• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.100-109
• /
• 2020

This study aimed to develop a 'star-car' operational program combining with the STEAM program and the PEST method for motivating elementary school students who belonged to less favored areas in terms of scientific culture to get an interest in astronomy and appropriately forming scientific concepts of Astronomy and Space and, subsequently, to examine the effectiveness of the program. For the purposes to be feasible, 5 experts participated in the study. They set a development direction of the program through a workshop, developed a draft with respect to a mobile astronomical observatory program of the Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute, and then complete the development of the program through one trial application. The program which was developed in the study applied the STEAM program and targeted the elementary school students who lived in isolated regions of the scientific culture. The results of the research were as follows. First, The mobile astronomical observatory program developed in this study was improved as a program which stimulated the curiosity of elementary school students in all grades towards the Astronomy and Space. Second, The program developed in the study consisted of 11 periods in total; one period was for the presentation of the situation, five periods for emotional experience, the other five periods for creative design. Third, The results of analyzing the students' satisfaction were turned out to be effective in general. Judging from the aforementioned results, the mobile astronomical observatory program is expected to enhance learners' core competencies.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.45 no.1
• /
• pp.90-104
• /
• 2021

This study conducted an online survey to understand what elementary school teachers think about the learning contents of elementary science education subjects needed to train elementary science teachers suitable for the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution. The results are as follows: First, there were many elementary school teachers who thought that the current learning content of elementary science education was not suitable for the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution and that it needed to modify the learning content. Many of the teachers said that the learning content of the subject did not include the characteristics of the 4th Industrial Revolution, but also did not reflect the changes of the times and remained in the past. Second, the content that elementary school teachers thought was important in training elementary school teachers suitable for the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution was mainly related to the interests and curiosity of students, and scientific experiments or inquiry. On the contrary, the items that they thought should be deleted or reduced included science learning theory, science teaching/learning model, nature of science, and guidance for gifted children. Third, the contents that elementary school teachers thought needed to be added as learning content of elementary science education subjects were SSI education, science education-related social change and future prediction, advanced science technology, STEAM guidance, and integrated education within the science field. Fourth, in order to train elementary school teachers suitable for the era of the 4th Industrial Revolution, the contents that they thought should be introduced first as learning content of elementary science education subjects were SSI education, integrated education within the science field, STEAM guidance, and core competencies. Other contents that need to be introduced were software education, safety education, and project learning methods.