• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2014

This study compares the perceptions of elementary gifted child and science teacher in a science class for the gifted. In order to explore the research problem, students and teachers answered a written semi-structured questionnaire and participated in interviews regarding the gifted science class. The data was collected and analyzed. Science teachers recognized the characteristics of a good science class, especially in terms of educational content and teaching methodology. First, they suggested promoting inquiry skills, presenting a challenging task in atypical topic selection, student-centered curriculum, and controlling the pace of learning to recognize individual differences. Second, in terms of the science class skills and attitudes category, teachers recommended raising mutual satisfaction through vigorous interaction within a permissible atmosphere. Finally, science teachers need to strive for continued professional growth. Gifted children, meanwhile, want to investigate a wide range of topics without time constraints. Additionally, they may have to explore challenging topics further. They prefer to act like scientists in that they enjoy group activities, communication and cooperation. In particular, they want to be evaluated by others in a totally embedded assessment. Gifted children also expect teachers to understand the life circumstances and needs of the students. In addition, they asked for teachers to respect individual experiments and to show them how to safely use new equipment or research methods. As a result, gifted children and science teachers have to recognize the differences of opinion concerning a good science class for the gifted. This study can help formulate strategies to establish quality management of materials in gifted science classes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.622-634
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• 1999

We have investigated the 6th middle school science curriculum and its implementation based upon the results of middle school science teachers' and professors' ratings and self-reportings. The national-wide survey was administrated to obtain the data from 213 teachers of 112 middle schools and 43 professors of colleges of education. The survey items correspond to four stages of science curriculum. In the stage of the planned science curriculum, 'goals', 'framework of contents' and 'contents' are relevant to the basic guideline for curriculum revision, 'the more emphasis on inquiry activities'. However, the amount of contents is not appropriate, and 'methods' are difficult to attain. In the stage of the written science curriculum, 'goals', 'framework of contents', 'contents', 'methods' and 'evaluations' are not useful for teachers to teach science. In the stage of the implemented science curriculum, a small number of teachers use the issues of local community, organize the different group activities, develop assessment tools cooperatively, and conduct a lesson and a program considering students' diversities. This is partially because of the large amount of learning contents, the lack of materials and the weakness of supporting system. Finally, in the stage of the attained science curriculum, the students' achievements under the 6th curriculum is not higher than those under the other curricula.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.671-685
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• 2012

In this study, we developed an analogical experimental design strategy emphasizing understanding and checking stages and applied it to four groups consisting of 7th grade science-gifted students. We classified the patterns of experimental design processes and analyzed the verbal interactions among the science-gifted students at the levels of turn and interaction unit. The analyses of the results reveled that three groups were relevant to reinitiated motion and the other to backward-divergent motion. In the analyses of turn and interaction unit, the frequencies of the statements related to the task were high, especially 'making suggestion' and 'elaborated symmetrical interaction'. The analyses for each stage of strategy indicated that the frequencies of 'explain', 'question', and 'cumulative interaction' at understanding stage were high. At designing stage, the frequencies of 'making suggestion', 'cumulative interaction', and 'disputative interaction' were found to be high. At checking stage, 'making suggestion', 'receiving opinion', and 'disputative interaction' were high. In the comparison of the patterns, the qualitative differences among interaction unit were found at all the stages, whereas there were differences only between designing and checking stages in the turn cases. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.372-387
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• 2012

This study aims to identify unique small group norms and their influence on the process of constructing a scientific model. We developed instructional materials for the construction of a model of blood flow in the heart and conducted research on eighth-grade students from one middle school. We randomly selected 10 small groups, and videotaped and recorded their dialogues and behaviors. The data was categorized according to the types of interaction and then analyzed to investigate the characteristics of group norms and models in one or two representative groups for each type. The results show that the types of interaction, the quality of the group models, and the group norms were different in each group. Even though one teacher guided students through the same task in the inquiry context, each group revealed different patterns of discourse and behavior, which were based on norms of cognitive responsibility, the need for justification, participation, and membership. With the exception of one group, there was little cognitive responsibility and justification for students' opinions. Ultimately, these norms influenced the model construction of small groups. A group that forms norms to encourage the active participation and justify members' opinions with cognitive responsibility was encouraged to do inferential thinking and construct a group model close to the target model. This study has instructional implications for the establishment of a classroom environment that facilitates learning through small group activities.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.395-418
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the influence of mathematical tasks on mathematical communication. Mathematical tasks were classified into four different levels according to cognitive demands, such as memorization, procedure, concept, and exploration. For this study, 24 students were selected from the 5th grade of an elementary school located in Seoul. They were randomly assigned into six groups to control the effects of extraneous variables on the main study. Mathematical tasks for this study were developed on the basis of cognitive demands and then two different tasks were randomly assigned to each group. Before the experiment began, students were trained for effective communication for two months. All the procedures of students' learning were videotaped and transcripted. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were applied to analyze the data. The findings of this study point out that the levels of mathematical tasks were positively correlated to students' participation in mathematical communication, meaning that tasks with higher cognitive demands tend to promote students' active participation in communication with inquiry-based questions. Secondly, the result of this study indicated that the level of students' mathematical justification was influenced by mathematical tasks. That is, the forms of justification changed toward mathematical logic from authorities such as textbooks or teachers according to the levels of tasks. Thirdly, it found out that tasks with higher cognitive demands promoted various negotiation processes. The results of this study implies that cognitively complex tasks should be offered in the classroom to promote students' active mathematical communication, various mathematical tasks and the diverse teaching models should be developed, and teacher education should be enhanced to improve teachers' awareness of mathematical tasks.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.52-63
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• 2005

National competitiveness is related directly to the strength of educational competitiveness of universities. Seoul National University (SNU) has been taking efforts to improve its competitiveness in University education in variety of ways and the classroom assessment is one key example of those. The current classroom assessment system practiced at universities is being used to evaluate courses and professors in charge by the university administration or evaluation committee. The classroom assessment system is not intended to put students and professors as the subject of the evaluation. In this case, the evaluation is intended wrongfully to rank the courses and evaluate professors' achievement by assigning grades on the lectures. Instead, a proper classroom assessment system should be targeted to improve the quality of lectures by encouraging communication among professor and students in the classroom. In this study, it was intended to investigate a suitable classroom assessment system to enhance the effectiveness of education, not to rank the courses and evaluate professors' achievement. For this purpose, research has been carried out to investigate opinions of professors at SNU on the criteria of classroom assessment and to analyze the criteria of classroom assessment at other domestic universities in Korea. The inquiries for feedback on the lecture by the student in the class was analyzed. The current classroom assessment system at SNU was reviewed and an improvement plan was devised to evaluate liberal art courses of engineering and science schools at SNU. In this research, the problems in the classroom assessment system was reviewed and improvement points were searched to utilize the classroom assessment system more effectively for the improvement of lecture quality.

• School Mathematics
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.379-396
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to analyze characteristics of problem solving in mathematics for gifted students through case study on solving the mathematical problem for gifted students, and to investigate what are relationships with the cognitive and affective characteristics. To this end, this study was to analyze the characteristics on the problem solving in mathematics by using qualitative research method after it selected two students who had specific education for brilliant students. As a result, this study has shown that it had high preference for question with clear answer, high preference for individual inquiry learning, high adhesion to answer for question, and high adhesion for assignment on characteristics of process of problem solving, but there was much difference in spirit of competition. As to the characteristics of thoughts in problem solving, this study has shown that it had high grasp capacity, intuitive insight, and capacity for visualization, but there were differences in capacity for generalization and adaptability. However, both two students had low values in deductive thought. In addition, as to the home environment and cognitive and affective characteristics, they were not related to the characteristics on problem solving directly, but it has shown that it affected each other indirectly. As to the conclusion of this study, this researcher thinks that it will be valuable documentation in order to improve curriculum, development of textbooks, and teaching method for special education for the gifted students and education for secondary mathematics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.657-668
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• 2016

The purpose of the study is to explore the types and coping methods of dilemmas that pre-service science teachers experience during student teaching. For this, we collected 131 dilemma journals that 34 pre-service science teachers wrote during a four-week period of student teaching. Results show that first, there are five categories of dilemmas, they are, 'Which science teacher should I be?', 'What is good science teaching?', 'How should I build relationships with the people around me at school?', and 'Who am I as a student teacher?'. Second, pre-service science teachers' status as a students-teachers made them cope with dilemmas passively. Third, when they cope with the dilemmas, student-teachers considered the dilemmas as conflicts of irreconcilable alternatives rather than opportunities of conciliation and compromise, therefore, most pre-service science teachers choose just one alternative and only 20% of dilemmas are resolved by compromise choice. Finally, dilemmas which showed the features of science teaching are the dilemmas related to scientific inquiry teaching and science teaching-learning model. Based on the results, we discussed the implications for teacher education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.527-538
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to select the factors of 'Group scientific creativity' and to find out how 'Group scientific creativity' turns out in the creative problem-solving process of students. To select the factors that affect 'Group scientific creativity', this research extracted 27 influencing factors on the group creativity from the prior study and organized them according to opinions of education experts. To select factors that affect 'Group scientific creativity' in the creative problem-solving process of students, this research analyzed the group problem-solving process that has been done on 72 gifted students for two days. Main results of the study is as follows: First, nine elements such as scientific thinking, scientific knowledge, scientific information-processing capacity, motivation, challenge, age and gender, existence of diversity, creativity educational experience, and the group cohesiveness were selected as human factors. Four elements such as scientific communication skills, scientific inquiry process, autonomy, and leadership were selected as the combining factors. Also, three elements such as the learning environment, teacher types, and compensation were selected as the Environmental factors. Second, it was possible to find that the group scientific creativity influence factors affecting the creative process by analyzing the gifted students in creative-problem solving process. Based on these results, this study described additional points on the factors improving 'Group scientific-creativity.'

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.693-703
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• 2018

One of the important competencies in knowledge and information society is the competency of Knowledge information processing. This is closely related to science education and described as one of the core competencies in the 2015 national curriculum revision. Even with a general agreement of the educational necessity of this competency, its practice in class depends mostly on teachers' will. Therefore, we surveyed science teachers' perceptions and classroom condition about the competency of Knowledge information processing, and we analyzed the questionnaires of 64 middle and high school teachers in Seoul and interviewed three teachers. As a result, all teachers shared the importance of Knowledge information processing competency and explained it in terms of social paradigm and goal of the subject. However, there were not many cases of actual practice in class. The teachers answered that time for Knowledge information processing competency is not enough in class and they also lack of PCK on this competency. About half of the teachers had experiences in teacher training about Knowledge information processing competency but most of their experiences are related to information utilization literacy. The importance of Knowledge information processing competency was very high in three factors (collection, analyzation, and utilization), among which information analysis was the highest. Middle school teachers showed higher scores in most questions even though the differences were not significant, and high school teachers showed higher scores in the importance of information sources at a significant level. In order to cultivate competencies, it is necessary to expand the meaning of science inquiry so as to cover this competency and to consider ways of linking with other subjects and develop methods of teaching and learning.