• Journal of Science Education
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.117-126
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• 2023

In an elementary school science teacher's guide, the guide in details that can help elementary school teachers with difficulties when preparing and conducting science classes are essential. To gain insights into the development of the 2022 revised curriculum elementary school science teacher's guide, it is necessary to investigate the perceptions and needs of elementary school teacher's guide in details. In this study, we developed a questionnaire by analyzing the components and design of an elementary school science teacher's guide in details to explore elementary school teachers' perceptions and needs. For this purpose, we first investigated elementary school teachers' perceptions of their needs, satisfaction, and the utilization of each component of the current guide in details. Next, we investigated teachers' needs regarding the specific components and design of a guide. The findings were as follows. First, elementary school teachers were delighted with the components that help them prepare and conduct lessons. Second, elementary school teachers wanted an easy-to-read design with a layout that allowed them to see the components they needed for their lessons at a glance. In conclusion, the elementary school science teacher's guide in details to be readable and organized to provide at-a-glance information on lesson preparation, lesson flow, and teaching and learning materials needed for science teaching-learning. Based on the results of this study, new approaches and attempts should be made to develop a textbook that elementary school teachers can utilize in the future.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.167-180
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• 2023

Teacher interventions in science classrooms are important because they can have a major impact on students' practices. This study qualitatively analyzed what kinds of utterances teachers used to intervene in students' practices of constructing scientific explanations. Two elementary school teachers, L and K, participated in the study, and their lessons in the sixth-grade science unit, 'Structure and Function of Plants' were reorganized for students to engage in the scientific practice of constructing explanations. In each lesson, the two teachers were asked to support students' practices as part of responsive teaching. The results of the study showed that the two teachers mainly utilized empathetic and disciplinary utterances, respectively, which were used to support emotional, processual, and conceptual aspects of students' scientific practices. The empathetic utterances were employed to support students' practices in the order of noticing, actively accepting, and offering alternatives. By contrast, the disciplinary utterances were used in the order of finding deficiencies, evaluating, and urging to improve students' practices. The reasons the teachers made use of empathetic and disciplinary utterances, respectively, were discussed, and implications for science education were suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.75-87
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of internet resource-based problem-based learning on the academic achievement in science and the attitude toward science of elementary school students. One experiment class and one control class of grade 6 students were selected to perform a prior investigation on the academic achievement in science and the attitude toward science, then the experiment class attended 4 weeks of lessons that was applied the internet resource-based problem-based learning, and the control class attended the traditional lessons based on the guidelines of teachers. After conducting lessons, a post investigation was performed for each class and the results were analyzed to produce the following conclusions. First, the internet resource-based problem-based learning could be seen to be effective in improving the students' academic achievements in science. The internet resource-based problem-based learning seemed to make students recognize the lesson details better and grasp well the questions given during lessons from the process of finding solutions among many informations and data on the internet. Second, the internet resource-based problem-based learning had a positive effect on all attitudes' areas toward science of students. It looked like that the internet resource-based problem-based learning taught the students to use the internet resources and gave them a friendly feeling, so the children could actively participate in class and had positive recognition on science. Third, from teacher observation and the result of the student recognition investigation, we could know that the students showed lots of interests in the internet resource-based problem-based learning, and they were able to understand the scientific theories in the process of solving problems that were relevant to real life, and thought science in a positive way.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.1329-1342
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• 2013

The purpose of this research was to investigate the relationship between the change of beginning teachers' beliefs about a lesson and that of teaching practice and argument-based inquiry using science writing. Participants were three science teachers (A, B, and C) from different middle schools. Classroom observation and interview data were collected and transcribed for analysis. A Summary Writing test was also administered to examine whether there was an improvement in students' learning. The results indicated that the interaction between the teachers and their students developed, which is concluded as an improvement in the teaching practice. Teacher A and B also reported that teacher-student interaction had improved. Teacher A and C came to understand that argument-based inquiry using science writing classes constituted learner-centered instruction. The result from the Summary Writing Test showed the impact of the changes in teaching practice and in teachers' awareness of students' learning as well as produced meaningfully higher scores than compared groups on the rhetorical structure of all the specific areas in teacher A's school and on the scientific concept at B and C's schools.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.2
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• pp.150-162
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• 2022

In this study, we investigated pre-service science teachers' NOS-PCK by analyzing their NOS lesson planning and demonstration. Four pre-service science teachers participated in the study. They planned and demonstrated NOS lessons in the context of 'Science Inquiry Experiment' developed under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. Their lessons were observed. All of the teaching-learning materials were collected, and semi-structured interviews were also conducted. The analyses of the result revealed that pre-service teachers mainly referred to the curriculum and textbooks when selecting the NOS learning objectives. However, they felt difficulty because the curriculum and textbooks did not clearly present the NOS to be dealt. Although all of them took explicit approaches, there were not many open and divergent reflective approaches. In addition, they expected that high school students would consider scientific knowledge absolute and would have negative perceptions of NOS lessons. They rarely assessed students' NOS learning, and were reluctant to assess. Finally, most of them had a negative perception that learning NOS is not necessary for all students. On the bases of the results, educational implications for improving the expertise of pre-service science teachers in NOS lessons were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.90-105
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• 2009

This study analyzed current programs practiced by science-gifted education centers. This study was based on concerns of 18 science teachers on six science-gifted education centers of the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education that had local representatives. For this study, we collected data using journals, documents, reports, survey reviews and interviews with science teachers. Science teachers were concerned about the selection and identification of gifted students, education periods, curriculum, and student evaluation. More authentic measurement for students' potential ability were needed for the identification and selection process. If the purpose of science-gifted centers was to be met, the number of students selected should be determined by local differences rather than regional equality. The curriculum and educational period could make good use of time allotted for vacation to increase lesson periods. Lessons based on strategies like contests for improving the students' creativity, free inquiry and communication skills had to be encouraged. A consistent system for science-gifted education from primary school to high school was needed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.6
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• pp.1219-1236
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the association between subject matter knowledge (SMK) and pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) for science teachers. To this end, a total of 26 secondary Earth science teachers participated in this study and a concept diagnostic questionnaire and a lesson planning task of atmospheric pressure were devised to give an indication of participating teachers' SMK and PCK, respectively. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, participating teachers showed a variety of SMK levels about atmospheric pressure. Second, teachers at high level of SMK focused on 'supplementary' and 'fundamental' curriculum contents for in-depth conceptual understanding, but teachers at low level of SMK, on the contrary, stressed 'applicative' curriculum contents. Third, teachers at high level of SMK grasped students' misconceptions and difficulties in learning atmospheric pressure far more concretely than teachers at low level of SMK. Lastly, teachers at high level of SMK showed a tendency to use learner-centered instructional strategy by utilizing students' prior knowledge, but teachers at low level of SMK were inclined toward teacher-directed concept explanation. Based on this study, some implications for effective science teacher preparation programs were also discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.953-970
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change of teacher-student interaction in a beginner secondary science teachers' class through collaborative mentoring program. Three experienced science teachers as mentors and three beginner science teachers as mentees were participated in this study. Mentors have been teaching science secondary school for more than 13 years with specialty in science education, and mentees have been teaching less than three years in secondary schools. They were matched one-toone on grounded characteristics that were revealed from pre-interview. Data collection consisted of lesson plans of mentees' classes, videotaped lessons of mentees, consultation meetings between mentors and mentees, and interviews with mentees as well as mentors. The consultation meetings and interviews were audiotaped and then transcribed with the videotaped lessons. To examine the change in teacher-student interactions, the lesson observed after four sessions of mentoring was compared to the lesson before mentoring on the basis of the analytical framework that was developed based on the interpretative approach. The analytical framework addresses the four aspects of teacher-student interaction, which include beginner of interaction (initiation), the types of the question, the student response and the feedback. After four sessions of collaborative mentoring, the beginner science teacher's classroom interactions were initiated by students more often. Teachers' questions increasingly turned into thought-provoking queries that required higherorder thinking. The students responded in the form of statements instead of asking question more frequently. Also, teachers provided more delayed feedback than immediate feedback. These changes of interaction patterns showed that students took a leading role in classroom interaction and they were encouraged to think. From this result, we argue that the beginner science teachers developed the ability to make students think and to support them in coming to an understanding of knowledge through a collaborative mentoring program.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.247-258
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• 2015

Students are engaged in classroom learning, and classroom learning occurs not only through conversation but also through nonverbal behavior. In science classrooms especially, there are meaningful nonverbal behaviors such as practical activities like observation and measurement. But these behaviors have not been properly investigated by existing instruments that try to measure students' engagement. This study aims to develop a new instrument for analyzing students' behavioral engagement especially in science classrooms. The method of developing the instrument was structured along three steps. First, student behaviors have been classified into fourteen categories through literature review and a series of observation of elementary science classroom. Second, based on these, a framework for analyzing student behavioral engagement has been developed. With the framework, every student moment could be labeled as Participatory Speech or Participatory Silence or Non-Participatory Speech or Non-Participatory Silence. Third, an instrument to which the framework is applied has been developed by using Microsoft Excel. As a trial, two fourth-grade students in elementary science class were analyzed with this instrument. The results of the trial analysis shows that the longest period of a science lesson was occupied by Participatory Silence (63% and 72%). Among the participatory silence, 'listening' was the most common (51% and 42% of the trial lesson) and 'observing' which is a specific behavior to science was the fourth position (17% and 17% of the trial lesson). It is expected that the developed instrument could be used in improving our understanding of the patterns of student engagement in science classrooms.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.3 no.3
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• pp.239-247
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of an free inquiry method based on PBL(Problem-Based Learning: PBL) to improve students science process skills and self-directed learning characteristics. To verify this research, twenty-two third-grade students were selected from Chung-ryeol Elementary School located in Busan. They have received pre-test and post-test about their abilities in their science process skills and abilities for self-directed learning characteristics. Also, their self-reflection data was analyzed. The teaching and learning PBL process is to provide the information named 'I am the expert on Earth and Moon' which is recreated by analyzing the science curriculum and characteristics of students from Lesson 3 'Earth and Moon', and to make plans for solving the information with K/NK method. Then, to solve the information is gathered and investigated using the PBL workbook. Lastly, students present their finding using the free inquiry method in a group. The post-test showed following results : first, the free inquiry method based on PBL stimulates inquisitiveness in students about science learning and the research group shows improved science process skill. It shows us that using the free inquiry method based on PBL can be used effects to elevate science process skill. Second, the free inquiry method based on PBL has a positive effect on self-directed learning. The research tells us that using the free inquiry method based on PBL can improve a student self-directed learning characteristics.