• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.485-493
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• 2011

There has been increasing evidence of the positive effects in informal science programs to promote the youths' positive development. However, relatively a small number of informal science programs target specific student populations such as youth in poverty with little research done about the important program factors. This case study presents an exemplary informal science education program (focusing on Earth Science Education or more specifically, water in urban environments) for youth in poverty in a midwest city of the United States. This study explored the most important characteristics of the program that could lead to positive development for the youth. Through a number of observations of the program and interviews with the participants, this study employs inductive and interpretive research methods. Findings show that the program managers' beliefs about the youths' knowledge and experiences, their relationship building skills, and their cooperative work are very important. A concrete mission for the program and structured institutional support to hire the youth as paid museum staff are also important in assuming their responsibility and building identity as an active social member.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.281-296
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• 2015

The ultimate goal of environment education plays an important role in forming knowledge, skill, attitude and a point of value along with sustainable development in the regions. Recently, however, environment education is comparatively despised due to college-entrance-exam-focused education policy. Ironically, environment education is more actively implemented at informal institutes rather than formal ones. Environment education at schools is based on the school curriculum, but at informal educational institutes enjoy much more freedom in choosing learners, places and programs. Among them, the place is one of the most important factors of environment education. Therefore, in order to maximize the goal of environment education in this study, a specified program was developed and applied to a certain place to investigate its features and effects. Also the program was checked if it reflexes the environment education goal by using environment education program analysis frame. The results are as follows; according to the analysis of the program, the program was most effective for the two goals of offering hands-on experience and presenting motivations. The second most effective result of the program lied in the goal of knowledge, functions, value and attitude. And the teachers who used this program concluded that, when the program was applied to unmanned islands, offered stronger motivation due to their natural surroundings. Furthermore, direct experience is recommended because it can give us better conditions to collect data and to enhance interpretation ability.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.125-134
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• 2012

Interest has been studied as one of the construct to understand and improve learning in science. While informal science education is getting increasing attention as science education has been extended from formal school science to informal science learning including after-school program or science museum activity, however, little has been studied in comparing to the needs. In this study the authors investigated students' interest about learning science in the context of informal science education. For this the survey tool in the article of Im and Pak (2000) was utilized through modification, and 155 elementary students' responses were analyzed with factor analysis and basic statistics. The factor analysis showed that the students' interest about learning science in the context of informal science education has multi dimensions like subject, motivation, and activity dimension. The result showed that students' interest decreased as their grade is higher, and that the interest of intrinsic motivation, empirical activity, and descriptive subject were relatively high while the interest of extrinsic motivation, cognitive activity, and specific subjects were low. From this study the authors could infer the necessity of instructional strategy in consideration of students' interest for more effective science learning in informal science education environment.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.329-336
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate the elementary school student's recognition of informal science education program : 'Korea Junior Engineering Achievement (KJEA)'case. The subjects were 807, 4th, 5th, 6th grade elementary school students who participated KJEA program. We developed questionnaires and explored the students' preference and the reason to KJEA (compared with school science lesson), attitude on informal elements of KJEA (non-school teachers and non-curricular content), interest in the each KJEA program, outcome of the KJEA. The result of this study showed that the students' recognition of the informal science education program was strongly affirmative. Students preferred KJEA program to school science lessons for that reason why they could make and do by themselves and the KJEA program had novelty. They expected more teaming opportunities by non-school teachers on non-curricular content. Though KJEA had little effect on career interests, students showed willingness to continue to participate. We could get implication for informal science education that the quality of the program is the most important factors than others. The novelty and the doing by oneselves were also important factors for students.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.279-290
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• 2010

This study is to investigate the direction for management of informal science education center by survey of participants' satisfaction and implication. The place to study was Gwacheon National Science Museum in Kyung-gi province. $4,322m^2$ for the education space can make education done effectively. And attendees of their own education program are over 10,000 per year. 87 students who attend education program and 78 of their parents joined the survey of participants' satisfaction. The results of this study show that most of the participants want informal science education center to be able to make up for school education in part of promoting scientific literacy, heuristic method and scientific attitude. Things to be improved were feedback about student activity, segmentation of the education program for each grade, public relations exercise of program and advanced method of teaching based on each subject of classes. As ideas for improvement, it seemed that making long term program for continuous participant, limiting participant appropriately, developing guide manual of teaching, improving publicity of program were required.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.149-158
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to improve education program for Informal Science Education Institution by analyzing education program of Natural History Museum, one of informal science education institution. This research subject is Seodaemun Museum of Natural History, located in Seodaemun-Gu, Seoul. It is Public Natural History Museum, which runs more than 60 education programs every year continuously for recent 6 years. Objects of this study are 32 education programs for 3rd to 6th grade of elementary school. The result of study shows that teaching materials of programs, run by informal science education institution, don't contain enough script and activity for improving creativity and inquiring mind. As the result of the study, it is required that guidance plan of education program be developed with more activities, teaching method and script, to seek quality of class than quantity of that when developing education program of science education institutes. And it is required to develop teaching material using creative technique and to improve medium and long term program for development of feedback.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.393-414
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• 2004

Traditional role of library is focused on the book collection and its reference service. However, library should be stressed the need of educational activity in the future. This study described to classify the roles of public library, which are book collecting and its reference services, educational activities, event place service for region community. Observation survey on the public libraries in Boston and its Vicinity shows that public libraries have various children's programs and they are getting more important roles. Public libraries of case study have done not only the roles for reference service space but also the informal lifelong education institute for region community. Library as the informal lifelong education institute deserve special emphasis on the development of education program.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.131-158
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to develop and apply an informal engineering education program for engineering education that is realized outside the framework of formal education. To this end, a non-format engineering education program was developed and rationalized, discussing participants' experience in participating in the program. The developed non-format engineering education program was applied to 90 high school learners interested in engineering in a one-night, two-day camp format, and the goal was confirmed through open surveys and in-depth interviews. The goal of the non-format engineering education program is to understand the importance of engineering and engineering design in real life and the principles of engineering design processes, and to use a variety of knowledge and tools to creatively solve engineering problems creatively. In addition, education programs were developed based on the fact that real-life examples allow engineers to understand what they do, design their own careers, and collaborate with colleagues to share various engineering issues and develop communication skills on engineering topics.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.337-352
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• 2024

This study develops an informal science education program based on a creative design for the promotion of participation and action and explores the validity and effectiveness of the program. The program consists of three mini-projects, namely, The Martian: Surviving from the Mars, So Good to Have Seonjeongneung, and Designing a Sunshine Restaurant, with distinct topics focusing on the localization and contextualization of the region in which the program was implemented to encourage students' participation and action. The researchers selected three topics for each mini-project through discussions and revisions. The program is designed for 42 lessons across the three mini-projects and offers a presentation session in which students present their learnings from the program, constructed to facilitate personal contextualization. Participants included 15 elementary school students from Grades 5 and 6 who took surveys before and after the program. The pre-post surveys comprised two dimensions, 'Participation and Action' and 'Positive Experience about Science,' to examine the effectiveness of the program. At the end of the survey, we added a self-descriptive question that allows students to freely write down their feelings and thoughts. We checked the students' thoughts. The effectiveness of the program was illustrated by the largest increase in the "safe society" category, whereas there was little increase in other categories under the 'participation and Action' dimension in the Korean Science Education Standards. 'Science-related Self-concept' exhibited the largest increase, whereas the other categories displayed little increase from the 'Positive Experience about Science' dimension category.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.391-398
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• 2005

Recent studies say that informal learning is influential to students as much as formal teaming. Nowadays we can see various informal teaming inside and outside of the country. In 2004, it was the first attempt in Korea that engineer had gone to the elementary school fur activity that included scientific experiment and engineering work with students. National Academy of Engineering of Korea (NAEK) progressed activity with companies and elementary schools for students' making sense of engineer and what they are doing. To do that, NAEK had developed the network that company could support its local school's science education circumstance by engineers' visiting program. In 2004, seventeen companies including both large and small ones took part in the program called' Korea Junior Engineering Achievement (KJEA)'. In this program, engineers played the role of teacher (we call them company teacher), elementary school teachers played the role of organizing classes as a mediator. Elementary school teachers and company teachers' recognition is very important to make students' activity meaningful. The aim of this study was to give implication for informal science education activity for which engineers visit their local school. We got the result by survey and interview of company teachers and elementary school teachers. This study's result shows that almost company teachers and school teachers were in favor of purpose of this informal science education activity and satisfied with their participation. But some company teachers were not satisfied with worksheets, materials provided and relationship between school and company). Elementary school teachers and company teachers, both of them believed students' program as the key factor of success of informal science education activity. To make informal science education grow, school administrator and teacher need to have a will to utilize the activities more actively.