• The Mathematical Education
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• v.51 no.4
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• pp.455-469
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• 2012

Given the importance of mathematical connections in instruction, this paper analyzed the objects and the methods of mathematical connections according to the lesson flow featured in 20 elementary lessons selected as effective instructional methods by local educational offices in Korea. Mathematical connections tended to occur mainly in the introduction, the first activity, and the sum-up period of each lesson. The connection between mathematical concept and procedure was the most popular followed by the connection between concept and real-life context. The most prevalent method of mathematical connections was through communication, specifically the communication between the teacher and students, followed by representation. Overall it seems that the objects and the methods of mathematical connections were diverse and prevalent, but the detailed analysis of such cases showed the lack of meaningful connection. These results urge us to investigate reasons behind these seemingly good features but not-enough connections, and to suggest implications for well-connected mathematics teaching.

• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.125-136
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• 2021

The development of systems that can generate automatically instructional material is a challenging goal for the e-learning community. These systems pave the way towards large scale e-learning deployment as they produce instruction on-demand for users requesting to learn about any topic, anywhere and anytime. However, realizing such systems is possible with the availability of vast repositories of web information in different formats that can be searched, reused and integrated into information-rich environments for interactive learning. This paradigm of learning relieves instructors from the tedious authoring task, making them focusing more on the design and quality of instruction. This paper presents a mobile learning system (Mole) that supports the generation of instructional material in M-Learning (Mobile Learning) contexts, by reusing and integrating heterogeneous hypermedia web resources. Mole uses open hypermedia repositories to build a Learning Web and to generate learning objects including various hypermedia resources that are adapted to the user context. Learning is delivered through a nice graphical user interface allowing the user to navigate conveniently while building their own learning path. A test case scenario illustrating Mole is presented along with a system evaluation which shows that in 90% of the cases Mole was able to generate learning objects that are related to the user query.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.433-448
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• 2020

In this study, the tasks of thermal equilibrium and heat insulation concept were divided into scientific and everyday contexts to analyzed the level of familiarity, feeling of knowing, state curiosity, and state anxiety that students feel in task contexts and their relationship. The subjects of this study were One hundred nine students in sixth grade of elementary schools located in metropolitan cities. The results of this study were as follows. First, there was no difference in the level of feeling of knowing, state curiosity, and state anxiety in the task of scientific and everyday contexts. In the case of familiarity, there was no consistent tendency in the concept of thermal equilibrium and heat insulation. And the group who recognized the task context familiarly had higher feeling of knowing and lower state anxiety than the group who recognized the task context unfamiliarly. Second, familiarity and feeling of knowing showed high positive correlation, state anxiety and familiarity showed negative correlation, and state anxiety and feeling of knowing had also negative correlation. In addition, familiarity had a negative effect on state anxiety, and FOK had a positive effect on state curiosity and a negative effect on state anxiety. There was no significant moderating effect of the task context. Third, in case of state curiosity, the group perceived the knowledge gap was very small had the highest state curiosity, and the group perceived the knowledge gap was very large had the lowest state curiosity. In case of state anxiety, the less the knowledge gap was perceived, the lower the anxiety was triggered. This study broadens our understanding of the learning process and provides implications for effective instruction strategies for students' cognitive and emotional states.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.457-470
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• 2016

We investigated the conceptual and methodological characteristics of self-study as an innovational way with reflective research methods and explored the possibility of application of self-study in the field of science education by reviewing previous researches done in foreign countries. The results show that Self-study in education means the study of self, self-practice, self-thought, and so on in the teaching and learning context. It is a kind of new research method to pursue the improvement of teaching and learning practice with integrated perspectives on the context of instruction, identities of members, their beliefs and values, innovation agenda for better education, etc. This can be attained by collective and critical reflection in doing research. Most previous articles on the methodology of self-study suggested that the self-study should be more than just daily journals written only by her/him self. To do self-study in the academic way, they requested interaction with critical and cooperative colleagues, multiple but strict qualitative research methods, and participants' efforts for making better practice in instruction. Similar features to the above are found in the previous 14 self-study papers related to science education done in foreign countries. Based on the results, we concluded that self-study could be applied usefully into the field of science education in Korea. This paper could contribute to stimulation in the innovation of science instruction in a more practical way by increasing the attention to self-study and provoking its practice in Korea.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.182-195
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• 2014

Ray drawing in geometrical optics is an effective method for visible imagery of light. In this study, we developed peer instruction materials for in-service teachers' training concepts on the refraction of light including drawing rays. And then we applied these programs to 29 pre-service teachers and 21 in-service primary teachers and evaluated the degree of conceptual change in correct points from the pretest and the post one. As a result of pretesting, in spite of experiences for learning this topic in elementary and secondary education courses, most participants in the study did not well understand the path of refracted light before instructions. However, the result of post testing after the application of peer instruction materials shows that they have practiced ray drawing, which is helping visible imagery. Accordingly, in learning geometrical optics, we suggest that peer instruction with ray drawing activity for teachers' training program would be effective. We also suggest that similar approaches would be applied to other context.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.431-442
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• 2015

SSI instruction can be an effective tool to promote key competencies for future citizens. Our assumption of the study is that applying the concept of collective intelligence in the context of SSI learning would facilitate the learning. Thus, we designed and implemented Collective Intelligence-based SSI instruction over almost a year and observed the effects of the instruction on enhancing students' collaboration, information management, critical thinking, and communication skills. Twenty 9th grade students enrolled in a science-gifted program voluntarily participated. Data was collected by administering a questionnaire to examine the skills before, in the middle of, and after the instruction, and by conducting classroom observations and focus student group interviews. The results indicated some degree of improvement in their targeted skills. First, they experienced the expansion of their thoughts by actively sharing information and ideas using the web platform. Second, they became more flexible and open to different points of views in order to accomplish a common goal. Third, they appreciated having independent time and space to explore their own positions on the issues and to search necessary information, and believed that the process encouraged them to more pro-actively participate and communicate in the group debates. Lastly, they positively perceived the values that collaboration with diverse group members could produce.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development and application of strategies using fairy tales in elementary school science. For this study, many fairy tales were searched in terms of various characteristics and educational value of the tales. Five fairy tales were selected and reconstructed to suit the 'mirrors and lenses' unit of 5th graders' school science, and teaching strategies using the fairy tales were developed to be used in six lessons. To investigate the effects of instruction using fairy tales, pre/post tests for scientific attitude were administered. To analyze students' perception of their classes, a simple survey was administered through questionnaires. We found from this study that the students related the fairy tales with their own experiences and took an active part in the class that used them. Also, instruction using fairy tales had positive effects on their scientific attitude. Many students said that the science classes were interesting, and the method using fairy tales encouraged students to study hard as well as helped them to understand the context. It was concluded that instruction using fairy tales was an effective method in terms of enhancing learning motivation, encouraging more inquiries, more opportunities to apply the scientific concept, and more positive scientific attitude. We discussed the strategies using fairy tales for implementation in elementary science classes as well.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.97-109
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• 2022

In this study, we investigated pre-service teachers' reflection of questions during science instruction in teaching practicum from the perspective of productive reflection. The productive reflection used in this analysis has four aspects of learners and learning, subject matter knowledge, instruction, and assessment. Five pre-service teachers participated in this study. They reflected on their questions with one class video by using think-aloud method. Semi-constructed interviews were also conducted. The analyses of the results reveal that the aspect of 'instruction' and the 'learners and learning' were frequently included in their reflections. 'subject matter knowledge' was often included in their reflection while 'assessment' was hardly included. The integrations of the two aspects appear most often, those of three aspects appear only sometimes. However, four aspects appear very rarely. The integrations of 'learners and learning' and 'instruction' with the other aspects were most frequent, and the integrations of 'content knowledge' with the other aspects were often. However, the integration of 'assessment' was very few. There were more productive reflections from pre-service teachers who reflect on several questions in context than who reflected on questions one by one. In addition, they exhibited some difficulties in suggesting alternatives to improve their questions. They tried to modify the teaching method related to the questions rather than revise the form of questions. Based on the results, practical implications to improve expertise related to the questions of pre-service teachers were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.119-130
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• 2019

The TIMSS assessment is conducted every four years, and Korean fourth grade cohort in TIMSS 2011 participated in TIMSS 2015 again as eighth graders, which produced the first achievement data of the cohort group of elementary and middle schools. In this study, in order to investigate the causes of the decline in Korean students' science achievement with grade changes from the fourth to the eighth grade, we analyzed educational context variables such as characteristics of students, teachers, and classroom instructions of the top 5 achievement countries participated in both TIMSS 2011 and TIMSS 2015. According to the results, students' sense of school belonging increased, whereas students' positive attitudes toward science teaching decreased with the grade change from the fourth to the eighth. As for the teacher characteristics, the teacher's professional development activity increased, and the teacher's confidence in science teaching showed similar tendency to the international average. Regarding classroom instruction characteristics, the frequency of inquiry-related science activities was highest at the fourth grade, and lower than the international average at the eighth grade. Based the results, we suggested implications for science teaching and learning as well as further studies including development of differentiated strategy by the school level to improve students' achievement, the necessity of converting into more student-engaging science classes, and the necessity of in-depth study on the teacher related educational contextual variables.

• School Mathematics
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.205-222
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• 2002

In school mathematics, the negative numbers have been instructed using the intuitive models such as the number line model, the counting model, and inductive-extrapolation on the additionand multiplication and using inverse operation on the subtraction and division. Theseinstructions on the negative numbers did not present their formal nature and caused the difficulty for students to understand their operations because of the incomplete function of the intuitive models. In this study, we tried to improve such problems of the instructions of the negative numbers on the basis of the didactical phenomenological analysis. First of all, we analysed the nature of the negative numbers and the cognitive obstructions through the examination about the historic process of them. Second, we examined hew the nature of the negative numbers were analysed and described in mathematics. Third, we explored the improving directions for them on the ground of the didactical phenomenological analysis. In school mathematics, the rules of operations using the intuitive models of the negative numbers have been Instructed rather than approaching toward the nature of them. The negative numbers have been developed from the necessity to find the general solution of equations. The study tries to approach the operations instructions of the negative numbers formative]y to overcome the problems of those that are using the intuitive models and to reflect the formative Furthermore of the negative numbers. Furthermore, we examine the way of the instruction of the negative numbers in real context so that the algebraic feature and the real context should be Interactive.