• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.416-429
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• 2018

In social constructivist teaching, knowledge construction is achieved through learners' collective social interaction. Vygotsky argued that this process is mediated with language use, and the development of higher order thinking is realized through the transition from inter-personal psychological functions to intra-personal psychological functions. In so doing scientific concepts are internalized to learners. This study examined the third grade elementary students' inter/intra-personal psychological functions and their internalization processes during social constructivist teaching plan about strata and fossils. The lessons were designed along with Wells' dialogic inquiry and Leach and Scott's social constructivist teaching-learning sequences. Results showed that a teacher's utterances of talking with questioning to switch attention, creating cognitive disequilibrium, and expanding the width of students' opinions could make effective inter-personal psychological function. In addition, a learner's inner speech expressed into social discourse through talking about personal experiences, comparing epistemic idea with visual representation, or applying to different situation showed his/her intra-personal psychological function. Some cases of learners' internalization through language use could be at the stage of knowledge building and understanding of the spiral of knowing, but not all. Thus it is argued that a teacher's deeper insight into Vygotskian social constructivist teaching can make elementary science classroom teaching more effective in their inter/intra-psychological functions.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.168-181
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to monitor evaluation in science education at primary and secondary school in Korea. In order to do this, the survey was administered. The subject was 518 teachers; 292 elementary school teachers, 110 middle school science teachers and 116 general high school science teachers. It was found that the ratio of paper examination increased while that of performance evaluation decreased according to the grade of school. In the science paper examination, the ratio of selection type item was higher than that of supply type item, and the ratio of item belonging to knowledge area was higher than that of item belonging to the inquiry area regardless of the grade of school, teaching career, and teacher's gender. The teachers recognized the necessity of supply type item, but they suffered from the reliability of the result of that item. And it was hard for them to do performance evaluation because it took much time and effort. This study suggested that the high-quality in-service teacher training be provided and laboratory assistants who help the science experiment and grading test papers be employed in order to fulfil the performance evaluation and increase the ratio of supply type item and items belonging to the inquiry area.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.82-92
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed the perceptions of elementary school students about science learning and lab safety in the affective, behavioral, and cognitive domains. With respect to science learning, students indicated liking science classes more than average, being good at scientific inquiry more than average, and having more scientific knowledge than average. Compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic, student confidence in retaining scientific knowledge had decreased markedly. Of the eight student types in the students' awareness levels about affective·behavioral·cognitive domain, the HHH type-the most ideal-was also the most distributed. Students' preferred science class methods were experimental (72.7%) and nature inquiry classes (23.2%); science knowledge classes were ranked a distant third (4.1%). Preferred class locations were the science lab (58.1%) and different places from time to time (34.4%); the classroom was ranked last (7.5%). With respect to lab safety, most elementary school students did not have experimental classes, but more than half reported understanding how to use experimental equipment. Most students recognized the need to wear safety equipment in the lab. They were not only well aware of the associated physical protection functions, but also of the affective and psychological effects. Most students also recognized that first aid education is necessary, but only 31.5% reported understanding first aid methods. Based on those results, the implications for science learning and lab safety in school are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.1
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• pp.42-49
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• 2022

Many elementary school teachers' lack of scientific knowledge reveal as several problems in teaching science. Thus, elementary school teachers need to improve their scientific knowledge, but there is the limit to improve the teachers' scientific knowledge through activities based on lecture that conducted in process of training and retraining them. Therefore, Improvement for training science teacher to improve scientific knowledge of elementary school teachers would be searched in this study. Depth interview was conducted toward three elementary school teachers, who had conducted action research, to improve content knowledge of material domain within teaching process and elementary school science. Based on result of the interview, difficulty and development that the three teachers were commonly experienced in process of conducting scientific inquiry in action research were analyzed. One of the difficulties of the inquiry were to figure out how the three teachers, who participated in the interview, understand specific concept, what they do not understand, and what they should study more to understand the concept. And there was a circumstance that the teachers did not know how to apply procedural knowledge, which learned explicitly in the process of setting plan for conducting research, into real context. Since there was difference between knowledge that they understand disjunctively and context that observed in real circumstance, they faced difficulty. However, the teachers conducted analysis of topic, planning research, conducting research, discussion of the result by themselves with those difficulties Thus, the teachers mentioned that not only content knowledge had been improved, but understanding of procedural knowledge, which is not intended to improve, had been also improved. Besides, they also mentioned that comprehensive understanding content knowledge, which they already understood, was also helpful. And the teachers suggest that if there were chance to discuss and examine the scientific practices by consisting of group with colleagues rather than conducting it individually it would more efficient studying. Considering their suggestion, direction of training elementary school teachers for improving their scientific knowledge should be improved in a way to understand science concepts based on direct research about context that is generated in circumstance of studying group of the teachers. Consequently, it would contribute to improvement of teaching science by combining teachers' practice and understanding.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.50-59
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• 2004

Recently, many more fisheries and shipping high school students have entered college than those of the past. But, this trend could be attributed to the easy and various forms of selection for college admission. Thus the examinations of the college scholastic ability 2005 have added to the vocational search ability including verbal ability, mathematic ability, foreign language ability and inquiry ability. The vocational search ability in fisheries and shipping field is concluded the general fisheries science, general maritime science, general marine science and fisheries and shipping information management. This study analyzed the questions of the fisheries and shipping subject of vocational search field with high school 2nd students on October 2003. In result, this study identified some needed basic scholastic ability for fisheries and shipping high school students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.487-499
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• 2022

This study aims to understand the trends and characteristics of elementary science textbook research. For this purpose, among the papers published in science-related journals from 2001 to 2021, 156 studies related to elementary science textbooks were analyzed to examine the research trends on textbook analysis. The analysis criteria consisted of two major categories, 'outward feature' and 'topic.' The subcategories of 'outward feature' consist of 'year of publication,' 'target curriculum,' 'target grade,' 'science content area,' 'subject of study,' and 'publishing institution.' The sub-categories of 'topic' consist of 'comparison,' 'content,' 'illustration,' 'inquiry activity,' 'perception of textbooks,' and 'others.' As a result of the analysis on 'outer feature,' textbook-related research was conducted almost every year, and the research on the 2009 revised science curriculum, on the 3-6 grades, and on the whole field of science had the most. The science textbook researches were published not only in science education-related journals but also in other areas' journals. As a result of the analysis of the 'topic,' the number of papers was higher in the order of comparative research, content analysis, illustration, inquiry activities, and perception of textbooks. Implications for accredited textbook system of elementary science were discussed based on the analyses on the elementary science textbook research trends.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.276-285
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate the pattern and characteristics of elementary school teaching and learning processes in science based classes. The study participants' class was recorded in video and instructional conversation transcription. The pattern of the observed class was analyzed using the classification frame suggested by Mogan &Saxton(2006). In result, the questioning for elicit information was most frequent and questioning for shape understanding and the questioning for press for reflection in its priority. In result, the presence of elicited questioning for the attainment of knowledge and understanding is more prominent in science-based classrooms. It was revealed that the participating teachers used the questioning sentence pattern more frequently and the self-sustained inquiry that accelerates creative thinking of the student was lacking. It was discovered that teaching elicited questioning, which accelerates creative thinking, as well as fact confirmation pattern is a necessary element of training for teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.75-88
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to understand the factors affecting interactions as well as the students' learning process in small group activities. For this purpose, the changes and characteristics of students' interactions in scientific inquiry experiments were analyzed. This study focused on 2 homogeneous small groups of eighth graders. Students were involved in 13 inquiry experiments for one year and students' interactions in each experiments were observed and recorded using video/audio and the data recorded were transcribed. The analysis of data was based on the method of making a note by looking on and listening to the data repeatedly. Changes in the interactions of the two homogeneous groups differ remarkably. In small group A, owing to the conflicts of students' emotions, learning through social interactions became to be impossible. On the other hand, the interactions in small group B became more active. It seems that this changes are affected largely by the existence of peers who are able to mediate different opinions or feelings among group members. In general, middle school students were poor at receiving peers' opinion, cared a lot about writing reports. The less able students tended to be placed at a disadvantageous position in experiment lessons emphasizing social interactions. Four factors that affected the change of interactions were identified: Is the aim of experiments the understanding or completion of report? Is there any attitude towards peers' suggestions? Is there a disposition to care about peers? Is there any peer to mediate on peers' opinions or feelings? Educational implications of the progression of activities emphasizing interactions and the organization of grouping were drawn.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.22-35
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• 2013

In this study, we analyzed the problems of grade 3~4 science textbooks developed for the 2007 revised national curriculum raised by elementary school teachers. 53 elementary school teachers were selected and asked to complete the open questionnaire to find out the problems they experienced or perceived when they taught the corresponding unit of the science textbooks. The responses were coded and categorized through researchers' cross analysis. The result revealed various problems in using the science textbooks in real classroom context. The problems were divided into three dimensions as inquiry activity aspect, science knowledge aspect, and science learning assessment aspect. Each dimension consisted of several categories. We explained the frequency and representative examples of the problems in each category. These can provide some guidelines and implications for new science textbook developers and science education policy makers.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.129-142
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• 2017

In this study, the characteristics of the reading materials in elementary school science textbooks developed under the 2009 revised National Science Curriculum were investigated. The criteria for classifying the reading materials were the types of topic, purpose, students' activity, and presentation. The visual images in the reading materials were also analyzed from the viewpoint of type, role, caption type, and proximity type. The results indicated that the number of the reading materials in the 2009 revised science textbooks decreased compared to that of the 2007 revised science textbooks. It was also found that the frequencies of the reading materials expanding concepts of the text and/or requiring corresponding students' inquiry increased. More visual images were used in the reading materials of the 2009 revised science textbooks. However, several limitations were still found to exist; most visual images were illustration and/or picture; many visual images were presented without a caption; there was a problem in the proximity of visual image to text.