• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.119-130
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• 2019

The TIMSS assessment is conducted every four years, and Korean fourth grade cohort in TIMSS 2011 participated in TIMSS 2015 again as eighth graders, which produced the first achievement data of the cohort group of elementary and middle schools. In this study, in order to investigate the causes of the decline in Korean students' science achievement with grade changes from the fourth to the eighth grade, we analyzed educational context variables such as characteristics of students, teachers, and classroom instructions of the top 5 achievement countries participated in both TIMSS 2011 and TIMSS 2015. According to the results, students' sense of school belonging increased, whereas students' positive attitudes toward science teaching decreased with the grade change from the fourth to the eighth. As for the teacher characteristics, the teacher's professional development activity increased, and the teacher's confidence in science teaching showed similar tendency to the international average. Regarding classroom instruction characteristics, the frequency of inquiry-related science activities was highest at the fourth grade, and lower than the international average at the eighth grade. Based the results, we suggested implications for science teaching and learning as well as further studies including development of differentiated strategy by the school level to improve students' achievement, the necessity of converting into more student-engaging science classes, and the necessity of in-depth study on the teacher related educational contextual variables.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.156-176
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• 1998

On the border between the Geography subject and the Science subject, much of the content area is found to be interrelated or shared in common due to the characteristics of each subject. This possibly causes a problem of which of the two subjects should treat these overlapping areas with more responsibility and importance, and, as a result, might cause teachers to neglect the areas and result in insufficient treatment of the areas on both sides. In other words, these overlapping area can be overlooked on both subjects. On the other hand, as the science subject treats these areas more deeply and widely in both quantity and quality, the geography subject might lose its original content area to the science subject and accordingly lose its characteristics as an independent subject. To conclude, the following suggestions must be taken into consideration when we develop and organize the environment-related unit in the geography subject. First, the various real cases damaged by pollution, the efforts and steps to avoid being polluted, the inquiry questions and activities to set up the value of the environment conservation, and sufficient assistant materials such as maps, graphs, photos, illustrations, statistics, which will help to realize the environment problem more directly and clearly, must be presented in the textbooks. Second, as the environment education is not just teaching the environmental pollution, the content should be composed for the students to realize the value of the environment and to change their awareness and attitude toward the environment. Third, the environment education cannot be restricted to a certain subject, or it needs to be approached in multi-subject areas. To exercise a effective environment education while we maintain the unique characteristics of the geography subject, a way to link the environment and the region, which is one of the main concepts of geography, should be developed. Finally, textbooks are indispensible materials to teaching-learning, but for more effective teaching the teachers of geography should try to recompose and reorganize the content and to develop newer and more effective teaching material-aids.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.253-264
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to examine the practice of scientists from the perspective of Ian Hacking's 'creation of phenomena'. Scientific phenomena, according to Hacking, are regular and do not exist in nature without the intervention of scientists or experimental tools. This study tries to derive scientific educational meaning by analyzing the thoughts and episodes of the 'Sontanda (inter-individual variability)' phenomenon experienced by four life scientists. The Sontanda phenomenon is a common term used by scientists to describe phenomena in which findings do not appear consistently even when studies are carried out using the same experimental procedure and materials. The following four educational implications were discovered as a result of the research. First, we confirmed the importance of embodied knowledge, or non-verbal knowledge, which solves issues by making appropriate judgments and reactions at all times, rather than simply becoming accustomed to the experimental method. This argues that propositional knowledge and non-verbal knowledge should be handled equally in order to provide students with a practical scientific inquiry. Second, we tried to reconsider the picture of the experiment. The phenomenon revealed in the interviews of scientists is rare, and it takes a long time to stabilize the phenomenon. On the other hand, the image of school experiments is always positive and consistent, necessitating a shift in perspective. Third, the precise meaning of scientific practice could be confirmed. This study confirms that scientists use their knowledge effectively in line with the circumstances, and we examined strategies to apply scientific practice to school instruction based on this. Finally, by provoking uncertainty, the Sontanda phenomena may give students with an opportunity to engage in meaningful scientific involvement. By breaking away from the cookbook experiment, this study expects school experimental education to help in efforts to experience scientific practice.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.194-202
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze how optics concepts and activities have changed according to the revision of the national science curriculum. For this purpose, the optics achievement standards presented in the middle-school science curriculum of the 7th curriculum, 2007 revised curriculum, 2009 revised curriculum, and 2015 revised curriculum, and the optics content presented in the textbooks developed for each curriculum, were compared and analyzed. The optics content is classified into four concepts: the process of viewing an object; light and color; reflection and refraction; and the image from a mirror and a lens. The main results are as follows: First, according to the revision of curriculum, some optics concepts have been added or removed. In particular, big changes have appeared in the concepts of "process of viewing the object", "dispersion", "reflection and refraction" and so on. Second, the content for 'image formation by a mirror and a lens' was gradually reduced, according to the revision of curriculum, and the level of activity was also adjusted. Third, attempts to present the content of textbooks in conjunction with the phenomena and tools that students can experience in everyday life have increased gradually. In addition, based on the analysis of the content of curriculum and textbooks, the implications for optics education have been discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.21-28
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• 2008

A numerical analysis is achieved to elucidate the behavior of lifted flames and characteristics of flow near flame zone according to the exit velocity of triple flame, Poiseuille and uniform distribution. For the cases of Poiseuille and uniform nozzle exit velocity, we reviewed previous results with the present numerical results and investigated characteristics of the flame structure near the flame zone comparing with liftoff height generalized by momentum flux. In addition, a close inquiry into the combustion flow characteristics near flame zone was made with the characteristics of velocity, pressure, temperature and chemical reaction. From nozzle to flame zone, center line velocity profile traced well with the velocity profile of typical cold jet flow, but very near the flame zone, this study examined phenomenon that flow velocity decreases very quickly before the flame zone and then increases very quickly after the flame zone. Because flame zone acts as a barrier at the flow region which is before the flame zone and accelerate the flow velocity when it pass through the flame zone. This phenomenon was not clarified previous cold jet flow.

• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.8 no.12
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• pp.1-10
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the mathematics competencies required in middle school Korean language class to find out ways to improve student's debate ability. The results of the analysis showed that creativity and information processing ability in research activities; problem solving ability, creativity, information processing ability in planning activities; reasoning and creativity, information processing ability in rebutting activities; problem solving and reasoning in summary activities. In cross-inquiry activities, problem solving and reasoning, information processing, and creativity are required; creativity in final focus; problem solving and reasoning ability in judgment and general review; preparation time activities require problem solving, reasoning, and information processing ability. Therefore, in order to improve the debate ability of the students, it is required that the mathematics competencies such as problem solving, reasoning, information processing, and creativity are increased.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.20-28
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• 2000

We examined how science teachers in academic high schools perceived the 6th science curriculum and how they practiced under the curriculum. A nationwide survey was administered to obtain the responses from 402 teachers of 135 high schools. Most thought that the main themes of curriculum revision were well-embedded in the 'objectives', and that the 'content and content structure' were proper. However, they thought that the 'objectives' were not stated explicitly enough to develop teaching materials and to improve actual teaching and evaluation, and that some statements in the sections of 'method' and 'evaluation' were not proper if considered actual teachers' ability to teach inquiry and educational facilities. Many teachers also felt that the information about the curriculum was not sufficiently included at in-service teacher training programs, and that students' knowledge, attitude, and problem solving ability were not enhanced. Only few teachers were found to apply the STS approaches, reconstruct lessons, vary the structure of learning group, and develop evaluation tools with their colleagues. The lack of the practices was explained by entrance-examination-centered instruction and assessment, poor educational facilities, and lack of innovative teaching materials.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.47-63
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed the PCK components in the materials units of the third and fourth grades of the Korean government-authorized teacher's guides for elementary school, developed in the 2015 revised national curriculum. The results showed that the PCK components were presented in a relatively balanced manner compared to the teacher's guides for middle school. Knowledge of the subject matter accounted for the highest proportion, and knowledge of instructional strategies in science accounted for a higher proportion than knowledge of the science curriculum. The knowledge of assessment in science showed the greatest deviation among publishers, and knowledge of students tended to show the lowest. By subcomponents, experiments and inquiries had a higher proportion than concepts and theories. The ratio of horizontal articulation was lower than that of vertical articulation or lesson objectives, and lesson objectives were presented in various ways, such as in core competencies and achievement standards for science. As questioning was emphasized, teaching strategies and questioning appeared at a similar rate. Motivation and interest, misconceptions were linked to teaching strategies and questioning. In some cases, assessment items and assessment criteria were presented at each level, and various PCK components were linked to these two components. Components with relatively large differences among publishers were supplementary or in-depth concepts, inquiry in textbooks, instruction sequence and method, subject-specific strategies, and assessment items. From the results, the implications for the development of teacher's guides were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.50-58
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• 2007

In this study, students' thoughts were searched according to the types of experiments related to the "law of definite proportions" in 9th grade science textbooks. The most common four types of experiments in textbooks were selected and analyzed for this study. It was found that the experiments needed various preconceptions and complex inferring process by students. But most of the students could not catch the concept understanding desired from the experiments. They just perceived simple observation from their senses. These phenomena were common regardless of types of experiments. These means that the level of preconceptions and inferring process for the interpretation of the experimental data did not match with students' level of thoughts. The goals of the experiments in science textbooks are to increase students' inquiry ability, and to acquire science concepts by themselves from the experiment results. But if the contents of experiments are not suitable to students' understanding level, the educational effects of the performance of these experiments were not positive. Therefore, these experiments need contents revisions for students to acquire the concept related to the "law of definite proportions" by themselves.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.125-149
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to provide basic information on the current status of elementary school teachers' perception of gifted education. For this purpose, this study wi1l analyze elementary school teachers' perception of the gifted education (i.e., general perception of gifted education, characteristics of gifted children, identification of gifted children, programs for gifted education, and teachers of gifted education). A questionnaire survey was used for the purpose and research questions of this study. The questionnaire used in this study was constructed by taking into account the results of surveys conducted in previous studies and the literature on gifted education. Before conducting the research, a preliminary inquiry was made to identify problems that may occur while the subjects were participating in the survey, as well as to determine the appropriateness of the questionnaire and the amount of time needed. The preliminary inquiry was conducted with ten randomly selected elementary school teachers who did not participate as subjects in the actual research. The results were later used as initial data for the actual research. The subjects of this study were teachers who were teaching in8 elementary schools under each office of education in Seoul. This process was conducted for 180 elementary school teachers from April to May 2004. The results were analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) Ver. 10.1, a software program for statistical research. After the data were analyzed, the following conclusions were arrived at: 1. The result of the genera1 perception of gifted education by elementary school teachers were positive and reasonably high. The level of their perception of detailed information or knowledge, however, was relatively low. 2. As for their perceptions of the emotional characteristics of gifted children, t11e results showed a low level of understanding of the characteristics of gifted children. 3. As for their perceptions of identification of gifted children, the results showed a high level of understanding of the appropriate time to provide special education to gifted children and of the methods to identify such. On the other hand, their understanding of the identification of gifted children in an actual class was poor. 4. The respondents' level of perceptions of programs for gifted education was very low since many subjects did not have any experiences with such programs. 5. The results showed a very positive response to receiving training on gifted education, though they were very reluctant to be assigned as teachers of gifted education because of the excessive work that is associated with such and their lack of capability in handling gifted children.