• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.173-180
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to investigate about current status of science field study in elementary schools. A total of 72 elementary teachers in Busan and Gyungnam districts were involved and the data from questionnaire was gathered. The questionnaire was comprised two parts: items on general level include the epistemological aspect and actual condition and items on concrete level according to chapters of elementary school science curriculum. The major findings are as follows: 1. Many teachers cognize the requirement of science field study in 7th Korean elementary school science curriculum is larger than 6th one. But they respond the actual number of science field study in 7th curriculum is nearly equal to 6th. 2. In analysis to grades, the actual number of field study decrease as grade is high. 3. In the science content aspects, the requirement of field study is the largest on biology domain and earth science domain. 4. Many teachers have pointed out “the difficulty of administration for field study” and “inappropriated surrounding of their school” as the problems of science field study in elementary school.

• Korean journal of medical education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.317-326
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• 2018

Purpose: The study examines changes in students' self-assessment of their general communication (GC) and medical communication (MC) competencies, as well as perceptions of MC concepts. Methods: Participants included 108 second year medical students enrolled at a Korean medical school studying an MC curriculum. It was divided into three sections, and participants responded to questionnaires before and after completing each section. To assess perceived GC and MC competency, items based on a 7-point Likert scale were employed; a single open-ended item was used to examine students' perceptions of MC. Statistical analysis was conducted to gauge GC and MC competency, whereas semantic network analysis was used to investigate students' perceptions of MC. Results: Students perceived their GC competency to be higher than MC. Perceived MC competency differed significantly across the three sections, whereas no differences were found for GC. There were no statistically significant differences after completing the curriculum's second and third sections; however, the vocabulary students used to describe MC concepts became more scholarly and professional. In the semantic networks, the link structure between MC-related words decreased in linearity and looseness, becoming more complex and clustered. The words 'information' and 'transfer' proved integral to students' perceptions; likewise, 'empathy' and 'communication' became closely connected in a single community from two independent communities. Conclusion: This study differed from prior research by conducting an in-depth analysis of changes in students' perceptions of MC, and its findings can be used to guide curriculum development.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.470-483
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• 2003

This study analyzed the evolutionary content in 13 textbooks developed from the first to the 6th high school biology curriculum, The content analysis of textbooks, which were delineated nine component, was performed on the 80 evolutionary categories, According to the result, the proportion of the total evolutionary content in textbook increased from the textbooks developed by the Ist curriculum to the textbooks developed by the 6th curriculum, but the proportion of 'main narrative' in total evolutionary content was gradually decreased. It also showed that biology curriculum and points of view of textbook writers influenced on the proportion of evolutionary contents. On the whole, the topics of analysed textbooks exhibit insufficient diversity, Any categories- 'group selection', 'gene selection', 'gaps in fossil record', 'co-evolution', 'punctuated equilibrium', 'mosaic evolution', 'place of labor in human evolution', 'human race differentiation', 'criticism of "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny", and 'human activities affecting evolution' - were not treated and others - 'theory of neutralism', 'theories of major episodes(excepting extinctions) found in the geologic time scale', 'sympatric speciation', 'clinal and area-effect speciation', 'polyploidy and evolution', 'gradualism' and 'evolution and origin of mammals' - were treated very lightly, the most emphasized topic was 'phylogeny in general' and 'formation of precells', 'miscellaneous' in the order of emphasis. 'Theory of natural selection' was lightly treated as just one of evolutionary theory though it should be emphasized as major theme of evolution. Also, the law of recapitulation, of which biologists doubt the validity, was discussed as an evidence of evolution in some textbooks. And the agents of genetic equilibrium disruption like genetic drift and migration were treated as of little importance. On the basis of above result, it was suggested that the textbook writers introduced the more meaningful evolutionary topics focused the theory of natural selection in explanation of evolution and evolution theory.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.1075-1083
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• 2010

This study analyzed content on sustainable development in the middle school science curriculum of 2007-Revised. Analyses criteria were developed based on literature reviews. The analyses showed that among 25 units, nine of them dealt with the topics and issues on sustainable development. However, the content had too much partiality for biology and earth science, lacking integration with other areas of science. Results of this study suggest the need for developing systemized teaching material on sustainable development that can be incorporated in the science curriculum by pursuing the following tasks: First, the educational goal of sustainable development and its need should be mentioned in the science curriculum. Second, the class content, themes, objectives, teaching-earning programs on sustainable development should be formulated. Third, within the science curriculum, the content should deal with topics beyond natural or environmental issues, to issues such as economical and socio-political so as to bring better understanding of the concepts related to sustainable development.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.329-343
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to develop the middle school science curriculum to enhance creative problem-solving abilities. The reconstructed curriculum consisted of three big components, that is, scientific knowledge, process skills, and creative thinking skills. Five themes have been selected to incorporate with four areas of the middle school science curriculum, namely, physics, chemistry, biology, earth science. The five themes are structure, change, interaction, energy, and stability. Based upon these five themes, the individual or separated scientific knowledges of learners can be put into the unified knowledges. The process skills were observing, measuring, classifying, communicating, inferring, predicting, variable differentiating controling, data gathering analysis, establishing hypotheses, experiment design, and experimenting. Creative thinking skills include divergent and critical thinking. The finally developed curriculum is presented in the form of matrix.

• Journal of Korean society of Dental Hygiene
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.808-823
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• 2009

Objectives : This study was to suggest the basic data to develop the national exam contents for dental hygiene by comparing with those of other country. Methods : Several dental hygiene education course results were reviewed, and analyzed the culture subjects, basic major subjects, educational subjects, national exam contents in 3 or 4 years dental hygiene curriculum. Results : In Korea, grades of culture subjects in dental hygiene curriculum were different between 3 and 4 years education course, mean grades were 10.4, and 34.5 respectively. While there were few different between 3 and 4 years education course, mean grades were 36, and 36.5 respectively in foreign country. In Korea, grades of major subjects in dental hygiene curriculum were similar between 3 and 4 years education course as mean grades of 110, while there were different between 3 and 4 years education course, mean grades were 60 and 80 respectively in foreign country. In Korea, number of major subject was higher in 4 years(n=61) than 3 years(n=54). However, it was lower in 4 years(n=27) than in 3 years(n=33) in foreign country. Total grade number was 129 in 3 years, and 145 in 4 years in Korea, while it was 97 in 3 years, and 116 in 4 years in foreign country. By analyzing 3 years education course, culture subject was 9.5%, basic health was 11.2%, oral biology was 11.2%, clinical dentistry was 20.7%, public oral health was 10.4%, oral hygiene care was 35.9%, management of dental clinic was 9.4%, education was 2.8% in Korea. In USA, dental hygiene examination contains practice work as major part, while theory was thought of as most important things in korea. Conclusions : It is necessary to improve learning course of dental hygiene curriculum on the basis of other country's system, and then it could be possible to development of good quality's national examination contents, thus good quality of dental hygiene personnel would be turned out in Korea.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.246-257
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• 2006

TIMSS (Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study) aims to produce reliable and internationally comparable indicators of student achievement. The TIMSS science achievement scale summarizes student performance on test items designed to measure a wide range of student knowledge and proficiency. This study analyzed Korean middle school students' science achievement at the advanced and high international benchmarks of the four benchmark levels of the benchmarks classified in TIMSS 2003 in light of science content areas (physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and environmental science) and item characteristics. The average percent correct on items at the advanced benchmark by Korean students was highest in physics followed by earth science, biology, chemistry, and environmental science, whereas internationally the order was earth science, chemistry, biology, physics and lastly environmental science. Korean students performed relatively better in physics yet somewhat worse in chemistry than other top-performing countries. According to item analysis, Korean students reaching the advanced international benchmark understood some fundamentals of scientific investigation, but demonstrated weakness in written explanations of scientific principles, abstract science concept comprehension, and application of scientific concepts to solve quantitative problems. In addition, Korean students reaching the high international benchmark demonstrated relative weak conceptual understanding of ecology compared with other countries.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.693-711
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• 2009

One of the most important objectives in science education is to develop students' science literacy. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relevance between biology instructional objectives in the 7th curriculum taught in elementary and secondary schools. For this study, 7 major parts in each grade were analyzed including cell, the form and function of plants, the form and function of animals, genetics, diversity, evolution, ecology, and environment. The strand map of instructional objectives is completed that represents the relation between the objectives. The summary of the results from this study is as follows. First, the concept about cells is not fully covered in lower grades including elementary schools. While the concept of energy metabolism is repeatedly covered, there is no concept of energy covered in learning the concept of energy metabolism in elementary schools. Second, the textbooks in elementary and middle schools have main concepts about the form and function of plants while those in high schools don't. The concept related to the part of the form and function of animals is repeatedly involved in the curriculum throughout the elementary, middle, and high schools. Third, the concepts such as genetics and evolution are involved in higher grades since these concepts are abstract ones. The part of genetics and evolution as well as diversity has no connection between grades in schools, so the development of "notion between" is necessary to relate these concepts with each other. Fourth, the 4 parts of diversity, ecology and environment, evolution, and the form and function of plants are covered in limited grade levels. The results of the relevance of gene in lesson goals will play an important rein as the primary material in developing the connection between textbooks in which lesson goals are closely related to each other throughout all grade levels in elementary, middle and high schools.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.401-413
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• 2010

This study analyzed the kinds and frequencies of descriptors in 154 articles in ERIC data base on the 4th day of January in 2010. The titles of the articles includes the words, 'scientific literacy'. As each descriptor is constituted of two words and over, in this study the first word in the descriptor was defined as 'restrictive word' and the rest word(s) as 'target word(s)'. The results are as follows. First, the descriptors which show high frequencies of target words are the traditionally important themes of scientific literacy education. Target words which show relatively high frequency are 'education', 'literacy', 'instruction' and 'countries'. Low frequency word is 'curriculum', which has various restrictive words and represents wide differentiation. Second, among the descriptors which show low frequencies of target words, relatively high frequency descriptors are '(and)society', 'change', 'secondary education', 'concepts', and 'biology', which have been given more attention in scientific literacy research than the rest descriptors. Third, the number of the descriptors that shows largely distributed pattern A, which happens over 15 years continuously, is over the half of all analyzed descriptors, which shows that they have been the major objectives in researches about scientific literacy. Most descriptors of pattern A shows normal distribution of frequency or the trends of increasing frequency as the time is nearer. Fourth, The descriptors are divided into four groups according to the time span. Each research trends are as follows. In later 80s, the research which emphasizes the importance of the sociality and technology in all level school science curriculum. In later 90s the research for educational change of inquiry-centered science curriculum which considers technological literacy in social contexts. In earlier 2000s the research that scientists and science teachers develop science curricula mostly related to scientific principles and thinking in chemistry and biology especially. In later 2000s case studies which relates teaching methods and science process activities to students' attitudes, scientific concepts and curricula.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.759-770
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to examine the Earth science content relevance of the 7th national science curriculum. For this purpose, we (1) analyzed science curriculum or content standards of Korea, California, England and Japan, (2) compared science textbooks of Korea and Japan, (3) conducted a nationwide survey to gather opinions from students, teachers, professors and textbook authors about the relevance of the science curriculum and textbooks. According to the results, the Earth science contents of the 7th national science curriculum were not appropriate in terms of the objectives of science curriculum and the needs of students and society. The main reasons include the equal division among physics, chemistry, biology and earth science, iack of connection due to fractionation of units, overly strict application of spiral curriculum, and redundant amount of activities and concepts to cover in the textbook. Major suggestions fir securing the relevance of Earth science contents are as follows: First, the science contents and the size of units at each grade level should be determined according to the students' characteristics, not by equal portion rule. Second, the excessive overlapping and repetition of contents due to the spiral curriculum should be avoided. In addition, the number of activities should be reduced and the quality of required science activities should be improved. Third, to raise students' interest in Earth science, real-life applications and real-world Earth science contents should be emphasized including natural disasters, safety, universe and space exploration, and natural resources. Lastly, considering one of the relevance criteria is feasibility, supports for schools and science teachers are needed to realize the goal of the intended science curriculum.