM programs integrated different science fields using animals and plants could be meaningful works to encourage elementary students' skills and interest.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.278-293
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics of multiple-choice test items used in assessment of high school integrated science according to 2009 revised curriculum. For the analysis of the tendency of item setting, we devised an analytic framework specific to integrated science, and analyzed the characteristics of items by applying the devised framework and item response theory. The results of the tendency of item setting revealed that most of items run counter to the intent of integrated science in terms of item resource, integration extent, and cognitive level, which means teachers are stick to separative method in teaching-learning and assessment of integrated science. The results of the analysis applying item response theory showed that item difficulty was appropriate and item discrimination was considerably high. However, there was no relevance between the tendency of item setting and qualitative characteristics of the items. We also discussed some agendas to improve the teaching-learning and assessment of integrated science based on the results of this study.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.381-393
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• 2012

This study was analyzed that what kind of elements for STEAM, except scientific commonsense, are contained in 2009 revised chemistry textbooks I for high school students. So first, elements of STEAM in textbooks were examined by following three sections; by publishing company, each unit and area of textbook. For reference, new sub-elements of STEAM were set because existing elements of STEAM is incongruent with current textbooks. As a result, most chemistry textbooks included elements of STEAM properly for inter-related learning with the other fields. Every textbook had its unique learning methods for utilizing elements of STEAM and they were unified as one way. Depending on textbooks, learning methods were little bit different from the others. Also, detailed elements of STEAM contained in textbooks were classified just 14 types. And they were even focused on a few elements according to sort of textbook. Thus, it seemed that there was a certain limitation of current education of STEAM in chemistry Field. By the unit, according to the curriculum, contained elements of STEAM were different. Almost all elements of STEAM were located in I section. Consequently, it is difficult to include elements of STEAM if mathematics or history were not existed in curriculum. Lastly, by the area, most of all elements of STEAM were included in reference section. Almost all elements of STEAM were focused on art and culture. Thus, STEAM was used for utilization about chemical knowledge in substance. Otherwise, convergence training for approach method was not enough in chemical knowledge.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.404-414
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• 2009

The revised curriculum in 2007 includes open inquiry approach to increase students' interest in science and to build up creativity. So teachers and pre-service teachers should be equipped with the ability of open inquiry performance. In order to investigate pre-service teachers' readiness to perform open inquiry tasks, we analyzed reports written as homework by a group of 71 juniors in a national university of education. The investigation tool was composed of four domains: topic selection, the inquiry process, the conclusion, and reporting. Each domain had three or four sub-domains. By using the framework, four raters scored the students' inquiry reports. The findings reveal that the pre-service elementary school teachers have difficulty in the domain of 'topic selection' and the 'conclusion' compared with the other domains. Under the topic selection domain, they showed weaknesses in 'creativity' and 'scientific topic' and under the conclusion domain, they had difficulty in 'recognizing limits' and 'value of conclusion'. The finding suggests that pre-service teaching program should provide with opportunities to perform open inquiry continually.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.718-734
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• 2013

The purpose of the study is to investigate high school students' perception and understanding of old metaphorical science terminologies and new metaphorical science terminologies (highly metaphorical science terminologies). For the study, three old metaphorical terminologies and three new metaphorical terminologies have been chosen from the old and new Korean science curricula respectively, and 176 high school students who learned physics based on 7th science curriculum developed in 1997 and 175 highschool students who learned physics based on the science curriculum revised in 2009 were sampled from two high schools in a big city in Korea. The research results are as follows: First, for the old metaphorical terminologies, there are more students who give explanations using scientific terms than those who use the meaning of the metaphors that terminologies had. Second, for the new metaphorical terminologies, there are much less students who give explanations using scientific terms than those who explained using the meaning of the metaphors that the terminologies had. Therefore, it should be emphasized that, for the new metaphorical terminologies, the metaphorical meaning of the terminologies do not mean the concepts themselves in teaching science.

• 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 the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.337-358
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate how storytelling is embodied in the Mathematics I textbooks for first grade high school students in the 2009 revised curriculum and the perception of secondary math teachers and students of those books. Furthermore, in order to have some implications on newly ongoing textbook development, this thesis sets up the following goals for inquiry into the effect on storytelling. First, are there any noticeable differences among the 10 types of mathematics I textbooks for high school first graders in the 2009 revised curriculum? Second, what do teachers and students think of textbooks which apply storytelling techniques? The results are as follows. The frequency of storytelling types that appeared in the textbooks is as follows: real-life connection type and inter-scholarship type take up 47.55% and 24.51% respectively, followed by decision-making type with 10.52%, math history type with 10.17% and tool-using type with 7.05%. Within the contents, math history type showed up on reading material from every textbook. And it is worth considering that real-life-connection type has the most various topics and is mainly for arousing interest and checking up on some concepts. However, inter-scholarship type is usually related to science, and decision-making type is included for error analysis and tool-using type for reading materials about math programs. The results of this study suggest that many of the teachers who participated showed some kind of understanding of storytelling but there were not many who are actually incorporating that into their own classes. It is also essential that we develop textbooks that are effective for storytelling classes, hold regular symposiums as well as teacher training, and create tools for proper assessment. Furthermore, students think that textbooks based on storytelling would have positive effects as long as they are supported by enough time, a sufficient number of classes and tests with validity.

• Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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• v.53 no.1
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• pp.29-37
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• 2015

Since based on the revised educational curriculum, the insects and spiders in eight biology textbooks I and II of high school are as follows. In class level, two classes, Insecta and Arachnida were investigated and their frequence numbers in the textbooks were a total of 143 times. In order level, 12 orders in insecta, 2 orders in Aranea were appeared in the textbooks. The most appearing frequence number was represented in Lepidoptera (33 times) and then in Araneae (11 times). For each publisher, the most appearing frequencies of insecta and spiders was shown in Gyohaksa (23 times), and then in Hyeongseol and Centurla education research institute (21times, respectively). In the textbooks, four species were found to misidentify in their species name and five mistakes were investigated in their photos and content.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.263-274
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of STEAM program on students' academic achievement, creative problem-solving ability, scientific inquiry ability and scientific interests of elementary school students. For this, we developed a STEAM program to utilize animation production about 'structure and function of the our body' unit in 5th grade. The STEAM program was developed for a total of 9 sessions and was applied to the experimental group. The theoretical lesson of the 2009 revised curriculum was consisted of 11 sessions and was applied to the comparative group. The results of study showed significant differences of the students' academic achievement, creative problem-solving ability to the experimental group participating in the STEAM program and also showed significant effects in the domains of subject contents and teacher preference, which are the areas of scientific interests compared to the comparative group. This means that the STEAM program to utilize animation production about 'structure and function of the our body' developed in consideration of the characteristics of elementary students positively influenced the academic achievement, creative problem-solving ability and scientific interests of elementary school students. In the future we need to develop STEAM programs more variously that utilize animation production and that it needs to be applied to elementary schools.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.205-215
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• 2016

This study aims to investigate how elementary teachers use teachers' guide in preparation for science lessons. First, different uses of teacher's guide were analyzed. Second, how and why teachers use each section in teacher's guide were analyzed. For the study, 24 elementary school teachers were interviewed in depth. The semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted individually and/or in small group, and additional interviews were held when necessary. The results showed that most of the teachers used teacher's guide only substitutionally, and some teachers rarely use teacher's guide, while only 3 out of 24 teachers used teacher's guide in detail. The reasons that teachers used the teacher's guide substitutionally or rarely were that most science lessons include experiments, and science textbook itself provides enough information for preparation of science lessons for 3rd and 4th grade students. The results also revealed that only few teachers read the general guideline in teacher's guide. Some sections of teacher's guide were not used. The sections that many teachers used were the aims of lesson, the learning system of the unit, background knowledge, flow of lesson, learning contents and activities. This study specifically examined the actual use of teacher's guide for lesson preparation and discussed implications for the development of more helpful teacher's guide.