• The Mathematical Education
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• v.45 no.1 s.112
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• pp.75-96
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyze how elementary pre-service teachers learned the pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics and to understand the challenges and difficulties that they experienced in the course of student teaching. A qualitative case study provided an in-depth description of the whole three weeks of student teaching process. Four pre-service teachers and two mentor teachers participated in this study. Multiple data collection techniques were used; classroom observations, in-depth interviews, document analysis, and researcher's field notes. The results of this study showed how pre-service teachers learn PCK of mathematics in designing mathematics lessons, understanding mathematics learners and delivering mathematics lessons and what are the difficulties and challenges they experienced. Finally this study discussed about some suggestions to pre-service program and future research.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.601-625
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• 2016

In this study, I hoped to reveal the understanding of pre-service elementary teachers about proportional reasoning and the traits of proportional reasoning strategy used by pre-service elementary teachers. The results of this study are as follows. Pre-service elementary teachers should deal with various proportional reasoning tasks and make a conscious effort to analyze proportional reasoning task and investigate various proportional reasoning strategies through teacher education program. It is necessary that pre-service elementary teachers supplement the lacking tasks such as qualitative reasoning and distinction between proportional situation and non-proportional situation. Finally, It is suggested to preform the future research on teachers' errors and mis-conceptions of proportional reasoning.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.459-466
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• 2012

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry in terms of designing exploration and reasoning that is used to formulate explanations based on evidence. The research context was an open inquiry with using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) template in which participant students were not provided with inquiry questions. As data, lab. 39 pre-service elementary teachers participated in this study while taking their science methods course. Analyses of the reports were framed by the cognitive processes of inquiry (Chinn and Malhotra, 2002) and each report was coded and analyzed by the framework of inquiry (Tytler and Peterson, 2004). Results showed that groups' works that utilized the SWH template encouraged the participants to interact each other about scientific inquiry. They came up with more relevant and testable questions for their scientific inquiry. It implicates that children will be able to have chances of testing their own questions more properly by using the SWH template in science classes just as the participants did in this study. The use of the SWH template would help pre-service teachers to teach appropriately how to test inquiry questions to their students in the future. Discussion was made to figure out the characteristics or Korean pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.487-521
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the effect of mathematics teaching experience during the teaching practicum on pre-service elementary teachers' beliefs about mathematics. The conclusions drawn from the entire research were, as follow: First, it can be said that mathematics teaching experience during the teaching practicum has a significant effect on the change of pre-service elementary teachers' beliefs about mathematics. Specifically, the teaching experience during the teaching practicum has statistically significantly negative effects(p=.05) on pre-service elementary teachers' beliefs about the teaching mathematics. Second, the factors which help pre-service elementary teachers the most in preparing for mathematics classes are collaborating teachers in charge of supervising them, the teacher's guidebook and materials acquired from the Internet. Third, pre-service elementary teachers are well aware of the importance of understanding students and emphasize concrete manipulative activities, but experience lots of failures due to difficulty of drawing students' attention. Fourth, collaborating teachers do not play a significant role in helping pre-service elementary teachers develop and change their beliefs about mathematics positively. The advise given by collaborating teachers to pre-service elementary teachers is mostly about simple techniques of managing the classroom. So, collaborating teachers do not affect significantly and positively on the change of pre-service elementary teachers' beliefs. Fifth, regardless of their belief tendency, pre-service elementary teachers teach more confidently and feel more satisfactory when they prepared for classes more thoughtfully and understanded students more deeply.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.164-180
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• 2011

In this study, pre-service elementary teachers (n=68) participated in an inquiry of exploring children's science ideas as group work. After conducting interviews with children, the pre-service teachers analyzed their science ideas on specific concept and propose a teaching plan based on their findings. This paper aimed to find the positive learning experiences of the pre-service teachers by looking into their inquiry process. Questionnaire, researcher's journal, classroom videos and final reports were collected and analyzed for this multiple case study. Four representative groups were chosen and interviewed after submitting their final reports for in-depth understanding of their inquiry process. The positive learning experiences found in the process of their inquiry into children's science ideas were as follows: (1) exploring children's ideas have brought the opportunity for enhancing pre-service teachers' science content knowledge. (2) the pre-service teachers developed their ability in creating questions that probe into children's understanding. (3) the pre-service teachers recognized that children have various incomplete and unstable science ideas. (4) the pre-service teachers could suggest teaching strategy based on their findings.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.661-674
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• 2017

This study used questionnaires to investigate how pre-service elementary teachers understand ocean acidification. As a result of gender, female teachers were more aware of ocean acidification than male teachers, but male teachers had a higher average rate of correct answers, with a lower standard deviation. Teachers from the natural sciences knew more about ocean acidification than did teachers the liberal arts. Teachers ranked environmental crisis in order of most dangerous to least dangerous as follow: global warming and the greenhouse effect, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, and acid rain. About 46.7% of teachers learn about ocean acidification through education, followed by broadcasts, school lectures and the internet. The educational materials most desired for teachers were videos related to ocean acidification. Pre-service elementary teachers have two broad perspectives on ocean acidification. Firstly, they refer to economic loss and food shortages, and secondly, they note that there is a need for improved awareness and publicity about ocean acidification. The role of elementary school teachers is important because their awareness of environmental issues has a considerable effect on teachers perception of the environment. Revitalizing education on ocean acidification and government support are necessary to effectively communicate the seriousness of ocean acidification. Lastly, we need to study ocean acidification in detail so as to be able to persevere toward protecting our ocean ecosystem.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.36-54
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service elementary school teachers' understanding about alternative energy and to identify their alternative conceptions. The two-tier instrument had been developed by Cheong et al. (2015) were used for this study. Twelve items from the instrument consisted of four categories: 'source of alternative energy', 'greenhouse gas emission', 'cost in electricity and construction' and 'advantages and disadvantages'. One hundred and fifteen pre-service elementary school teachers were participated in online survey during the semester. The results analyzed using SPSS 26.0. were as follows: First, the correct response rate varied depending on the content of item. Items related to characteristics and advantages & disadvantages of alternative energy showed high percentage of correct answers. Whereas, items regarding the principles of alternative energy showed relatively low percentage of correct answers. Second, there are some items showing statistically meaningful differences according to students' high school track. Nevertheless, there are no significant differences in overall. Third, we identified twelve alternative conceptions about alternative energy from students' answer distribution. Educational implications were discussed based on the results.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.353-366
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• 2011

An alternative vision for science inquiry that appears to be important and challenging is model-based inquiry in which students generate, evaluate and revise their explanatory model. Pre-service teachers should be given opportunities to develop and use their mechanistic explanatory models in order to participate in the practice of science and to have a sound understanding of science. With this view, this study described a case of pre-service elementary teachers' scientific modeling in magnetism. The aims of this study were to explore difficulties preservice elementary teachers encountered while they engaged in a model-based inquiry, and to examine how their understandings of the nature of scientific models changed after the model-based inquiry. The data analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers had difficulties in drawing and writing their own thinking because they had little experience of expressing their own science ideas. When asked to predict what would happen, they could not understand what it meant to make a prediction "based on their model". They did not know how to use or consider their model in making a prediction. At the end of the model-based inquiry they reached a final consensus of a best model. However, they were very anxious about whether the model was the "correct" answer. With respect to the nature of scientific models, almost all of the pre-service teachers initially viewed models only as a communication tool among scientists or students and teachers to help understand others' ideas. After the model-based inquiry, however, many of them understood that they could create, test, and revise their "own" models "by themselves". They also realized the key aspects of scientific models that a model can be changed as evidence is accumulated and a model is a knowledge production tool as well as a communication tool. The results indicated that pre-service elementary teachers' understandings of the nature of scientific models and their previous school science experiences could affect their performance on a model-based inquiry, and their experience of scientific modeling could help them enhance their understandings of the nature of scientific models.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.14 no.3
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• pp.257-266
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• 2021

This study investigated the understanding of pre-service teachers in relation to the 'fog experiment' in the 5th grade 'Weather and Our Daily Life' unit of the 2009 and 2015 revised elementary school science textbooks. Pre-service teachers who participated in this study were 100 students, who are attending the university of education and taking courses in teaching research. After pre-learning about the 2009 and 2015 revised elementary school science textbooks and guide book, pre-service teachers conducted the experiment in groups. After that, the pre-service teachers individually presented answers to three questions, and the results of analyzing the answers are as follows. First, there were 24 (24%) preservice teachers who explained the difference in fog generation in the 2009 and 2015 revised curriculum with related scientific concepts such as condensation and water vapor, and only 1 (1%) of them explained the difference using the concept of saturation. Second, there were 48 (48%) pre-service teachers who found out the reason for the change in the fog experiment method according to the change in the curriculum. Third, pre-service teachers valued the reproduction and success of experiments rather than the importance of scientific knowledge, and such pre-service teachers suggested the use of alternative experiments or website.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.1-25
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to identify pre-service teachers' Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) about decimal calculation. A written questionnaire was developed dealing with decimal calculation. A total of 152 pre-service teachers from 3 universities were selected for this study; they had taken an elementary mathematics teaching method course and had no teaching experience. The results were as follows: First, with regard to the method of decimal calculation, most pre-service teachers were familiar with algorithms introduced in the textbook. But with regard to the meaning of decimal calculations, they had difficulties in understanding decimal multiplication or decimal division with decimal number. Second, pre-service teachers recognized reasons of errors as well as errors patterns that student might make. But this recognition was limited mainly to errors related to natural number calculation. Third, pre-service teachers frequently commented about decimals algorithms, picture models, the meanings of decimal calculations, and connections to natural number calculations. Many of them represented the meanings of decimal calculations through picture models as to help students' understanding, while they just mentioned algorithms or treated decimal calculation as natural number calculations with decimal point.