• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.339-358
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• 2021

This study explores the agency of a student leader, expressed through efforts to distribute power and encourage participation in elementary scientific modeling classes. The study also analyzes the context in which the leader's agency was expressed and the context in which the development of a collective agency was constrained. The participants were 22 fifth-grade students. The leader's agency was analyzed by examining his words and actions. As a result, at the outset of the study, the leader had the most power, performing all the activities as the sole authority in a non-cooperative participation pattern. However, with reflection and help from the researcher, the leader recognized the problem and facilitated the participation of other students. He developed an identity as a teacher and demonstrated the agency. The leader's agentic behaviors can be categorized into three aspects. First, regarding the cognitive aspect, the leader helped other students participate in modeling by sharing his knowledge. Second, regarding the normative aspect, he made rules to give all students an equal voice. Third, regarding the emotional aspect, the leader acknowledged the contribution of the students, increasing their confidence. The leader's agency temporarily helped the group to overcome the student hierarchy, facilitating a cooperative participation pattern. However, the development of a collective agency was constrained. The power of the leader was partially redistributed, and the other students did not position themselves as equal to the leader. To support the leader's agency to develop into a collective agency, it is necessary to redistribute the power of the leader more equally and to change the recognition of students.

• Journal of Korean Historical Folklife
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• no.27
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• pp.267-361
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• 2008

This article traces how the modern Chinese "nation" was constructed as an "imagined community" around Huang-ti (the Yellow Emperor) in late Qing. Huang-ti was a legendary figure in ancient China and the imperial courts monopolized the worship of him. Many late Qing intellectuals appropriated this symbolic figure and, through a set of discursive strategies of "framing, voice and narrative structure," transformed him into a privileged symbol for modern Chinese national identity. What Huang-ti could offer was, however, no more than a "public face" for the imagined new national community, or in other words, a formal structure without substantial contents. No consensus appeared on whom the Chinese nation should include and where the Chinese nation should draw its boundaries. The anti-Manchu revolutionaries emphasized the primordial attachment of blood and considered modern China an exclusive community of Huang-ti's descent. The constitutional reformers sought to stretch the boundaries to include the ethnic groups other than the Han. Some minority intellectuals, particularly the Manchu ones, re-constructed the historic memory of their ethnic origin around Huang-ti. The quarrels among intellectuals of different political persuasion testify how Huang-ti as the most powerful cultural symbol became a site for contests and negotiations in the late Qing process of national construction.