• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.173-180
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate about current status of science field study in elementary schools. A total of 72 elementary teachers in Busan and Gyungnam districts were involved and the data from questionnaire was gathered. The questionnaire was comprised two parts: items on general level include the epistemological aspect and actual condition and items on concrete level according to chapters of elementary school science curriculum. The major findings are as follows: 1. Many teachers cognize the requirement of science field study in 7th Korean elementary school science curriculum is larger than 6th one. But they respond the actual number of science field study in 7th curriculum is nearly equal to 6th. 2. In analysis to grades, the actual number of field study decrease as grade is high. 3. In the science content aspects, the requirement of field study is the largest on biology domain and earth science domain. 4. Many teachers have pointed out “the difficulty of administration for field study” and “inappropriated surrounding of their school” as the problems of science field study in elementary school.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.86-92
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• 2010

Although constructivist assessment has been emphasized by many science educators, most elementary school teachers are still not familiar with this. In order to investigate the causes of this problem, we examined the perceptions of pre-service elementary school teachers toward constructivist science assessment and the relationships among the perceptions toward constructivist science assessment, the views on science teaching and learning, science teaching efficacy beliefs, and the perceptions toward constructivist science learning environment. Analyses of the results revealed that the perceptions of pre-service elementary school teachers toward constructivist science assessment were higher than those of the elementary school teachers reported previously. The results of a stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that the views on constructivist science teaching and learning and personal science teaching efficacy beliefs were the significant predictors of the perceptions toward constructivist science assessment.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.373-381
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• 2009

This study investigated pre-service elementary school teacher's perception of science curriculum use in Korea and Japan. Ninety four pre-service elementary teachers in Korea and fifty three pre-service elementary teachers in Japan are participated in this study. As the result, four patterns were revealed. First, science isn't perceived as an important or interesting subject by the pre-service elementary teachers in both countries. Second, the perception of Korean pre-service teachers about the objectives of science subject is relatively negative. Third, in the case of Korea, the perception about the effectiveness of science subject content and level, and the amount of learning is shown to be more negative than those of Japan. Finally, in both countries, the science majors and the non-science majors have negative perceptions about the inclusion of the perspectives and methods of assessment and the preparation of teaching and learning plan in curriculum.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.102-111
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• 2010

This study examined the instructional influences of MBL programs on elementary school students' science achievement, scientific inquiry skills, and science learning motivation. The perceptions of students and their teacher toward science classes using MBL programs were also examined. The subject of this study was sixty four 4th grade students from two classes. The experimental group engaged in science classes that applied MBL and the control group engaged in traditional science classes based on the textbook and experiment workbook. As results, there was no significant difference in academic achievement, scientific inquiry skills, however, were significantly higher for the experiment group compared to the control group. There was also significant difference in the relevance and confidence, the sub-categories of science learning motivation. In the analyses of students' perceptions toward science classes using MBL, students showed positive perceptions in aspects of interests of science classes, content comprehension, and convenience of experiments. The teacher also showed positive perceptions using MBL in elementary science classes. Educational implications of appling MBL in elementary science classes were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.261-272
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• 2008

This study focused on explicitly instructional effects about NOS(Nature of Science) of sixth grade students. Participants were 28 sixth grade students. Data sources included classroom observations of the explicit NOS science lessons, questionnaire, and interviews. 5 students among the participants were selected for the interviews. Date were analyzed for finding the changes of students' thoughts. Before the instruction, the majority of participants held naive views of NOS, but after the instruction, the majority of participants held informed views of NOS. Developing informed conception of NOS within curriculum is necessary to growth of science education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.507-518
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of verbal analogy activities on science achievement and science attitude of elementary students. Students consolidated lessons by making short sentences with core words that a teacher gave for scaffolding instruction. Many researches about analogies have been conducted in science education. However, most of them considered analogy as learning tools, whereas this research considers analogy as a cognitive process. To see the effects of verbal analogy activities, two groups were selected from 6th grade elementary school students; one was an experimental group working with the student-generated verbal analogy and the other was a control group with teacher-centered and textbook-centered activities. Science achievement, scientific attitudes, attitudes toward science and retention were tested after the treated lessons.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.198-205
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• 2013

For assessing classroom environment, numerous instruments were developed and reported the survey results for science students in science education. In this study I translated Constructivist Learning Environment Scales (CLES) were into Korean versions for elementary school teachers, and measured the reliability. The subjects were randomly selected from three departments of an University of Education in a metropolitan city. All of them were 110 students, who would be elementary school teachers. According to the survey results, pre-service teachers for elementary school have recognized constructivistly for learning environments in an actual forms. In a scale of student negotiation they have most constructivistly recognized learning environment, and moderately in scales of relevance, uncertainty and critical view while they have seldom constructivistly recognized in a scale of shared control. Also Korean version CLES would be an reliable instruments for constructivist assessing learning environments.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.245-255
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• 2012

The purposes of this research are to analyze preservice elementary teachers' degree of difficulty in classes of seasonal variation and suggest the measures of classes so that preservice elementary teachers can progress classes of seasonal variation effectively. To achieve them, the research was conducted for 90 first graders completing teaching method of elementary science in P university of education from Sep. to Dec. 2012. This research was conducted, based on the results of in-depth interview for 9 preservice elementary teachers who performed classes of seasonal variation, survey on the degree of class difficulty and evaluation of classes on 8 classes theme of Earth sector in elementary science. The results of this research are as follows. The first, preservice elementary teachers had relatively high class difficulty for teaching seasonal variation among the sector of the earth in elementary science. The second, in the evaluation of preservice elementary teachers' classes, the more the subject showed high class difficulty, the more the score of class evaluation was low. The reason is analyzed that high class difficulty reduces teacher's confidence. The third, preservice elementary teachers had insufficient knowledges and concepts which are basically necessary for the classes of seasonal variation. Especially, it was more serious for preservice elementary teachers who didn't learn Earth-science during their high school time. The fourth, it is necessery that concrete and systematical teaching method should be developed so as to improving preservice elementary teachers' teaching method for the classes of seasonal variation.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.328-340
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of a science drama on elementary students' science attitudes. To this study, the survey measured science attitudes conducted to the experimental group(N=33) and the control group(N=33), and it was interviewed to them after their science drama. The interview was recorded to make a transcript, then used to complement the results of sub-domain analysis. The results were as follows: There was a statistically significant difference in curiosity and creativity regarding scientific attitude, and interest in science and appreciation of scientist regarding attitudes towards science. Though there was no statistical significance in the other domain of science attitudes, we confirmed that students' science attitudes was changed more positively and meaningfully by the analysis of the interview. Based-on this study, we suggested the implications and the following studies.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.242-250
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• 2011

The present study compared the contents and methods of elementary science education in schools and education institutes for the gifted and surveyed the contents and methods of science education for the gifted desired by students in order to set the direction of elementary science education at education institutes for the gifted. For this study, we conducted interviews with a 5th-grade male student and a 6th-grade female student at the science class of the Education Institutes for the Gifted run by Iksan Education Office. Besides, printed materials were collected and used to refer to the contents of education. The results of this study are as follows. First, in school, the student learn according to the curriculum defined by the government and the contents begin with elementary and basic ones and move step by step to deeper and wider scientific principles. On the contrary, in the education institute for the gifted, the contents of teaching materials are decided at the teacher's discretion, and because they target gifted children, their level is higher than that of the science curriculum in school. Second, the most common teaching method in school is lecturing and, next, experiments, group activities, etc. On the contrary, in the education institute for the gifted, experiments are used most frequently, and various educational methods are adopted including lectures, project learning and cyber learning. Third, the contents of science education that gifted children wanted to learn are not limited to any specific area. Science education methods that gifted children wanted were various, including project learning, group activities, experiments, and report making and presentation.