• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.253-263
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• 2023

This study explored the discrepancy between the text of a teacher's guide about straight and reflective light and the content knowledge of pre-service elementary teachers. A total of 455 questions and 543 answers generated by 279 pre-service elementary teachers after reading a 'Shadow and Mirror' unit in the teacher's guide were analyzed. The questions were classified according to the types of concepts and discrepancies, and the answers were analyzed for accuracy. The results of analyzing the concepts of questions revealed that the pre-service elementary teachers were most curious about the shadow in the straight concept, the mirror image in the reflection concept, and the light source in other concepts. The questions with a low correct answer rate due to incorrect- or non-answers, such as those concerning the superposition principle of light by reflection, the principle of experimental tools, and images by lenses, were only partially or not included in the teacher's guide. When the questions were classified according to the type of discrepancy, the frequency of questions due to knowledge deficit was higher than that due to knowledge clash. This demonstrates that the concepts that teachers need to know must be supplemented with the contents of the teacher's guide. Discrepancies due to knowledge clashes are often caused by conflicts between what is experienced in everyday life and what is presented in textbooks. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the discrepancy between the texts of the teacher's guide and the knowledge of pre-service elementary teachers by including the differences between the actual context of everyday life and the context of the textbook in the teacher's guide.