• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.153-163
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• 2011

This study aimed to identify the difficulties that new science teachers in secondary schools experience. Subjects for this study were 190 science teachers attending qualifying training for 1st degree of teaching certificate. Using an open questionnaire, the difficulties these teachers encounter were collected, categorized, and compared between their first year and their succeeding years of teaching in terms of their school level, gender, majors and regions. Results showed that first year science teachers have had difficulties in areas including subject teaching, guidance, administrative affairs, human relationship and self-understanding. On their succeeding years, difficulties about subject teaching were reduced to half while other difficulties remained. New teachers in middle schools have experienced the most number of difficulties about guidance, while new teachers in general high schools have experienced the most number of difficulties about subject teaching. Based on these findings, some recommendations were proposed for new science teachers in secondary schools, school administrators, and training institutions.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.192-198
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• 1994

The Purpose of this study was to investigate secondary science teachers' perceptions on the goals of science education, science teaching strategies, science curriculum, and STS themes to ascertain the extent to which the current science programs incorporate with STS themes. The results of this study indicated that the perceptions of science teachers did not support the view that the STS themes have become established in contemporary secondary science education. However, they showed willingness to incorporate STS themes into their science teaching. Based on these results, the implementation of STS themes in science teaching were esstimated to be valuable for Korean science education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.341-359
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• 2003

The purpose of this research was to determine whether the present Korean teacher education programs for secondary science teachers are effective in improving the teacher conceptions of constructivism and STS. It is because the current Korean National Science Curriculum is consistent with both ideas as reforms. The teacher education programs sampled in the research included pre-service programs and two types of in-service programs. These two were the Qualifying In-service Program and the Iowa Korean Science Teachers Workshop. The Iowa Program was considered as an experimental program emphasized the constructivist perspective. Specially designed questionnaires for identifying teacher conceptions before and after the programs were administered. The conceptions about constructivism and STS improved as a result of the instruction in both of the pre-service and in-service teacher education programs. The pre-service program was more effective than the in-service programs in improving the teacher conceptions of both constructivism and STS. The Qualifying Inservice program was less effective than Iowa Korean Science Teachers Workshop. It was necessary for inservice programs for Korean secondary science teachers to be more emphasized on constructivism and STS. Iowa Korean Science Teachers Workshop provided a possible example to design a new special in-service program focused on constructivist perspectives as a way of aligning the Korean National Science Curriculum more quickly with recommended teaching practices in Korean schools.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.146-161
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• 2005

This case study searched two secondary school science teachers' faiths on experiments in science classes. For this study, scaled questionnaires, open-ended questionnaires, structured and semi-structured interviews were conducted. Classroom activities were observed, and instructional plans and materials were collected. In addition, students of the two teachers' classes were interviewed with respect to their thoughts on the lessons. Data sources were analyzed inductively. The triangulation and the member checking guaranteed the validity of this study. As the results, the teachers' faiths on experiments were related to the constructivism, but the faiths were not in accord with their classroom practices. From these results, it was concluded that the teachers' misjudgments about the students' inquiry levels and unfit reorganizations of the experimental activities were the causes of the gap between the teachers' faiths on experiments and classroom practices.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.725-733
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• 2015

In this study, we investigated secondary school science teachers' actual and preferred types of assessment with focus on the purpose and the method of assessment. Participants were 92 secondary school science teachers. We developed a questionnaire asking science teachers about the types of assessment they have actually used and the preferred types of assessment for hypothetical situations that have been generally reported as the prototypical examples of constructivist assessment. The characteristics of the science teachers such as teaching career, experience on in-service training about assessment, and perspective toward constructivist assessment were also examined. The analysis of the actually implemented assessments in their responses revealed that most science teachers tended to aim at traditional purposes such as summative assessment, and that multiple-choice was the most prevailing assessment method followed by experiment, report, and essay. For hypothetical assessment situations, science teachers exhibited their preferences for various types of constructivist assessment methods, whereas their purposes of the assessment still remained to be traditional. The science teachers who have had a relatively constructivist perspective toward assessment showed a statistically significant preference for using formative assessment than their counterparts in the hypothetical assessment situations.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.221-234
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• 2007

A comparison of mathematics teachers' personal beliefs between in- and pre-service teachers for Chinese secondary schools (grades 7-12) about mathematics theories, teaching and learning has been studied. In-service teachers' beliefs are close to constructivist's aspect and pre-service teachers' beliefs are close to absolutist's views. Based on the results, we give some suggestions to both teacher education and in-service teachers' training.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.753-763
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• 2018

The image of scientists that learners have has an important impact on science learning and on science-related career choices. The image of the scientist was mainly analyzed using the drawing analysis method. Drawing analysis has limitations on drawing, mainly analyzing the external image of scientist. Science teachers' images of scientists and their perception of science-related careers are important factors in students' science learning and science-related career choices. However, research on science teachers is lacking. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the usefulness of measurement tools by developing and applying a scientist image measurement tool through the semantic analysis method, and to discuss the educational implications of the research by investigating the image of scientists and science-related professions of secondary pre-service science teachers. The subjects of the study were 79 male and 55 female for a total of 134 students in the 2nd and 3rd grades majoring in science education at a teachers college. The results of the research show that the image measurement tool consisted of four components: 'ability,' 'evaluation,' 'activity,' and 'emotion,' in 24 items. As a result of applying the developed measurement tool to the secondary pre-service science teachers, the image of the 'evaluation,' 'ability,' and 'activity' elements of the scientist were high, but 'emotion' was low. There was no statistically significant difference according to gender. It is found that science-related career perceive them as 'hard,' 'professional,' 'smart,' and 'complex.' In particular, male students perceive themselves as 'hard and difficult' while female students perceive it as 'challenging and complicated'. Finally, we discussed the usefulness of using the image measurement tool of the scientists, the image of the scientists of the secondary pre-service science teachers, and the educational implications on science-related career.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.213-228
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the new introduction of elementary science experiment specialist is appropriate under the current situation of serious emphasis of the importance in science experiments in elementary science in Korea. For this study, the survey items were developed twice through the preliminary study. The results show that most elementary teachers consider the importance of experiment in elementary science and the critical role of science experiments to increase students' curiosity and scientific understanding. About 80% of the teachers stressed the professionalism in elementary science. Although 65% of the teachers believed their having basic professionalism, 53% of them appealed the difficulty in teaching science experiments to students. Nevertheless, 67.5% of the teachers opposed to the idea of teaching elementary science in separation between experiment and theory in science, and only 8% of them agreed the idea of induction or adoption of the college graduates majoring in science and engineering, or holding the secondary teacher's certificate. Further, over 60% of the teachers responded no necessity of inducing the new policy of elementary science specialist. Many numbers of teachers revealed their serious worries about the new policy because of their past experience to suffer from the side effects of inducing the teachers with secondary teacher certificate to the elementary school. In particular, they also made a proposal to make a good use of the current system of exclusive elementary science teacher in Korea. The educational implication and suggestions for policy making were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 1989

From the investigation perfomed by this writer in 1986, it was recognized that many science teachers are in difficulty in teaching the intergrated science in secondary schools and then the present teacher preparation programs need improvement to advance the quality of science teachers. To set up the improvement model, the preservice programs in the departments of science education in Korea were intensively analyzed and compared with that in the department of science education in Hiroshima university. The results of analysises on the programs showed the needs for improvement. A improvement model of the program for secondary science teacher preparation was set up as follows; 1. The improvement program is set up to emphasize the basic science course such as, general physics, chemistry, etc. 2. More emphasis is put upon the intergrated science course. 3. The improvement program is a practical one which is suitable to apply directly as a program in the department of science education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.1049-1062
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• 2004

In this study, various scientific viewpoints of 'motion of objects' were analyzed from the Aristoteles age to the Newton age. From the analysis, a questionnaire was developed which was including causes of motion, forms of motion, and preservation quantity of movement. The conceptions of pre-service science teachers were researched by the questionnaire developed in this study based on the science historical viewpoints. The subjects were twenty sophomore students of physic education major and thirty four of other science education major who majored common science education also in a college. Most of the pre-service teachers of physical education major had inertia and Newton's force conception related to the question situations of 'causes of motion' and 'forms of motion'. But a lot of the pre-service teachers of physic education major and other science education major had viewpoints of Descartes or Huygens related to the question situation of 'preservation quantity of movement'. Only few pre-service teachers regardless of major had Newton's viewpoint which represented in current Korean science curriculum for secondary school.