• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.486-501
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• 2015

In the elementary school science curriculum, wind is one of the most important concept. In particular, land and sea breeze has been a key example to deliver how wind is driven, and thus its model experiments have been used to help students understand causes of wind. Here we compare causes and explanations for wind and land and sea breeze between textbooks in colleges and elementary schools to examine any potential improvement for the contents. In addition, we conducted survey to examine how pre-service teachers understand land and sea breeze, and convection box experiment used in elementary school textbooks is useful to understand land and sea breeze. Based on the comparison, we find that college level textbook explains the cause of wind as atmospheric pressure difference while elementary school textbooks explain them differently according to curriculums. In the textbooks, there are a difference in the way described for land and sea breeze. Analysis of questionnaire indicate that pre-service teachers understood land and sea breeze correctly, and they selected the convection box experiment in 2009 curriculum textbooks as the most suitable one. Explanations and experiments for land and sea breeze in the textbooks have been revised as the modification of elementary school curriculums. We expect this study helps to deliver more solid contents for wind and land and sea breeze in the upcoming new curriculum.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.39-53
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to investigate the conceptual structure of subjects related to matter having pre-service elementary school teachers by applying semantic network analysis (SNA). The analyzed concepts in the subjects of matter were 6 words such as 'atom', 'molecule', 'ion', 'electron', 'matter' and 'particle'. The results of SNA of the concepts are as follows : 1. In the semantic network of 'atom', words having a high betweenness centrality were linked with the words based on both the scientific context and the everyday context. 2. The network of 'molecule' was analyzed to be more organized than the network of the 'atom'. 3. In the network of 'ion', the group of words of the scientific context was distinguished from the group of words of the everyday context. 4. The network of 'electron' was analyzed to be more oriented on electricity and magnetism in the field of physics. 5. In the network of 'matter', the words related to compounds were linked with knowledge of history of science. 6. The network of 'particle' was not structured with words based on particulate nature of matter.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.645-657
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service elementary teachers' conceptions about the relative sizes of celestial bodies including the universe, galaxy, star, planet, satellite, asteroid, and comet, which were presented in elementary school science textbook. This study also examined the causes of their misconceptions as shown in the study. Sixty three pre-service elementary teachers participated in this study. The survey was developed for this study that asked to make an order of relative sizes of the given celestial bodies and to write scientific facts about each of the celestial bodies. The survey items were analyzed by simple descriptive statistics, and the written responses were analyzed using qualitative and inductive methods. The results showed that only five (7.9%) of the participants correctly answered about the relative size of the given celestial bodies. There were three common misconceptions identified in relation to the relative sizes of the celestial bodies; more than 20% of the participants had: (1) a planet is bigger than a star (46.0% of the participants), (2) an asteroid is bigger than satellite (58.7%), 3) a comet is bigger than a star (22.2%).

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.99-114
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• 2011

Developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been emphasized as one of the requirements for science teacher's professionalism, and it should be done from systematic teacher training courses. In this study, we investigated the components considered in planning instruction and the difficulties encountered in implementing it in PCK held by secondary pre-service teachers. Twenty-seven juniors at a college of education in Seoul 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 teaching strategies and learners' cognitive affective aspects were considered by most secondary pre-service teachers, whereas curriculum and assessment were regarded by few of them. For examples, choosing instruction models and organizing instructions were concerned in teaching strategies. They also considered learners' cognitive affective aspects for selecting experiments as main activities. Only few considered learners' prior-knowledge. Most difficulties encountered in planning instruction and implementing it appeared in teaching strategies. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.588-603
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• 2021

This study details a researcher's self-study journey in advancing from a computational thinking (CT) novice to an expert. The researcher went through a four-stage process, with a preliminary literature review preceding the four stages. From the literature review, the computational thinking analysis (CT_AT) tool was developed for use in stage one to analyze science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematic (STEAM) modules. Although no discernable patterns were found in analyzing the five science and five engineering-based modules, the analysis revealed which CT practices were missing or weakly exposed. In stage two activities were suggested to promote these missing or weakly exposed practices. Stage three required the researcher to develop his own STEAM module from the viewpoint of exposing students to CT. The fourth stage was to validate the CT_AT through interviews with pre-service and in-service teachers. These interviews led to changes in the CT_AT tool and, as a result, the researcher produced a guidebook that could be used by teachers in their own CT studies. This guidebook can be used by teachers to develop and become competent in CT skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.253-263
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• 2023

This study explored the discrepancy between the text of a teacher's guide about straight and reflective light and the content knowledge of pre-service elementary teachers. A total of 455 questions and 543 answers generated by 279 pre-service elementary teachers after reading a 'Shadow and Mirror' unit in the teacher's guide were analyzed. The questions were classified according to the types of concepts and discrepancies, and the answers were analyzed for accuracy. The results of analyzing the concepts of questions revealed that the pre-service elementary teachers were most curious about the shadow in the straight concept, the mirror image in the reflection concept, and the light source in other concepts. The questions with a low correct answer rate due to incorrect- or non-answers, such as those concerning the superposition principle of light by reflection, the principle of experimental tools, and images by lenses, were only partially or not included in the teacher's guide. When the questions were classified according to the type of discrepancy, the frequency of questions due to knowledge deficit was higher than that due to knowledge clash. This demonstrates that the concepts that teachers need to know must be supplemented with the contents of the teacher's guide. Discrepancies due to knowledge clashes are often caused by conflicts between what is experienced in everyday life and what is presented in textbooks. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the discrepancy between the texts of the teacher's guide and the knowledge of pre-service elementary teachers by including the differences between the actual context of everyday life and the context of the textbook in the teacher's guide.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.407-415
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• 2014

Genetic determinism of human behaviors is considered as a philosophical perspective that genes in humans determine biological as well as social traits. However, many biologists agree that human traits are determined by interactions between genes and genes, as well as between genes and environments. In this context, genetic determinism still affect ideas of the general public as well as research directions of biologists. According to Cl$\acute{e}$ment's KVP model (Cast$\acute{e}$ra & Cl$\acute{e}$ment, 2012), teachers' conceptions of genetic determinism influence students' concepts of genetics. This study intends to investigate teachers' conceptions on genetic determinism of human behaviors. For this end, a questionnaire adopted from a previous research (Cast$\acute{e}$ra & Cl$\acute{e}$ment, 2012) has been administered to 308 teachers including 151 pre-service and 157 in-service. Factor analysis has been conducted to extract major factors and one-way ANOVA has been employed to find out differences in extracted factors among different groups of teachers. Four factors have been extracted from 14 items of questionnaire, including factor 1, a perspective of genetic determinism of gender differences in intellectual ability, social status, and emotional traits; factor 2, a perspective of genetic determinism of individual differences in intellectual ability; factor 3, a perspective of genetic determinism of individual differences in biological immune function and behavioral trait; and factor 4, a perspective of genetic determinism of ethnic differences. From the results of One-way ANOVA among teacher groups on four factors, first, it has shown a significant difference in factor 1 (F=3.325, p=.006), factor 3 (F=3.320, p=.006) and factor 4 (F=4.325, p=.001) due to their subject matters. In post-hoc comparison there have been no significant difference between biology teachers and other teachers. It has also been found that there was a significant difference between pre-service and in-service teachers in factor 1 (t=-3.938, p=.000) and factor 4 (t=-3.121, p=.002) and in-service teachers are more genetic deterministic than pre-service teachers. Finally, different religions have no influence on teachers' conceptions of genetic determinism of human behaviors.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.371-384
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• 2008

The purposes of this study were to investigate perspective teachers' conceptions of liquid-state and get implications for the direction of science curriculum or professional development. The instrument was composed of seven questions focusing on aspects of liquid-state phenomena. The results showed that the participants have various alternative concepts about liquid-state. The problem revealed in almost every question was their macroscopic explanations for the phenomena. In addition, it appeared that the participants seemed to understand phenomena in terminology level, but they didn't know basic reasons or fundamental concepts about the phenomena. It is required to change the curriculum or instructional methods in secondary school and teacher education programs to anchor the scientific concepts on molecular or microscopic level.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.239-249
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• 2017

The purpose of this exploratory study was to investigate the influence of pre-service science teachers' selection of earth science I, II in the high school and their college major on their self-perceived attitude and academic achievement in general earth science lecture at university. The participants in the study were 273 who enrolled in the division of science education, college of education and took the general earth science lecture from 2012 to 2015. The data was analyzed with two-way ANOVA by using SPSS 23.0. The results indicated that there was no significant difference of students' attitude and examination difficulty in general earth science lecture between earth science major and other subject major. However, students who took earth science I and/or II in high school showed positive attitude toward the lecture and higher achievement scores than students who didn't take earth science I, II in their high school. The results of the study imply that it is essential to consider students' attitude toward science and achievement in pre-service science teacher education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of background knowledge on problem solving. To achieve this aim, I proposed the model which shows problem solving process centering around background knowledge, conducted the lessons concerning the concept 'weightlessness' on pre-service elementary teachers, and then classified the pre-service elementary teachers into several groups by the difference of the results presented in the process of solving the problems on weightlessness. And I examined qualitatively the effects of background knowledge on problem solving through the interview with 11 volunteers. On the cause of the failing the problem solving, the failure of acquiring or activating the background knowledge related to the learning concept was most frequently, secondly the use of the background knowledge unrelated to the learning concept, and thirdly the failure of understanding the teaming concept. To acquire or activate the background knowledge related to the teaming concept was more difficult than to understand the new teaming concept, and the cases that use the background knowledge unrelated to the learning concept failed to solve problem. The result of interview, all interviewee understood the learning concept correctly, but all of them who fail to acquire or activate the background knowledge related to the learning concept, or use the background knowledge unrelated to the learning concept, could not solve the problem.