• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.611-625
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• 2009

The purpose of this research is to investigate the characteristics of beginning science teachers' subject matter knowledge (SMK) as revealed in their classroom teaching methods. In this research, we explored six beginning teachers' classroom teaching episodes on the 'work and energy' unit. Using open-ended interviews with the teachers and group discussions taking place on a regular basis to analyze and compare the classes of six beginning teachers, we extracted the features of beginning science teachers' SMK. Using grounded theory methods, the characteristics of beginning science teachers' SMK drawn from this research are: (1) beginning teachers' positivistic epistemology on science, (2) claiming the teacher's authority based on rich subject content knowledge, and (3) beginning teachers' science elitism. These epistemological characteristics are realized such PCK as (1) representational errors caused by the teacher's own science misconception, (2) doing harm to students with too much content knowledge, (3) sporadic content presentation lacking a focus, and (4) surplus class hours with lack of effective science teaching explanations. Suggestions for alternative perspectives on science SMK are presented by experienced teachers. In conclusion, science teachers' SMK is necessary, but not sufficient, for effective teaching. Science teachers' SMK does have an effect on science teaching, mediated by other types of teacher knowledge. The beginning teachers need a systematic support to transform their SMK into a viable PCK.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.621-634
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• 1998

Emthusiasm about the introduction of computers into mathematics education is widespred. But, the perspectives about the relationship between mathematics education and computer are diverse. The purpose of this study is to examine theoretical background for using computers in mathematics education. In spite of the pedagogical possibilities of computers. only a small minority of mathematics teachers are using computers in mathematics classroom. It is natural to seek this obstacles within theoretical background of the teachers who manage computers, In this study, We discuss the problems in the two sides. First, due to increased computer activity, relationship of mathematics in school with mathematics in society is changing. It is tension between academic mathematics and practical mathematics. School mathematics have to be changed toward stressing practical mathematics. Second problem is the dialectical relationship between the individual and the collective. While maintaining a respect for the individuality of student contributions. We take into account the social dimension of mathematical meaning-making. We discussed theoretical clarification of work collaborative learning. We propose the case study for the roles of computer in collaborative mathematics learning.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.188-205
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• 2018

For STEM education science teachers usually choose topics which are related to both science and other disciplinary contents. Nevertheless it is not clear for the teachers to adopt what kind of criteria for their choices. Interdisciplinary teaching is not a mixture of science content with another one from different disciplines as resources for the content teaching. Instead the criteria and perspectives for the integration need to be clearly defined. In this study we investigated how to integrate science and other disciplines in terms of interdisciplinary teaching. Family resemblance approach by Wittgenstein, recently revised by Erduran and Dagher, was applied to comparative analysis of science, math, and physical education curriculum documents in Korea. Aim and value, methodological rules and methods, knowledge, and activities in each discipline were compared and analyzed with the view of FRA. Results of the study described alternative criteria of how to find appropriate topics for interdisciplinary teaching.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.331-351
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• 2002

It is widely recommended that teachers should actively mediate students' engagement with tools such as manipulative materials. This paper is to help to parse classroom life so that both social and psychological aspects are accounted for and coordinated. Building on the theory of affordances from ecological psychology and the activity theory from sociocultural perspectives, the main strategy of this paper is to view manipulative materials as simultaneously participating in social and psychological activity systems. Within these activity systems it is charted how both mathematical affordances related to the structure of mathematical concepts and ecological affordances related to socially situated classroom practices need to be considered by teachers in effective mediation of mathematical manipulatives. This paper has three major sections. The first section develops a theoretical extension of Gibson's theory of affordances from natural to social environments. The second section introduces mathematical and ecological affordances using empirical data from a grade two elementary school classroom. The third section illustrates the need of coordinating the two affordances as embedded in different activity systems.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• no.4
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• pp.15-38
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• 1998

The main purpose of this paper is to take a look at a controversial approach to critical discourse analysis for the suggestion of a well-balanced perspective on such a biased presupposition and methodology. Currently linguists, language teachers and even social scientists have shown their strong interests in critical language awareness and its ideological involvements in order to encourage the general public to realize the social function of language in all modes of communication. It seems, however, to me to be increasingly clear that critical language study calls for a careful attempt based on an appropriate combination of textual facts and contextual factors in the interpretation of discourses. From this point, of view, this paper suggests some pedagogic / analytical guidelines for a study on language and its social connotations as a result of examining the cogency of two contrasting argumentations in relation to critical discourse analysis.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.193-206
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• 2011

The purpose of the study is to examine the use of emotion vocabulary by Korean English learners. Three basic emotion fields, pleasure, anger, and fear were selected to elicit the participants' responses. L1 English speakers' data was also collected for comparison. The major results are as follows. First, English learners responded with various inappropriate verb forms like I feel~, I am~ while the majority of English native speaking teachers responded with subjunctive forms like I would feel~. In addition, L2 English learners used mostly simple and coordination sentences. Second, the lexical richness, measured through type/token ratio, was higher in English L1 data than in English L2 data. The proportion of emotion lemmas reflects the lexical richness or the diversity of the emotion words. Lastly, L2 English learners' responses focused on a few typical adjectives like happy, angry and scared. This structural and semantic distinctiveness of Korean English learners' emotion words was discussed from pedagogical perspectives.

• Educational Technology International
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.79-105
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• 2009

The notion of contradiction from Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) perspectives is known as an "engine" for the development of human practices because participants attempt to adjust their practices to resolve contractions. This study examines two middle school teachers' classroom practices from CHAT, focusing on the role of contradictions that emerged between their existing teaching practices and constructivist activities in the development of a student-centered technology-integrated learning environment. Findings indicated that teachers' awareness and resolution of contradictions played a large role in the development of a technology-supported student-centered learning environment, a culturally more advanced activity system: students displayed greater responsibilities for their learning and were guided to make effective decisions for their learning activity.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.209-221
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• 2014

In the last few decades there has been much interest in how mathematics can be effectively taught and learnt. The Third Wave is a unique ongoing international collaborative mathematics education research project, which aims to explore the relevant values of effective school mathematics teaching from both the teacher and student perspectives. As part of this project, this study investigates the related findings from students on the Chinese mainland. Multiple data were collected through classroom observations, focus group interviews, and written, open-ended questions. Twenty-four students from junior and senior secondary schools were invited to write down their views on an effective lesson, a good mathematics teacher, and how to do well in mathematics learning. Results showed that among the eight values determined in the study, the values of involvement, explanation, and examples were embraced by students across all grades. Students preferred teacher-led mathematics teaching. Junior secondary students placed more value on teachers' personalities, whereas senior students placed more value on teachers' teaching manners.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.57-75
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• 2007

This small-scale research project attempts to describe and explore the Korean students' perspectives on oral classroom interaction in a second language classroom in a graduate course in America. Based on the interpretist paradigm, this study employed the qualitative research methodology, triangulating the following methods: class observation, interviews, and document analysis. The findings are that the Korean participants perceived the importance of oral classroom interaction in an American classroom, and that there were shared several factors which influence their participation such as socio-cultural differences, course content, English skills, course requirement, and classroom activity types. Based upon the findings, pedagogical implications are provided for the teachers to help Korean students achieve academic success in American universities.

• The Korean Journal of Elementary Counseling
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.95-116
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• 2007

This thesis is aimed to understand when and how elementary teachers scold their students and to explore any common psychological factors shown in the process. In order to produce the meaningful results of the research, applied is experience-based analysing method which expectedly leads to discovering psychological cause and effect occurring when school teachers scold students. 11 teachers of elementary school, including me the author, have joined as co-researchers to solve the next two issues and I made guidelines for the analysis. Given that co-researchers are locally scattered, they were grouped into three and in the mean time, analysis on scolding during 4 meeting sessions were made. The results of research problems are as follows. First issue: What common psychological factors exist in when and how teachers scold students? Common factors in 'when' part include three cases: teachers discovering the factors hindering student's desirable growth, noticing the class rules and peaceful communities are broken, or experiencing humiliating remarks and annoying behaviors and In "how' part, on the other hand, teachers speak up in a stronger voice or raise their tone to point out student's wrongdoing and give students a stoic and fierce look. Second issue: What psychological development takes place in scolding? Teachers who participated in this scolding experiment have experienced' feeling responsible and upset'. Feeling responsible is highly likely to be interpreted to result from the idea that teachers supposedly support students to grow into well-functional person in society. Meanwhile, feeling upset or even humiliated is caused by the frustration when they find their authority and dignity Ignored and damaged. The phases teachers go through during the scolding are: recognizing scold-inviting situation-> interpreting clues deserving enough to scold-> being aroused into the feelings-> deciding how to respond-> executing decision-> dealing with emotion. This thesis has distinctive qualities from existing ones in that the research focuses on agonies and conflicts faced with school teachers in class. On top of that, it is noted that this thesis meaningfully enables to realize teachers' psychological mechanism activated from scolding and to provide teachers with opportunities to see themselves more proper perspectives. However, there still remains some reservation since I had rather short period of time to collect data and we, co-researchers, had meeting sessions. To compensate for the possible shortcomings shown in this thesis, further research is expected to be followed to perform a practical analysis.