• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.153-165
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• 2012

This study investigated the frequent mistakes and the causes of the alternative conceptions in the animal classification by using the questionnaire and interview with the middle school students (N=300). As results, some students have difficulties classifying suggested animals into vertebrates or invertebrates : snakes (31.7%), shrimps (28.3%), turtles (25.6%), frogs (24.7%), and starfish (10.7%) in order of precedence. These errors seemed to be caused by intuitive thinking over characteristics of physical motions and appearance of suggested animals, wrong inference from comparing to features of familiar animals and the lack of observation experience of the vertebrate backbone. Furthermore, the results showed that relatively many students made a mistake classifying subgroup members of vertebrates such as classifying salamanders into the class Reptilia (45.3%) and turtles into Amphibia (40.3%). It is likely that those errors are affected by ambiguousness of classification terminology (e.g. the term of Amphibia) and weak ability in relating the physiological and ecological feature to standard of classification feature. In addition, sociocultural factors could influence animal classification as 'bat in birds', 'whale in fish, and 'penguin in mammals'. The present study implied that teaching and learning animal classification may require an appropriate guide focused on activities to explore major characteristics used for the animal classification standard through providing more chances of animal observation rather than the cramming method of learning induced by technical memorizing.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.30-45
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• 2012

Educational communities around the world have concentrated on integrative efforts among science, technology, engineering and mathematics (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics: STEM) subjects. Korea has focused on integrative education among STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) school subjects to raise talented human resources in the fields of science and technology. The purpose of this study was to analyze secondary school science, technology, and mathematics teacher's perceptions and needs toward integrated education and integrative STEM education. A total of 251 secondary school teachers from all areas of the country who have taught science, mathematics, and technology were surveyed by using a self-reported instrument. The findings were as follows: First, teachers have used little integrated education in their classes due to insufficient time in the actual preparation of the integrated education and the lack of expertise, teaching experience, and teaching-learning materials for the integrated education, while they have positive thoughts about the need of integrated education. Second, they presented several needs to facilitate the integrated education: development of a variety of integrated programs, school administrative and financial support, and in-service teachers' training. Third, overall perception toward integrated STEM education was not sufficient, but most teachers perceived the need toward integrated STEM education due to students' development in their creativity, thinking skills, and adaptability. Fourth, they perceived that it was imperative to develop the various integrated STEM education programs, distribute the materials, and help STEM teachers' understanding toward integrated STEM education. Fifth, they perceived that the most relevant method to integrate STEM subjects was the problem solving approach. In addition, they appreciate that the integrated STEM education is highly efficient in not only developing integrated problem solving skills and STEM related literacy, but also in positively impacting the rise of talented human resources in the fields of science and technology. In order to increase the awareness of STEM-related secondary school teachers and vitalize the integrated STEM education, it is necessary to develop and spread a variety of programs, effective teaching and learning materials, and teachers' training programs.

• Korean Educational Research Journal
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.25-57
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to analyze the characteristics of beginning teachers in elementary school as they experience the lifecycle of teachers, to analyze and comprehend the difficulties of these teachers based on their characteristics, and to propose a resolution strategy. The study is intended to assist beginning teachers in adapting well to their work and profession as teachers in order to contribute to the growth in quality of education; it is also intended to prepare beginning teachers to utilize their time in elementary school as a period of self-improvement to become proficient teachers. The difficulties in human relations that beginning teachers experience in school can be divided into three major categories: relations with administrators and fellow teachers, relations with parents of students, and relations with students. The standardized and uniform culture of a school and the administrators and fellow workers imposing such a culture are the reason for the difficulties that beginning teachers face, and the question of what kind of fellow teachers the beginning teachers will encounter in their first school exerts a serious influence on the growth of these teachers, who have just begun their career in education. Furthermore, the lack of skills to discipline students eventually leads beginning teachers to face difficulties in controlling students in the classroom, and the process of encountering and resolving various classroom problems contributes to the growth of teachers' proficiency. Moreover, the attitude of students' parents who behave toward them as novice teachers serves as the reason for beginning teachers to lose their confidence or face difficulties in their careers, and exerts an influence on student counseling and guidance. The resolution strategy that beginning teachers apply as they encounter such problems with the entities in the educational field is as follows: imitation, listening, and accepting the thoughts and to renounce. To resolve the difficulties that beginning teachers experience, it is necessary to allocate space and time to discuss their difficulties and possible plans for resolution during the beginning teachers' training period and initiate a mentoring system in schools. Lastly, it is necessary that the offices of education continuously conduct qualitative research on beginning teachers and publish casebooks on such studies.

• The Journal of Korean Philosophical History
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• no.50
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• pp.363-389
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• 2016

Any moral ideas get integrity upon their practices. Because in human society systems, morality have capability among human interactions, for it gives moral standards(good or bad/ right or wrong) to them. And when the society system is Korean, Koreans surely have developed unique styles of moral practice and moral education in their traditional ages. So reinterpretating and categorizing the moral tradition for taking advantage of it in contemporary context, make sense. In this study, Korean moral tradition is focused in its scope, as 'Confucian moral tradition in semi-modern era'. For convenience of study and the potentials of effective revision, Korean tradition have been resized. In Confucian moral tradition, semi-modern Korean moral ideas could be presented as ren(仁) and yi(義). Furthermore, ren and yi could be practiced with several moral virtues, like xiao(孝), di(弟), ci(慈), zhi(直) qin(勤) gian(儉). When compared with contemporary moral education idea systems, the traditional system can have affinity with the systems in moral ideas division('with-self morality', 'with-others morality', 'with-universe and transcendence morality'). And several fusion-style, integration-based education practices can be developed and applied at contemporary school moral education.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.5
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• pp.390-404
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• 2022

The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics and changes in epistemic thinking when an argument-based inquiry science class was applied in no face-to-face and face-to-face situations. Participants of this study were 113 8th grade students of four classes from a coed educational middle school in a metropolitan city. Data collection was made over one semester during which ten argument-based inquiry science lessons on five subjects were conducted in both no face-to-face and face-to-face context. As a result of comparing and analyzing students' epistemic thinking in the argumentation of each group's generating question stage, the no face-to-face classes showed higher understanding of contents and more evidence suggestion validity than face-to-face classes did. Claim validity and categories of process in argumentation were higher in face-to-face classes than No face-to-face classes. Students were able to improve their understanding of knowledge through writing by discussing rather than direct communication in no face-to-face situations, and in face-to-face situations, students showed that their thoughts were influenced by interpersonal relationships with the group members.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.57 no.1
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• pp.115-126
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• 2013

In this study, we developed a explicit and reflective scientific inquiry learning program about nature of scientific inquiry, and compared its instructional influences with those of implicit scientific inquiry learning. We also compared students' perceptions of the program. Eighth graders at a middle school were assigned to the treatment and the control groups. The students of the treatment group participated in the program, while those of the control group participated in general scientific inquiry instruction. The analyses of the results revealed that the program was more effective in improving students' epistemological views on scientific inquiry than general scientific inquiry learning. However, there were no statistically significant differences in both test scores of science achievement and enjoyment of science lessons. The students of the treatment group perceived that group discussion on the nature of scientific inquiry was an advantage of the program. However, they still had difficulties in performing group discussion, understanding the nature of scientific inquiry, and writing and presenting their thoughts. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.735-750
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to draw an educational implication by analyzing the context of narrative texts, students' narrative thinking, and their academic achievement. We investigated text types in students' geological field trip reports, the reason why students favors narrative texts, the relationship between narrative texts and their scientific knowledge recall, and the relationship between narrative thought and academic achievement. All students used expository texts, 82% of them expressed argumentative texts, and 36% of them used narrative texts. It is likely that students use more narrative texts because students were in the context of outdoor activity and so, their emotional feelings were more activated than when they are doing lab activities. The academic characteristics of earth science seemed to contribute more narrative texts in students' reports. The post-test revealed that students with narrative texts recalled better than the others. On the other hand, there were no statistically meaningful differences in academic achievement between the two groups. However, we have noted that female students whose reports contain narrative texts achieved significantly higher scores than female students whose reports are without narrative texts. From in-depth interviews, we found that students who properly used both paradigmatic and narrative mode of thought were in a more advantageous position than those who used narrative thought only. It was also found that some narratively thinking students tended to feel uncomfortable with the way of learning or evaluating questions about science. In the future, a complementary approach of narrative and paradigmatic mode of thoughts would be encouraged by understanding students' tendency of thinking.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.33-46
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to find out the image as science teachers recognized by pre-service science teachers. The data was collected from 312 pre-service science teachers from Kyungpook National University in Daegu and participants were asked to write about the image of science teachers they liked most and least in their secondary school years freely. The result of this research was as follows. The image as science teachers categorized 2 factors: science instructional situation, image of science teacher. Each factor was subdivided into more detailed ones. First of all, 'science instructional situation' category subdivided into lesson style, teaching-learning materials, teaching methods, and class atmosphere. In lesson style, 'experiment' and 'observation' gained the most favorable comments, and questioning-answering gained the least. In teaching-learning materials, print materials such as handouts, worksheets, reports were the most liked, and 'writing on the blackboard' was the least liked. In teaching methods, the 'detailed and systematic explanation of the theory and concepts' was preferred to rote learning and memorization lacking explanation. In class atmosphere, friendly and free atmosphere was the most preferred, and uncomfortable, boring one was the least preferred. Secondly, in 'image of the science teachers' category and 'quality as the teachers' sub-category, thoughtful and considerate teachers who respect students' personality was the most preferred. On the contrary, they didn't prefer teachers who were indifferent and humiliated students. Finally in 'characteristics of the teachers' sub-category, the participants liked clear, energetic voice, and mild expression, and they didn't like formal style, overly fancy clothes, etc. Based on the result of this study, more empirical study on the teachers' image is needed, and the thoughts of educational administrators, students, parents, and teachers should be reflected because an undesirable teacher can be advised and get opportunity to be a better teacher.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.305-317
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• 2018

In this study, we investigated the characteristics of participant students' modeling with the blackbox simulation program and epistemic criteria. For this research, we developed a blackbox simulation program, which is an ill-structured problem situation reflecting the scientific practice. This simulation program is applied in the activities. 23 groups, 89 second year students of an education college participated in this activity. They visualized, modeled, modified, and evaluated their thoughts on internal structure in the blackbox. All of students' activities were recorded and analyzed. As a result, the students' models in blackbox activities were categorized into four types considering their form and function. Model evaluation occurred in group model selection. Epistemic criteria such as empirical coherence, comprehensiveness, analogy, simplicity, and implementation were adapted in model evaluation. The educational implications discussed above are as follows: First, the blackbox simulation activities in which the students participated in this study have educational implications in that they provide a context in which the nature of scientific practice can be experienced explicitly and implicitly by constructing and testing models. Second, from the beginning of the activity, epistemic criteria such as empirical coherence, comprehensiveness, analogy, simplicity, and implementation were not strictly adapted and dynamically flexibly adapted according to the context. Third, the study of epistemic criteria in various contexts as well as in the context of this study will broaden the horizon of understanding the nature of scientific practice. Simulation activity, which is the context of this study, can lead to research related to computational thinking that will be more important in future society. We expect to be able to lead more discussions by furthering this study by elaborating and systematizing its context and method.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.327-344
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• 2011

This study is the first step for us toward improving high school students' capability of statistical inferences, such as obtaining and interpreting the confidence interval on the population mean that is currently learned in high school. We suggest 5 underlying concepts of 'discretion of contingency and inevitability', 'discretion of induction and deduction', 'likelihood principle', 'variability of a statistic' and 'statistical model', those are necessary to appreciate statistical inferences as a reliable arguing tools in spite of its occasional erroneous conclusions. We assume those 5 concepts above are to be gradually developing in their school periods and Korean mathematics textbooks of grades 1-12 were analyzed. Followings were found. For the right choice of solving methodology of the given problem, no elementary textbook but a few high school textbooks describe its difference between the contingent circumstance and the inevitable one. Formal definitions of population and sample are not introduced until high school grades, so that the developments of critical thoughts on the reliability of inductive reasoning could not be observed. On the contrary of it, strong emphasis lies on the calculation stuff of the sample data without any inference on the population prospective based upon the sample. Instead of the representative properties of a random sample, more emphasis lies on how to get a random sample. As a result of it, the fact that 'the random variability of the value of a statistic which is calculated from the sample ought to be inherited from the randomness of the sample' could neither be noticed nor be explained as well. No comparative descriptions on the statistical inferences against the mathematical(deductive) reasoning were found. Few explanations on the likelihood principle and its probabilistic applications in accordance with students' cognitive developmental growth were found. It was hard to find the explanation of a random variability of statistics and on the existence of its sampling distribution. It is worthwhile to explain it because, nevertheless obtaining the sampling distribution of a particular statistic, like a sample mean, is a very difficult job, mere noticing its existence may cause a drastic change of understanding in a statistical inference.