• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.84-99
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to develop a STEAM program using technological pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) model to effectively utilize technology to solve the difficulties in the teaching of 'structure and function of our body' unit in the primary science curriculum and to confirm the effect on the academic achievement, creative problem solving ability and scientific interests of elementary students. The program was developed as the STEAM program of the 8th class by utilizing the construction knowledge of the TPACK model. The developed program was applied to 29 experimental group students in 5th grade. And the textbook-oriented circulatory system learning program was applied to 29 5th graders in the same school. As a result of the application of the program, the experimental group showed significant improvement over the comparison group in its creative problem solving ability and scientific interests, and the satisfaction of the class was also high. This caused a positive effect on students because the process of self-directing information about the circulatory system using smart devices, making outputs creatively using 3D printers, and presenting them through role play using produced outputs.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.133-143
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school teachers' perception on application of STEAM education. For this study, a survey was administered to 80 primary teachers. The result showed as follows: First, even though, elementary school teachers have known about the meaning and aims of the STEAM education in detail, they often took a neutral attitude toward the actual teaching method. In addition, they take a negative attitude toward having the gathering. Second, only a few elementary school teachers prepared and used the teaching materials related to the STEAM education in class and teach students the concept based on the STEAM education. Only a few elementary school teachers said that they used the developed modules. However, the demand, developing the modules, was extremely high. This result means that the easy and available modules should be developed to establish the STEAM education. Third, only a few elementary school teachers applied the subject, activity, and estimation related to the STEAM education in actual class. Forth, even though, after applying, there much be the positive affects, most elementary school teachers could not recognize the positive affects. At the same time, elementary school teachers suggested the curriculum should be reorganized for students to connect between the results of the STEAM education and the contents of the textbook, and the easy and available program should be developed and spread, also. The attitude of elementary school teachers toward the application of the STEAM education was normally negative. Therefore, it is needed to include more STEAM related contents in the science textbooks and to develop various STEAM education materials and circulate them as well as to establish adequate teaching and assessment methods for STEAM education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.117-133
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate the elementary students' views about lab-based science learning. For the purpose of this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty sixth grade students in 12 classes from two elementary schools located in Daegu City. The interview contents consisted of three major categories. The first category was related to attitude toward science lab, the second was related to lab-based science learning which had four sub-categories; recognizing lesson object, planning experiment, performing experiment, drawing conclusion in lab-based science learning in which the students had ordinary have views and expectations, and the last category was related to students' difficulties and something need to be improved in lab-based science learning. In-depth interviews were performed individually and the interviews were recorded. From the interviews, we found that students, in first category, do like lab-activities more than lectures or instruction-based activities in textbook. Students, in second category, wanted generally more discussion for their own activities rather than teacher's instruction and they wanted teacher' mediation conflicts within small groups and comments for students' experiment results. In the last, most of students had fears for some dangerous reagents and accidents. Based on the results, the study suggested that teacher need to give their students to autonomous discussion opportunities to design and interpret data through teacher' guided questions in inquiry steps, to produce some intimate atmosphere for active interaction in small groups, and to teach the safety education on some dangerous reagents.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.321-330
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• 2009

This study investigated the effects of teaching-learning lesson plan using cognitive acceleration instructional strategies applied to the unit, 'The Light and Shadow' in elementary school. Two classes of the second grade elementary students (N=63) in Chungcheongbukdo districts were assigned to control and treatment groups each, and were taught about 'The Light and Shadow' for 8 class hours. For the treatment group, teaching-learning lesson plan using cognitive acceleration instructional strategies developed by this research was applied. The traditional instruction by textbook and teacher's guides was used for the control group. All students were tested with the test for concept of the shadow and the test for academic achievement about the unit. As the result of the post-test, the scores of the treatment group were higher than those of the control group. However, it was not statistically meaningful difference. The scores of the treatment group were significantly higher than those of the control group in the delayed-post-test for concept of the shadow. No significant interaction was observed with respect to the students' gender, instruction and pre-level for the concept of the shadow. Data analysis indicated that the scores of the treatment group were significantly higher than those of the control group in the post-test and delayed- post-test for the concept of the shadow in the area of object permanence. Our research work shows the effectiveness of the teaching-learning lesson using cognitive acceleration instructional strategies for the development for concept of the shadow for elementary school students, and suggests the necessity for this kind of teaching-learning program in the fields.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.1273-1284
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to analyze the examples represented in school science textbooks by the function types for students' scientific conceptions. According to the framework of analysis, we selected lacking examples in the textbooks, and developed a questionnaire for students. The questionnaire was applied to 157 third grade students to survey their conceptions related to matter states and change of states. The ratio of students' scientific conceptions related to solid the state was high because distinct examples were represented in the textbook. However, the ratios of students' scientific conceptions related to the liquid and gas states were low because there were no distinct examples in the science textbook. Contrast examples and expansive examples of liquid and gas such as fog and steam need to be represented in science textbooks in order to help students construct scientific conceptions of matter states and change of states.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.256-272
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• 2017

The purpose of this research is to study and learn more features how this type of distribution for communication in $6^{th}$ grade first semester elementary science and mathematics according to communicative expression by 2009 revised curriculum. For this study, based on an analysis standard presented in previous research on the types of communication. The results of this research are as follows. First, because the mathematics presents the number of ways to communicate twice more than science, mathematics go through with much more problems to solve than science. Second, in mathematics, spoken method and written method have similar proportion, less in physical activity method. Third, Science showed balanced proportion among four areas; earth, life, energy, and material. On the other hand, mathematics only showed small numbers in the area of geometry but similar numbers in number and operations, regularity, measurement. Fourth, there is no common feature or relevance about communicative approach for convergence thinking in 2009 revised curriculum, it seems that it doesn't consider it as a revised.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.545-556
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• 2013

The purpose of this research was to enhance the understanding of scientific thinking of $5^{th}$ graders of elementary school through conducting investigative analyses on the students' associations with regard to illustrations on science textbooks and to provide basic data that are needed for the teachers teaching science in classrooms to reorganize textbook illustrations suitable to the realities of science contents and realms. In order to achieve the research purposes, subject $5^{th}$ grade students were asked to write down what they associated with the illustrations on the matter part of the $5^{th}$ science textbooks of elementary school: among 14 illustrations, a half of them were after lessons and other half from before lessons. The types of students' learning goal statements according to Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives were compared with the learning objectives provided in teachers' guide. The differences between before and after lessons in associated words which students used responding to given illustrations were investigated. Students' responses were analyzed in terms of how their associations were consistent with what their preference of learning objectives would be as well. Students variables including their achievement levels and gender were used as group variables in order to locate their effects on differences in their associations before and after the lessons. It was found that students manipulated the given illustrations more variously with more explanations before the lessons than after. After the lessons students tended to describe the illustrations more homogeneously and made theirs stick on the given direction by the textbooks. The implications for how school teaching affected to students' perception was made.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.235-247
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school students' pre-concept of electromagnet and to investigate effects of instruction through social interactions on conceptual changes of the electromagnet. For the purpose, 108 elementary school students of 3 classes were selected from the 6th grade. They were divided into the control group I, control group II and experimental group. The control group I was treated through traditional instruction on the basis of text book. The control group II was instructed with a modified version of the textbook to help them better understand the concept of electromagnet. The experimental group was treated through instruction on the basis of the above modified version of the text book and social interactions. Conceptual changes on electromagnet before and after the treatment were quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed using the identical test. The students' styles of social interaction were qualitatively analyzed with tape records of their discussions and work sheets. Effects of instruction through social interactions based on radical constructivism on the 6th-grade elementary school students' concept of electromagnet were examined here. The results were described as follows. Firstly, after the treatment, the experimental group was statistically significantly higher in mean values of conceptual understanding and academic achievement than both the control group I and II. Secondly, styles of social interaction in the three sub-groups of the experimental group were qualitatively analyzed, among the threes, high- and medium-level sub-groups were higher in the frequency of linguistic social interaction than the low-level sub-group. Those students who were excellent in communication skills actively participated in linguistic social interactions. In discussions among the three sub-groups, students of the high- and medium-level sub-groups provided explanations or information while those of the other sub-group sometimes were passive by just listening, but in large actively participated in communication. In conclusion, instruction through social interactions was effectively changed in the 6th-grade elementary school students' concept of electromagnet.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.418-431
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• 2022

In this study, we analyzed the form, presentation, and interactivity of external representations presented in the matter units of elementary school science digital textbooks developed under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. The analytic framework of the previous study was modified and supplemented. The matter units in the 3rd-6th grade science digital textbooks were analyzed by dividing them into "body texts" and "inquiries" area. The results revealed that visual-verbal and visual-nonverbal representations were presented the most. Conversely, audial-nonverbal representations were presented at a high frequency only in the body texts, and audial-verbal representations were presented at a low frequency in both the body texts and the inquiries. Regarding the presentation, when verbal and visual-nonverbal representations appeared together, visual-verbal and visual-nonverbal representations were primarily presented together. In some cases where visual-verbal, audial-verbal, and visual-nonverbal representations were presented together, information on visual-verbal and audial-verbal representations was presented redundantly. Audial-nonverbal representations unrelated to contents were presented along with other external representations, and the frequency was particularly high in the body texts. Regarding the contiguity, no visual-verbal and visual-nonverbal representations were presented on different pages, and no audial-verbal representations were presented asynchronously with visual-nonverbal representations. Regarding the interactivity, explanatory feedback and low-level manipulations were mainly presented. Based on the results, implications to improve digital textbooks are discussed from the perspective of multiple representation-based learning.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.770-782
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• 2022

This study analyzes the depictions of scientists and teachers' thoughts on the 2015 revised elementary school science authorized 3rd-4th grade textbooks from the perspective of gender equality, and suggest improvements for the 2015 elementary school science authorized 5th-6th grade textbooks as well as a 2022 revised elementary school science curriculum. The data consist of representations of scientists found in seven elementary science textbooks provided to 3rd- and 4th-grade students in 2022 as well as in-depth interviews conducted with three elementary school teachers and responses from 32 teachers in Gyeonggi-do. Of the 23 scientists depicted in the textbooks, three (13.0%) are female and 10 (43.5%) worked in the inquiry domain, which was the largest group. When the teachers were asked about their perceptions of the gender ratio of scientists in the textbooks, their answers revealed that they had lower perceptions of female scientists compared to male scientists; moreover, they had no or very little teaching experience concerning female scientists. Furthermore, the teachers' thoughts on improving the gender ratio of scientists depicted in the textbooks differed considerably by the teachers' gender. Based on these findings, it was concluded that during the process of producing textbooks, writers and members of society need to agree on the gender ratio of scientists to be represented, and a social consensus is needed to identify and introduce the achievements of previously unknown female scientists towards gender equality.