• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.219-232
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• 2024

This study aims to determine the perspectives of pre-service elementary school teachers on the science curriculum in the fourth industrial revolution era. In this study, 128 pre-service elementary school teachers were asked to express their perspectives on the Saber-toothed Tiger Curriculum through photovoice activities. The resulting images were classified into three types: conservative, progressive, and radical perspectives. The number of both conservative and progressive perspectives was similar and high, whereas the number of radical perspectives was l ow. Those who had conservative perspectives on the Saber-toothed Tiger curriculum regarded "Inquiry" as the basis of the science curriculum, which should be maintained regardless of the time period and environment. Similarly, older teachers believed that this curriculum was based on eternal truth, which should be protected. Those who showed progressive perspectives on the Saber-toothed Tiger curriculum regarded a progressive person as someone succeeding to the blood of "New fist," and they showed positive attitudes toward AI-based education such as coding and meta-verse, regarding these practices as part of the teaching and learning method that could replace the existing inquiry-based education. Those who showed radical perspectives on the Saber-toothed Tiger Curriculum assumed critical attitudes toward the rapidly changing political circumstances of science education and criticized conflicts between different social classes formed through progressive curriculum. Based on these results, this study found that pre-service elementary school teachers needed to consider the science curriculum from several different perspectives rather than just one.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.881-901
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• 2011

The science museum in the past satisfied visitors only by interacting them with simple objects and exhibition, while one in modern times was requested to meet the need of visitors in their engagement in educational programs. To meet the visitors' need, the science museum made efforts to train, educate, and assign docents so that they can interact with visitors and serve the educational purpose of visitation. In this study, we analyzed the strengths and weakness of docent training programs from science museums/science centers nationally and internationally, to make implication on how to design a docent training and professional program. Programs from four national and four international science centers/museums were selected as a sample for analysis. Their docent training programs were compared with the data of surveys and interviews and emails from docents and docent managers/evaluators. Artifacts and documents of the docent training programs were also collected and used to construct the validity in analyzing the data, resulting in the well-developed docent training program as the critical one for enriching science museum education. The results included; First, we need to recruit and train docents who interact visitors directly but they need to be differentiated from regular volunteers for promoting science museum education for the purpose of popularization of science. Additionally, Second, we need to develop and run docent training program where docents can experience 'informal learning' exhibition interpreting strategies through the real field from mentoring from the experienced/senior docents beyond 'formal learning' exhibition content. Third, we need to equip docents with skills to make scientific literacy possible at science museum-such as experiencing scientific ethics through scientific inquiry-which happens limited at school education.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.301-318
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• 2017

This paper explores students' question generation process and their study in small group discussion. The research is based on Anthropological Theory of the Didactic developed by Chevallard. He argues that the savior (knowledge) we are dealing with at school is based on a paradigm that we prevail over whether we 'learn' or 'study' socially. In other words, we haven't provided students with autonomous research and learning opportunities under 'the dominant paradigm of visiting works'. As an alternative, he suggests that we should move on to a new didactic paradigm for 'questioning the world a question', and proposes the Study and Research Courses (SRC) as its pedagogical structure. This study explores the SRC structure of small group activities in solving ill-structured problems. In order to explore the SRC structure generated in the small group discussion, one middle school teacher and 7 middle school students participated in this study. The students were divided into two groups with 4 students and 3 students. The teacher conducted the lesson with ill-structured problems provided by researchers. We collected students' presentation materials and classroom video records, and then analyzed based on SRC structure. As a result, we have identified that students were able to focus on the valuable information they needed to explore. We found that the nature of the questions generated by students focused on details more than the whole of the problem. In the SRC course, we also found pattern of a small group discussion. In other words, they generated questions relatively personally, but sought answer cooperatively. This study identified the possibility of SRC as a tool to provide a holistic learning mode of small group discussions in small class, which bring about future mathematics classrooms. This study is meaningful to investigate how students develop their own mathematical inquiry process through self-directed learning, learner-specific curriculum are emphasized and the paradigm shift is required.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.219-237
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• 2010

On inquiry of international comparison assessment, the Korean students achieve high scores in mathematics while they achieve relatively low scores in responses of the affective questionnaire. It can be an important point in mathematics education of Korea, but there are few studies which explore the specific reasons. So in this study, we analysed the results of PISA 2003(in math domain) based on multiple regression analysis and correlation analysis to investigate the reasons and features of those phenomena. We compared the results of Korean students with students of other countries. As a result, there were 7 factors which effect on Korean students' affective domain in mathematics learning and they were statistically significant. According to this study, it needs to improve students' positive attitudes to their school, mathematical interest, and positive self-concept. And it needs to develop an actual instrument to explore the affective domain which effect on mathematics learning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.269-277
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• 2016

Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cases that have formed and operated teachers' learning communities through cross-curricular consulting at the school level. The purpose of this study is to explore cross-curricular instructional consulting as an activity of teachers' learning communities at the school level, and investigate the effect of cross-curricular instructional consulting on middle school science teaching. We analyzed features and limitations of cross-curricular instructional consulting revealed in three case studies in middle school, including open classes and instructional consulting sessions, and conducted additional instructional consulting on the same videotaped science classes with science experts from outside. According to the results, science inquiry experiments are often replaced with text reading and interpreting, students' misconceptions and exact scientific representations are ignored, and the goal setting as well as class coverage has been questionable and disputable in science classes resulted from cross-curricular instructional consulting. Discussed in the conclusion are the necessity of cross-curricular instructional consulting in middle school, and ways to overcome limitations of the method of cross-curricular instructional consulting, including alternatives to a praise-only policy in cross-curricular instructional consulting, ways to use cross-curricular instructional consulting without compromising the subject's essence, and ways to improve the undue authority of consultants.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.855-865
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• 2012

The goal of this research is to investigate ways to improve science teaching methods to develop students' key competencies. Since the OECD DeSeCo (Definition and Selection of Key Competencies) project, key competencies are redefined as 'what people should know and be able to do in order to lead a successful life in a well-functioning society, which leads many countries to emphasize competency-based curriculum. In this research, we collected and analyzed foreign and domestic classroom cases that have implemented competency-based curriculum in science teaching. Through open-ended interviews with the teachers and principals, we explored ways to improve science teaching methods to develop students' key competencies. In foreign cases, science teachers emphasized students' knowing what KCs to accomplish, activities and student-centered learning, students' group activities and collaboration, and greater curriculum integration among subjects and contexts. Korean science teachers argued that the KCs should be realized through teaching methods and emphasized scientific inquiry learning whereby non-science track students could also benefit from science lessons. Korean science teachers also emphasized links to real-life situations, providing students with various learning experiences that supported students to develop the KCs, and the delivery of an integrated curriculum. In the conclusion section, the difficulties with the implementation of key competencies are discussed.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.495-515
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• 2012

This study is to diversely analyze teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) regarding to the area of plane figures and discuss the consideration for the materialization of the effective class in learning the area of plane figures by identifying the improvements based on problems indicated in PCK. The subjects of inquiry are what the problems with teachers' PCK regarding to the area of plane figures are and how they can be improved. In which is the first domain of PCK, teachers need to fully understand the concept of the area and the properties and classification of the area and length, recognized the sequence structure as a subject of guidance and improve the direction which naturally connects the flow of measurement by using random units in guidance of the area. In which is the second domain of PCK, teachers need to establish understanding of the concept for the area and understanding of a formula as a subject matter object and improve the activity, discovery and research oriented class for students as a guidance method by escaping from teacher oriented expository class and calculation oriented repetitive learning. They also need to avoid the biased evaluation of using a formula and evenly evaluate whether students understand the concept of the area as a performance evaluation method. In which is the third domain of PCK, teachers need to fully understand the concept of the area rather than explanation oriented correction and fundamentally teach students about errors by suggesting the activity to explore the properties of the area and length. They also need to plan a method to reflect student's affective aspects besides a compliment and encouragement and apply this method to the class. In which is the fourth domain of PCK, teachers need to increase the use of random units by having an independent consciousness about textbooks and supplementing the activity of textbooks and restructure textbooks by suggesting problematic situations in a real life and teaching the sequence structure. Also, class groups will need to be divided into an entire group, individual group, partner group and normal group.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.785-798
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• 2010

The purposes of this study are to investigate Korean science teachers' perception of the current science teacher preparation courses in Korea, especially focused on subjects of science education, and to induce implications for improvement of in-service program for science teachers. To do this, a questionnaire was developed by the authors and administered to the 215 science teachers sampled nationwide. The study concluded that science teachers perceived that the two compulsory subjects, 'science education theories' and 'science teaching-learning materials and teaching methods' were not enough for a professional science teacher. Particularly, they consisently insisted that more practices under the relationship with teaching science in schools were necessary when learning subjects of science education. Based on science teachers' response, we recommended that the following 4 subjects should be added in the course of pre-service program for science teachers: 'Development of experiment/demonstration devices', 'Teaching creativity and education for the gifted in science', 'Development of science teaching materials', and 'Science inquiry learning and teaching'.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.64 no.6
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• pp.429-437
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• 2020

This study investigated a total of 529 integrated science teachers' implementation and changes to apply the curriculum-instruction-assessment. Data was collected through online survey on scientific competencies and skills, teaching-learning and assessment methods, changes of teacher's preparation, topics/materials, teaching-learning, and assessment to apply the curriculum-instruction-assessment as teaching integrated science. The results of the study were as follows: first, in the integrated science class, teachers implemented more on scientific communication and scientific inquiry among scientific core competencies, and analysis and interpretation of data collection and communication among scientific skills. Teachers often taught in lectures and used multiple choice items and short essay for evaluation. Teacher groups with less than 10 years of teaching experience appeared to be less active in teaching scientific core competencies and skills than those with more than 10 years. Second, Teachers have increased more time and efforts to search and to organize various materials in addition to textbooks, and try to integrated concepts in various fields to prepare learning topics and textbooks. Third, even though teachers made little change in implementing the process-oriented assessment, they used instructional strategies to increase student engagement in the integrated science class, restructured the instruction to provide immediate feedback after conducting the assessment. It is necessary to build a system that ensures fairness and credibility of evaluation while respecting the autonomy and professionalism of teachers.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.111-135
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• 2023

This study conducted a student-centered inquiry lesson on the similarity of figures using AlgeoMath, with student learning aspects analyzed from a communication perspective. This approach aimed to inform pedagogical implications related to teaching geometric similarity. Through utilizing AlgeoMath, students were able to visually confirm that their chosen figures were similar, experiencing key mathematical concepts such as the ratio of similarity to the area of similar figures, and congruency and similarity conditions of triangles. In the lessons applying this concept, we categorized the features of similarity learning displayed by students, as seen in the communication aspects of their exploratory activities, into 'Understanding similarity ratios', 'Grasping conditions of similarity in triangles', and 'Comparing concepts of congruency and similarity'. Through exploratory activities based on AlgeoMath, students discussed the meaning and mathematical relationships of key concepts related to similarity, such as the ratio of similarity to the area of figures, and the meaning and conditions of congruence and similarity in triangles. By improving misconceptions about the similarity of figures, they were able to develop deeper mathematical understanding. This study revealed that in teaching and learning the geometric similarity using AlgeoMath, obtaining meaningful pedagogical outcome was not solely due to the features of the AlgeoMath environment, but also largely depended on the teacher's guidance and intervention that stimulated students' thinking.