• International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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• v.24 no.8
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• pp.135-138
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• 2024

The elementary stage is of great importance in establishing and supporting students during the beginning of their school life. Therefore, the current study aims to explore the Saudi teachers' perspectives about online learning and its effectiveness on some students' skills. The sample consisted of 250 male and female elementary teachers from different Saudi regions, and they responded to an online questionnaire consisting of both open and closed items to investigate their perspectives on online learning and face-to-face learning. The results showed a great perception and awareness among male and female teachers about the advantages and disadvantages of online learning. In addition, the results show that elementary teachers prefer face-to-face learning because it is the most stable and avoids many of the disadvantages mentioned for online learning. From this point of view, the study emphasizes the importance of integrating the two types of learning and directing teachers' professional development practices towards enhancing and developing their digital skills.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.421-434
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• 2004

Cognitively Guided Instruction (CGI) is one of the most successful professional development programs for elementary mathematics teachers in US. This article introduces its theoretical background, research-based framework of addition and subtraction work, and how the program has been disseminated. Carpenter and Fennema started CGI aiming to develop a professional development program that focused on research knowledge of children"s thinking. Their goal was. to bring a significant change in teaching by helping teachers understand how children think mathematically. This 3-year NSF funded project grew to be 11-year long, and a number of publications have reported consistent successful learning and teaching by CGI students and teachers compared to counterparts throughout US. CGI′s success by focusing on improving teachers′ knowledge of children′s thinking offers possible opportunities for teacher educators to re-conceptualize teacher education in Korea.

• School Mathematics
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.415-433
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• 2002

The mathematics education community is seeking to change a teacher-centered class-room culture to a student-centered culture. However, the real transition is not easy, even for teachers who are eager and willing to teach differently. The challenge for teachers is to use the social structure of the classrooms to nurture students' development toward mathematical ways of thinking and communicating as well as their under-standing of mathematical concepts and processes. By introducing an elementary teacher's teaching practice and professional develop-ment along with her classroom episodes, this paper is to make strides toward an enriched understanding of the culture of the elementary mathematics classrooms in which students may have a lot of opportunities to develop conceptual under standing and math-ematical disposition. This paper first provides a detailed description of the classroom flow in terms of general social norms and sociomathematical norms in order to explore how the teacher and the students have established such a student-centered math-ematics microculture. This paper then analyzes the teacher's teaching approach and professional development.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.66-78
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• 2008

Since Environmental Education in Elementary School is taught separately in various subject area, a well-founded and organized curriculum in integrated Environmental Education is needed to educate teachers for professional development. In this research, a curriculum for elementary teacher in-service training program was developed in order to improve both environmental and educational competencies of elementary school teachers. The curriculum was based on the needs analysis on Environmental Education training for elementary school teachers. Also it was based on international and updated perspectives on Environmental Education, Education for Sustainable Development. The curriculum consists of the introduction and the particular perspectives. The particular is made of 60 hours, which covers 6 perspectives on environment. They are ecological perspective, environmental ethics perspective, social-cultural perspective, economic perspective, environmental hygienic perspective, and environmental policy. Environmental policies of Korea and the world were included so that teachers will understand efforts made at national level and participate more to environmental action in their schools. Lesson objectives were specified for teachers to apply this curriculum to their classroom easily. Related elementary curriculum and textbook were indicated at the end of each lesson so teachers can link their training setting with their classroom setting. Especially, in this curriculum various teaching and teaming methods for each lesson are introduced. Thus, this re- search is very practical for elementary school teachers who are planning to teach environment in their classroom.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.213-223
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• 2012

This study explored practicing elementary school teacher's beliefs of scientific inquiry and scientific inquiry teaching methods. Defining teacher's beliefs as a broad construct, we tried to examine the teachers' understandings about the scientific inquiry and scientific inquiry teaching method. This study drew on interview data from 10 elementary teachers in busan and changwon area of korea. Conclusions of this study include; First, we found that elementary teacher's beliefs of inquiry were represented variously. And they considered that inquiry is the important goal of science education. They though that the goal of science education is development of Scientific inquiry skills, Scientific thinking skills, development of Creativity and problem solving ability, increasing interest about science, understanding of the basic concepts of science and apply of real-life. second, most of the teachers though that Scientific inquiry is scientists activities, they defined 'the process of creation of new knowledge', 'the process of deriving theory', 'solving process of intellectual curiosity', 'Problem-solving process'. third, they considered that teaching method of scientific inquiry is open inquiry activities. however, they thought that there are many difficulties to actually apply. Understanding teachers' beliefs has implications for both the enactment of inquiry teaching in the classroom as well as the uptake of new teaching behaviors during professional development, with enhanced outcomes for engaging students in Science.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.143-161
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• 2001

This paper explores how unequally successful mathematics practices were constructed in the two elementary mathematics classrooms. The interview data that pertain to the two teachers' personal reflections on the influences on their professional development were used as a source of inquiry to identify the underlying factors that might account for the differences and the similarities in implementing reform ideals in teaching mathematics. This affords not only exploration of the challenges of moving teaching practices toward student-centered approaches but also insight of the processes of developing mathematics teaching practices through teachers\`own career paths.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.129-148
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• 2007

Recent reform movement in mathematics education has focused not only on the curriculum development but also on teachers' learning or professional development. Whereas various theoretical paradigms call for different programs of professional development for teachers, one of the common emphases is on the pedagogical content knowledge [PCK] which encompasses contents and methods to teach. Against this background, this study developed comprehensive instructional materials for the purpose of fostering PCK in mathematics for elementary school teachers with 17 essential learning themes such as fraction, plane geometry, and area. Each loaming theme was first summarized on the basis of literature reviews and surveys in terms of knowledge in mathematics contents, knowledge in teaching methods, and knowledge in students' mathematical understanding and learning. Each theme was then analyzed in detail on how it was represented in the national curriculum and its concomitant textbooks along with workbooks. Finally, this report included a reconstruction of one unit in textbooks per each learning theme, followed by teaching notes and suggestions from classroom implementation. This was intended for teachers to apply what they might loam from this material to their actual mathematics instruction. Given the page limit, this paper dealt only with the learning theme of ratio.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.268-283
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• 2020

In this study, we aimed to look at what dilemmas of science teaching elementary school teachers experience and how they cope with their dilemmas in everyday science classes. Three elementary school teachers participated and qualitative data such as class log, class video, and interview materials were analyzed in inductive ways. The main findings are as follows. First, the dilemmas were classified based on the four factors that make up the science class; teacher, student, learning content, environment. However the dilemmas appeared to be not only one factor involved, but the rest of the factors intertwined. Thus, it was interpreted how the main factors causing the dilemmas conflicted with other factors. Second, the types of teachers' coping strategies to the dilemmas could be largely divided into 'give-up', 'stick to' and 'modified'. In some cases, teachers gave up on what they valued and did not take active action ('give-up'), teachers chose what they valued and made decisions to actively realize it ('stick to'), and in others, conflicts were adjusted by introducing new methods or elements to their classes ('modified'). Based on these results, we discussed that the teacher's dilemmas could facilitate the teacher's learning or professional development.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.137-173
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• 2021

Research and national standards, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in the United States, promote the development and implementation of K-12 interdisciplinary curricula integrating the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science (STEM+CS). However, little research has explored how teachers provide epistemic support in interdisciplinary contexts or the factors that inform teachers' epistemic support in STEM+CS activities. The goal of this paper is to articulate how interdisciplinary instruction complicates epistemic knowledge and resources needed for teachers' instructional decision-making. Toward these ends, this paper builds upon existing models of teachers' instructional decision-making in individual STEM+CS disciplines to highlight specific challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary approaches on classroom epistemic supports. First, we offer considerations as to how teachers can provide epistemic support for students to engage in disciplinary practices across mathematics, science, engineering, and computer science. We then support these considerations using examples from our studies in elementary classrooms using integrated STEM+CS curriculum materials. We focus on an elementary school context, as elementary teachers necessarily integrate disciplines as part of their teaching practice when enacting NGSS-aligned curricula. Further, we argue that as STEM+CS interdisciplinary curricula in the form of NGSS-aligned, project-based units become more prevalent in elementary settings, careful attention and support needs to be given to help teachers not only engage their students in disciplinary practices across STEM+CS disciplines, but also to understand why and how these disciplinary practices should be used. Implications include recommendations for the design of professional learning experiences and curriculum materials.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.771-791
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• 2013

What are the identification criteria elementary school teachers prefer? What are the characteristics of students that teachers consider when nominating them to gifted programs? Will those criteria of identification/nomination differ as to teacher experiences related to gifted education or teacher involvement in the professional development? This study aims to find the answer to these questions. For this purpose, a total of 511 elementary school teachers with a varying degree of experiences with gifted education were recruited from 23 schools in 11 school districts in Seoul. The results show that teachers generally preferred task commitment, creativity, curiosity, and domain specific talents as criteria for identifying gifted students, while perceiving achievement records, total grades, leadership, and general intelligence as less important. Teachers experienced in gifted education or having been involved in professional development perceived curiosity, task commitment, and creativity as more important than teachers without such experiences. The importance-performance analysis of identification criteria indicates that teachers reported high importance on task commitment, curiosity, and creativity, but those factors were less considered in actual nomination. On the contrary, teachers reported low importance on quick learning and achievement(total grades, subject grades), but those were highly considered in nomination. A similar pattern was found in both experienced and nonexperienced teachers although the importance-performance gap was higher for the latter. Implications for teacher nominations and professional development were discussed.