• Journal of Science Education
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.80-90
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to investigate manual skills of experimental apparatuses of pre-service elementary school teachers by examining and analyzing the process of experiments conducted by pre-teachers. For this study, 24 pre-service elementary school teachers were selected as the subjects and 4 experimental apparatuses were chosen through analyzing science textbooks from 3rd grade to 6th grade in elementary school. The selected experimental apparatuses were alcohol burner, dropper, microscope, instruments for making a prepared specimen. In addition, a task was carefully chosen to conduct an investigation in real settings and a series of evaluation standards was developed. While 3 subjects conducted experiments in separated and independent space at the same time, 3 collaborators observed the experiment process and recorded whether the subject met the evaluation standards or not, using O, X. The study suggests that pre-service elementary school teachers' manual skills of experimental apparatuses were under far below our projections. Particularly, in case of alcohol burner, the subjects showed lower ability to properly light the burners - which is to brush through the lampwick with fire - and to adjust the height of tripods according to the flame. Also, when it comes to dropper, they were not held the way they were supposed to be. In addition, when designing prepared specimen, the subjects used their hands instead of tweezers and often skipped the process of dripping water drop and wiping water with an oilpaper. Moreover, they did not know how to use a microscope properly so there were many times that they could not focus a microscope, failing to observe the objects. Educational implications are discussed.