• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.519-533
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• 2018

This study aims to classify the types of instructional expertise development activities of teachers who teach subjects related to software education in primary schools. To this end, the study analyzes their participation in expertise development activities over the recent three years, outcomes from these activities, and forms and characteristics of expertise development activities. In the questionnaire survey conducted for this study, 276 primary school teachers participated. According to the survey, the same largest proportion of them participated in collective job training (96%) and distant job training (96%), followed by consulting, instruction supervision, mentoring, and peer observation (82%), lectures, workshops, and seminars held by related government ministries and the provincial and municipal offices of education (69%), and teachers' study communities (66%). Among informal activities, reading accounted for the highest portion of the activities (88%), followed by the use of information on Websites including YouTude and GitHub (80%), and teachers' expertise development networks (76%). The reasons for their participation in the activities were mostly to improve their instructional expertise (80%). Their participation in the activities had an impact on usefulness to enhance instructional expertise, improvement of job competencies, application to current jobs, sense of instructional efficacy, and positive effect. These results of the study are expected to provide a foundation for preparing continued expertise development plans that can promote the educational value of primary school teachers' instructional expertise development activities for teaching subjects related to software education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.885-893
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• 2015

In this study, we compared the use of information and communications technology (ICT) by middle school teachers in Korea and other countries utilizing the teacher survey data of the IEA International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS) 2013. The ICILS target population consisted of all students in the eighth grade. We compared Korea with Australia, the Czech Republic, Norway, and Poland, which are nations showing the highest achievements in computer and information literacy. We selected nine questions from the teacher questionnaire and divided them into the categories of computer use, use of ICT for teaching and learning, and the ICT support environment in school. In comparison to their counterparts in other countries, Korean middle school science teachers used computers frequently and also had high ICT self-efficacy. They were confident in their ability to use computers for general tasks, but not in their ability to use computers for teaching and learning. The Korean teachers also had a high percentage of utilization of presentation and graphics software. Also, the proportion of activities concerning the information provided and teacher-led tasks was high, but the proportion of activities for student collaboration or peer interaction was low. In Korea, middle school science teachers had more negative than positive views of using ICT in teaching and learning. The teachers thought that computer-related resource support and digital learning materials were insufficient and that the computer model was outdated in schools. Therefore, we propose to build an ICT infrastructure and to develop and disseminate ICT teaching and learning methods for student activities.