• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.310-322
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• 2007

This study is to find ways of support for beginning teacher induction in elementary school with constructing model of professional development. To achieve this purpose, this study reviewed significance of beginning teacher induction program, the bridge to life learning, and constructed the model of professional development for beginning. The final conclusion about ways of support as support intensity are orientation based on demanding of beginning teacher, bridge connection with veteran teacher, coordination of working conditions, collaboration among peer teacher, and strengthening computer network at week intensity level. At strong intensity level, the ways of support for beginning teacher are institutionalization on election and training of mentor, institutionalization on compulsory induction for 1 year, development and operation of teacher education center, and furtherance of school learning organization.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.583-594
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate beginning elementary teachers' characteristics and improvement of their teaching skills in science class. The methodology of this study was a qualitative approach that included interviews, classroom observations, and teaching materials. In urban area, low beginning elementary teacher were selected. Four beginning elementary teachers were observed and recorded with VCR in their classroom at seven-times. The results showed that the beginning elementary teachers did not improve in their teaching skills in science teaching, and their characteristics of teaching skills in science were summarized as following; 1) their teaching methods were not inquiry-based science teaching, but explaining-based science teaching, 2) their main aims of the science teaching were focused on the science knowledges, 3) there were little students' science processes involved in their classes, 4) they focused on using textbook as teaching materials, 5) there were little waiting times after their questioning, and they usually used closed-questions rather than open-ended questions.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.552-566
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• 2010

This paper is an in-depth case study to analyze integrated elementary science lesson planning and practical teaching by two teachers at an urban elementary schools. One is an experienced teacher and the other is a beginning teacher. For this study, researchers asked teachers to design 5 stages of lesson planning after sharing basic theories about the integrated science education. The first of the 5 lesson planning stages is curriculum analysis and choice of integrated science topic. The second stage is constructing the frame of integrated science lesson contents, and the third is drawing a diagram of the integrated science lesson development. The fourth stage is making a table of lesson plans, and the last stage is writing integrated science lesson plans. Then, the teachers implemented the lessons they created. They taught students one unit of science which is composed of 8 lessons. Difficulties that teachers meet during designing plans and integrated science class were analyzed. 5 staged lesson planning, video transcriptions, teacher interview about lesson planning and teaching, researchers' checklists, reports of inspection classes, teachers' self evaluation, and students interviews were used for this study. One of the significant results of this study is that both experienced and beginning teachers had many difficulties in deciding on time to teach and contents of science and other subjects, as well as selection and organization of whole topics of integrated science teaching. The beginning teacher especially had greater issues with developing definite teaching-learning strategy to conduct thoughts and views for integrated science at the whole unit and each lesson. However, the experienced teacher was using various teaching-learning strategies by utilizing integrated science teaching professionalism to develop students' integrated thinking ability during the instruction of other subjects. The outcomes of this study are that both teachers could deeply understand the need and value of integrated science education at the elementary school through planning and teaching 8 lessons, and that they could have self-confidence with development of teaching professionalism for integrated science teaching. It may be possible that this study could help the development of pre- and in-service program for improvement of integrated science teaching professionalism for elementary school teacher.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.683-699
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of teacher learning and changes in teachers' epistemic beliefs within a learning community of elementary science teachers. Three in-service elementary teachers who majored in elementary science education in a doctoral course of a graduate school of education participated in the study, and learning activities in the teachers' beginning learning community provided a context for the study. Data sources included field notes produced by the researcher who engaged jointly in the teacher learning community as a coach, audio-recordings of the teachers' narratives, and artifacts generated by the teachers during the process of teacher learning. Complementary analyses of these multiple sources of data revealed that epistemic beliefs of the three elementary teachers were different and that each teacher made a different plan of science instruction based on his own epistemic belief even after the learning experiences within the teacher community. It was therefore suggested that science teacher education programs should be organized in consideration of the nature of teachers as constructivist learners and their practical resources.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.97-112
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• 2018

Conducted within the methodological framework of action research, this study examines the ways in which a beginning science teacher in a Korean elementary classroom engaged in collaborative research with her own students to resolve problems preventing effective science teaching and learning. Specifically, this study uses cogenerative dialogue between teachers and students to develop new teachers' knowledge of how to manage the classroom to be able to more effectively implement inquiry instructional strategies and knowledge of students as learners. Findings from this research suggest that by involving students in cogenerative dialogues, beginning teachers are provided with valuable insights into how elementary students think about school, science, and teaching and learning, which can help expand a beginning teacher's capacity to be an effective science teacher of science for all learners, especially diverse learners. These findings suggest that teacher education programs could better support beginning teachers by placing greater emphasis on how to conduct action research, including how to implement cogenerative dialogues to catalyze positive changes in their own classrooms. We conclude by discussing the important implications this research has for supporting new teachers struggle to effectively teach science and who would benefit from using strategies to foster improved relationships with their students and improved understanding about the challenges faced by diverse learners in their classroom.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.360-379
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate beginning elementary teachers' beliefs about the nature of science. Defining teachers' beliefs as a broad construct, we tried to examine the teachers' understandings about the nature of science. The methodology of this study was a qualitative approach through semi-structured interviews. In an urban area of Korea, five beginning elementary teachers were chosen. The cross-case and grounded theory study design were adopted for the data analysis. The results of data analysis were checked by teachers for internal validity. This study identified the teachers' beliefs about the nature of science suggested by many researchers. The results of this study showed that: 1) beginning elementary teachers did not well understand and were unfamiliar with the meanings of various terms about the nature of science; 2) their beliefs abut the nature of science were broad and various; 3) they understood some parts of the nature of science; 4) there were differences within their understandings about subconcepts of the nature of science.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.334-346
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• 2012

For teachers' conceptions and understandings are critical to their decision making and classroom practice, this study attempts to understand pre-service elementary teachers' views and practices of science inquiry during peer teaching practice. Fifteen 4th year university students in teacher education program participated in peer teaching practice. Their teaching and reflective discussion were video and audio recorded and written lesson plans were collected for data analysis. Five science teacher educators individually looked into the data and shared their comments and interpretations on pre-service teachers' views and practice. The study findings suggest that pre-service teachers emphasized the importance of providing students with motivating resources in the beginning of lesson, employing certain inquiry teaching models, the process of predicting and dis/proving via experiment, and teachers' minimal intervention as the important features of inquiry teaching. Science teacher educators emphasized that it is critical to help children understand inquiry questions in the beginning of inquiry process, to be mindful of children's problem solving and critical thinking rather than following instruction models or simply going through prediction and test process. They also commented that teachers' guidance could lead a good inquiry process in classroom practice, not always interfering students' inquiry. Based on the findings, the study suggests science teacher educators need to understand what and how pre-service teachers view and practice science inquiry teaching and consider these as useful resources where they can start effective teaching for pre-service teachers at the university level.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.109-124
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• 2012

Developing pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) has been emphasized for teacher's professionalism and it should be done from systematic teacher training courses. In this study, we investigated changes of elementary pre-service teachers' PCK of science teaching and motivational strategies before and after a training course. For the analysis of pre-service teachers' PCK, their lesson plans, surveys, and interviews were collected. According to the results, in the beginning of the semester, pre-service teachers in the experimental group usually used didactic or combination of didactic and inquiry teaching strategies and a few pre-service teachers used inquiry or discovery teaching strategies when making lesson plans. However, at the end of the semester many pre-service teachers used inquiry teaching strategies in their lessons which included activities of asking students' prior knowledge, conducing experiments, finding conclusion, and comparing teachers' explanations with students' explanations. Regarding motivational strategies, in the beginning of the semester they focused using activities to create student's emotional interest in science lesson but at the end they used other strategies to create positive atmosphere for learning, capture intellectual interest in science, and connect science to students' everyday lives. The changes in pre-service teachers' PCK in the experimental group was meaningful because there was less change in pre-service teachers' PCK in the control group. This study implies the need for effective professional development programs for developing pre-service teachers' PCK.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.399-416
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between science teaching practices and beliefs about the nature of science. Defining teachers' beliefs as a broad construct, the researcher tried to examine not only the teachers' understanding about the nature of science, but also the effect and reflection in science teaching practices with regards to the nature of science. Guiding research questions were how the teachers' science teaching practices reflected their beliefs about the nature of science. The methodology of this study was qualitative approach that included interviews, classroom observations, and instructional materials. At an urban area of Korea, five beginning elementary teacher was chosen. The cross-case and grounded theory study design were adopted as data analysis process. The results of data analysis were checked by teachers for internal validity. This study identified the teachers' beliefs about the nature of science suggested by many researchers and revealed that these teachers' beliefs reflected a little in science teaching practices. On the occasion it was reflected, restricted merely within the narrow limits the way to teach the concepts and contents presented in science curriculum. In addition, some of the obstacles that these teachers' beliefs did not reflect the science teaching practices with regards to the nature of science were investigated in this study.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.450-466
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to explore preservice elementary teachers' perceptions on models used in science and science education. Participants were sixty-one undergraduate students who were enrolled in a science education course offered at a university of education located in a mid-sized city, Korea. Data were obtained from the participants at the beginning of the course when they provided their answers to a questionnaire about models. The analysis revealed that a large number of the preservice teachers perceived models as representative of physical realities. By contrast, a relatively small number of them viewed models as representations of ideas or things like theories or hypotheses. Lots of the participants were apt to define a model from the perspective of its functions and considered the purposes of models communication, teaching, and understanding as well as visualization, simplification, and clarification. Most of the preservice teachers believed that there could be multiple models for a single target, and all of them answered that models could be changed in science. It was therefore concluded that the preservice teachers perceived properly the multiplicity and variability of models. Nevertheless, they could not elaborate how a model is used and evaluated in the process of scientific inquiry, and just a few of them mentioned the detailed nature of models. The preservice teachers possessed teacher-centered views of using models in the science classroom, and a small number of them remarked that they were going to use models for students to develop their own models and perform scientific inquiry.