• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.255-270
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to investigate the elementary pre-service teachers' views about "the purpose of science experiments". For the study, the views about the purposes of scientists' experiments and school science experiments were surveyed from 227 pre-service teachers. And the responses were analyzed based on their gender, intensive majors and school science test scores. The main results of the study are as follows. First, in relation to the purpose of scientists' experiments, the pre-service teachers considered internal values of doing experiments were more worthy than the external values of it. In particular, the pre-service teachers responded that the most important purpose of the science experiments is 'to get the evidences for the theories and arguments'. On the other hand, the views from the women and social studies major pre-service teachers were more diverse than those of the man and science major pre-service teachers. Second, in relation to the purpose of school science experiments, the pre-service teachers excessively considered that the internal values of school science experiments were more worthy than the external values. In particular, only few pre-service teachers were aware of social and personal aspects of the experiments, though they considered well that the experiments are useful tools for the school science study. Third, there were quite different aspects of pre-service teachers' views between the purposes of scientists' experiments and school science experiments. For example, the views about the scientist's experiments were relatively broad concerning the nature of scientific experiments, but the school science experiments were just regarded as an educational tool for the science study. Based on the results from the study, some science educational implication were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.81-100
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• 2002

This study identified concepts of heat and temperature. The study was conducted by 200 pre-service elementary school teachers at J-university. The questionnaire consisted of 11 multiple choice questions regarding equilibrium of heat, amount of heat, conduction, and radiation. The questions were designed to provide reasons based on answers. The results showed a misconception about the direction of heat transfer. A large percentage of individuals surveyed believed temperature was a measure of heat and also thought heat to be an element. They were not able to distinguish between conceptions of heat and conceptions of temperature.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.8-14
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• 2006

This study examined how pre-service elementary teachers' perceptions regarding the learning environment (learning focus/ability-meritocracy/cooperative climate) and achievement goals (mastery/performance-approach/performance-avoidance) in science education courses jointly contributed to their science teaching efficacy beliefs (personal science teaching efficacy belief/science teaching outcome expectancy). A path analysis supported a causal model in which the perception of the learning focus influenced the mastery goal, which in turn influenced the personal science teaching efficacy belief and science teaching outcome expectancy. The perception of learning focus also had a direct effect on science teaching outcome expectancy. The perception of ability-meritocracy influenced personal science teaching efficacy belief via the performance-approach (positively) or, conversely, the performance-avoidance goal (negatively). No link .was deduced from the perception of cooperative climate. The educational implications of these findings were also discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.113-126
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• 2013

In this study, the researcher aimed to increase productive reflection of pre-service elementary teachers through reflective journal writing and discussion after science peer teaching practice. 'Productive reflection' involves consideration and analysis of interrelationships among aspects of teaching including learners and learning, subject matter knowledge, assessment, and instruction. During 8 week efforts, productive reflection has increased gradually in both individual journal and class discussion. However half of individual journals didn't show productive reflection even in the final stage. This implicated that development of reflective thinking is an achievable but progressive change. By describing the progress in discussion and participants' responses on journal writing and discussion activity, this study shed light on practical ways of enhancing reflective teacher education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2018

Factors and causal structures of pre-service elementary teachers about the critical thinking and the scientific literacy competency were investigated in this study. The third grade university students and the first grade university students in the metropolitan city participated in this study. The factor analysis method and the structural equation modeling method were used for the data analysis, and the following results were obtained. First, the third grade university students and the first grade university students recognized 'inquisitive thinking' factor and 'reflective thinking' factor as factors of the critical thinking, and 'scientific explanation' factor and 'evidence-based conclusion' factor as factors of the scientific literacy competency respectively. Second, the third grade university students showed more the influence from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'scientific explanation' factor and from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'evidence-based conclusion' factor than the first grade university students.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.93-104
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between pre-service elementary teacher's prior knowledge and processes of observations and hypotheses generation via analysis of descriptive fault patterns during observation, problem generation and hypotheses generation processes. For the purpose of this study, thirty-four undergraduate students were participated and descriptions of participants' responds were analyzed. As the result, four patterns of descriptive fault on the process of generating hypothesis were classified; 1) descriptive fault from the causalities, 2) descriptive fault from repetition of observational facts, 3) descriptive fault from the priority of prior knowledge, and 4) descriptive fault from negation of the observational facts. From the result, the researcher was able to explore the faults caused by pre-service elementary students' prior knowledge through the observational descriptive analysis with hypothetical descriptive analysis.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.255-270
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to consider pre-service and in-service elementary school teachers' beliefs about STS (Science-Technology-Society), by investigating their opinions on STS interactions. 222 of the seniors in Jinju National University of Education, namely pre-service elementary school teachers, and 185 of the active teachers in Kyung-Nam Province were selected as the objects for researching these matters. Their beliefs about STS interactions were examined. The results were analyzed with a percentage as an examining tool of TBA-STS(Teachers' Beliefs about Science-Technology-Society). The results were as follows; First, on the nature of science, most of them showed simple opinions. On the nature of technology, most of them also showed simple opinions. most of them recognized the interactions among science, technology, and society affirmatively. They showed simple opinions on the interactions between science and technology. In fact, they didn't recognize the interactions between science and society, but they knew the influence of technology on society relatively concretely. Second, if one consider the cognitive situation or the distributing route of STS, he can easily find that most teachers never or little know it. At present, pre-service teachers learn STS from the lectures in their universities, and in-service teachers get information about it from science magazines/newspapers and training.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.23-30
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• 2009

In this study, we proposed a pre-service teacher training program that assists efficiently the conceptual comprehension and teaching skill development of computer science education. The program is integrated with Protype Theory and Example Theory based on cognitive psychology. And also the real teaching activities based on Unplugged Learning are provided for conceptual comprehension of computer science education as well as for learning computer science. This program was applied to 31 pre-service teachers for one semester. The results show that this program is very effective for pre-service teacher training of computer science education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.350-363
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• 2010

Recently there has been increasing emphasis on pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for fostering science teachers' teaching professionalism that needs to be done from teacher training courses systematically. We investigated what were the PCK factors considered in planning instruction and the difficulties encountered in implementing it by pre-service teachers. In this study, 26 sophomores at an university of education in Gyeonggi province were asked to perform teaching demonstrations using scientific instruction models. They were also requested to write reflective journals and interview. Analyses of the results revealed that many pre-service teachers considered the teaching strategies such as the instruction organization and implementation when planning instruction. They had also regard to the learners' cognitive affective aspects, whereas the pre-knowledge of them was not properly considered. Especially, the curriculum and assessment were almost disregarded. Most of the difficulties encountered in planning instruction and implementing it were appeared in terms of the teaching strategies. For example, they had difficulties in considering the characteristics of each stage presented by the instruction models when planning instruction and implementing it. The frequencies of the difficulties in implementing experiment were especially higher than those of the other PCK factors. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.180-187
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• 2002

The aim of this study was to investigate the factors affecting earth science problem-solving performances of elementary school pre-service teachers. The participants of the study were 81 students attending an elementary school teacher education university. The instruments of the study were paper-and-pencil tests, questionnaires, and interviews. The tests mainly measured the participants' problem solving abilities in the motions of the moon and the planets. Correlation and multiple regression techniques were used for data analysis. The results demonstrated that the pre-service teachers' problem solving abilities were low. Problem-solving performances were affected by the procedural knowledge, the participants' perception of the past earth science performance, self-efficacy, and the prerequisite declarative knowledge. Contrary to our expectation, the spatial visualization ability was not found to be related to the problem-solving performances. Implications of the study are drawn, and suggestions are made for further research.