• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.221-233
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• 2002

This study investigated preservice science teachers' understandings of philosophical foundations(i.e., ontological and epistemological beliefs) underlying constructivist notions of learning. The teacher education program these subjects participated in explicitly addressed philosophical notions consistent with different views of constructivism. For these preservice science teachers, the program provided them with the opportunity to reflect upon the implications that their ontological and epistemological commitments had for their role as a science teacher. Data from four in-depth interviews were used to explore changes in each preservice science teacher's ontological beliefs, epistemological commitments, and pedagogical preferences. Results indicated that ontological beliefs and epistemological commitments were not necessarily consistent with conceptions of science teaching and learning for these preservice teachers. While some students internalized idealist and relativist perspectives, they did not integrate these relativist epistemological views into their preferred instructional practices. Also, regarding the fallible and tentative nature of knowledge, data in this study indicated that participants' epistemological beliefs about scientific Knowledge did influence how they were thinking about their roles as science teachers. Implications for teacher education programs and research on preservice science teacher's philosophical beliefs are discussed.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.458-475
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• 2013

According to instruction of standard-based assessment system, teachers with higher level of competence in student assessment are required. The purpose of this study is to offer the basic data to enhance pre-service physics teachers' competency in student assessment. 17 pre-service physics teachers, who are sophomore in department of physics education, participated in the study for a whole semester. To do this, we gave the assignment of multiple choice question construction in physics conceptest for formative assessment to pre-service teachers and observed review questions constructed by them. We also analyzed multiple choice questions of 17 pre-service teachers. They had 5 classes for the review process of the question and improved their questions through it. 16 of 17 pre-service teachers completed test design. Our results show that pre-service teachers had a little low competence in test design for classroom assessment. In addition to, constructing and revising questions, almost of them didn't have various perspectives and didn't consider to get information about the pre-conceptions of students. These findings indicate that they have difficulties with constructing multiple choice question and more specific plan needs to enhance the overall student-assessment competency levels of pre-service teachers for successful settlement of the standard-based assessment system.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.427-447
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• 2001

Science teachers need to understand what science is, how students learn, how to teach science effectively, and the rationale for their teaching methods. Along this line, this article discusses constructivist learning theory as an alternative to the traditional pedagogy and the origin of various versions of constructivism. Constructivism is defined and used in a variety of contexts including philosophical constructivism, constructivist research paradigm, sociological constructivism, and educational constructivism. Educational constructivism (or psychological constructivism) can be divided into three distinct versions (i.e., individual, radical, and social constructivism) depending on unique ontological and epistemological beliefs that underlie each version. Each version of educational constructivism supports different conceptions of science teaching and learning that are consistent with its specific ontological and epistemological beliefs. In this article, the main tenets of each version of educational constructivism are examined with regard to ontological beliefs, epistemological commitments, and pedagogical beliefs. In addition, two major criticisms on constructivist pedagogy as well as implications for research methods for each version are also discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.789-802
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• 2007

This study investigated pre-service elementary teachers' understanding of the basic concepts of and their attitudes toward astronomy in Korea and Japan. The survey instrument called the Astronomy Diagnostic lest (ADT) that was developed by the Collaboration for Astronomy Education Research (CAER) in 1998 was used and modified to tailor to the two countries' contexts, including 12 items written in the two languages, Korean and Japanese. The attitudes toward astronomy were examined by the Survey of Attitudes toward Astronomy (SATA), which was developed by Zeilik et al. in 1999. Cronbach's alpha of this sample of the study was 0.69, while the reliability of SATA was 0.87. All the pre-service elementary teachers in both Korea and Japan showed a low-level understanding of the basic concepts of astronomy. 38% of Korean pre-service elementary teachers had correct answers to the questions regarding the basic conceptions of astronomy, while 37% of Japanese participants had correct answers to them. Although there was no statistically significant difference between Korean and Japanese pre-service elementary teachers, Korean teachers scored higher than Japanese participants in SATA. A significant difference, however, was revealed in the categories of cognitive competence and value of the attitudes toward astronomy (p <.05). In addition, it was found that both Korean and Japanese pre-service elementary teachers scored less than 40% about the basic concepts of astronomy and that they obtained lower scores than the US college students with regard to the attitudes toward astronomy.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.400-408
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• 1999

This study investigated the effect of the grouping method in cooperative learning applied to chemistry concept learning. Two grouping methods used were the HML (High-Medium-Low) and the HL/MM (High-Low/Medium-Medium) ability grouping. Three classes (N = 136) at a high school in Seoul were randomly assigned to the control and the treatment groups. Before instruction. the test of attitude toward science instruction, the perception questionnaire of learning environment consisting of three subtests (participation, conflict, and competition), and the questionnaire of self-esteem were administered, and a mid-term examination score was obtained. These scores were used as covariates. After instruction, the three tests administered before instruction and the conceptions test were administered. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that there was a significant interaction between the treatment and the level of previous achievement. The low-level students in the HL/MM cooperative group performed better than those in the other groups. The cooperative groups, regardless of the grouping methods, exhibited more positive perception than the control group at participation subtest of the perception questionnaire of learning environment.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-21
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• 2001

In general, curriculum is a product of the process of a political decision-making among a variety of peoples who have different perspectives on learners, knowledge, and society as a whole. And also, it is being affected by larger social and political contexts. As curriculum has become more a centerpiece of program activity for the gifted, the field has more emphasized the importance of viable curriculum models. The purpose of this article is to reflect current status of curriculum development for the gifted, explain the commonness and differences of several perspectives on gifted education programs, and lastly, share some experiences to deliberate about several critical issues of which any activity of program development for the gifted should consider. According to Eisner & Valiance (1974), there are five conceptions of curriculum which have shaped the thinking of many educators of what a view of curriculum for the gifted might be ; curriculum as the development of cognitive process, curriculum as technology, curriculum as personal relevance, curriculum as social construction, curriculum as academic rationalism. Although educators have a freedom to choose among these various curriculum orientations, the most effective curricular incorporate or balance all of them to some extent. After reviewing those perspectives on curriculum and several difficulties which are currently confronted at the site of curriculum development, this article have tried to identify the major curriculum efforts of the gifted education field. It focuses on the issues of developing programs for gifted and talented students, rather than on specific program models. As a result, it suggested seven critical issues or value conflicts which should be considered in the process of program development for the gifted: the balance of domain-general abilities of the gifted and domain-specific abilities, mutual consideration of accelerated learning and enrichment learning, separate organization of contents versus integrated organization, the balance of cognitive domain of human development and affective domain, official curriculum versus non-official education experience, individual-oriented learning situation versus group-oriented teaming, and expert-centered approach versus practitioner-centered approach to curriculum development.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.887-900
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• 2011

Teachers use explanations to communicate important scientific ideas to students. Consequently, all biology teachers should be evaluated to determine how effective they are at constructing and communicating biological explanations. Open response questions are required to detect pre-service biology teachers' abilities to communicate robust and accurate scientific explanations. Nevertheless, multiple-choice questions are typically preferred by educators because of the common drawbacks of using open-response instruments, such as scoring time, inter-rater scoring disagreements, and delayed feedback to test takers. This study aims to measure pre-service biology teachers' competence in building scientific explanations and to investigate how accurately multiple-choice questions predict the results of open-response questions. One hundred twenty four pre-service biology teachers participated in the study and were administered 20 multiple-choice items and three open-response items designed to measure the accuracy and quality of their explanations of evolutionary change. The results demonstrated that pre-service teachers displayed higher competence when tested with multiple choice items than when tested with open response items. Moreover, scores derived from multiple-choice items poorly predicted the scores derived from open-response items. Multiple-choice items were also found to be poor measures of the consistency, purity and abundance of conceptual elements in teachers' evolutionary explanations. Additionally, many teachers held mixed-models composed of both scientific and naive ideas, which were difficult to detect using multiple-choice formats. Overall, the study indicates that multiple-choice formats are poorly suited to measuring several aspects of biology teachers' knowledge of evolution, including their ability to generate scientific explanations. This study suggests that open-response items should be used in teacher education programs to assess pre-service teachers' explanatory competency prior to being permitted to teach science to children.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.288-298
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• 2018

In this study, we surveyed pre- and post-perceptions of fourteen science teachers related to the atmosphere composition of molecules with different masses by the developed test. As a result of the test, the teachers were classified into two types of thoughts; One of them is considered the atmosphere to be a homogeneous solution, and the other is a thought that the composition ratio of the atmosphere was not homogeneous considering the different weights of particles. The two types were reclassified into three categories; one of them is considering large gravity effect, another is considering small gravity effect, and the other is considering medium scale gravity effect. Total six types of thoughts were found from the pre-test. After introducing crosscutting concepts which are related to the composition of atmosphere. The teachers discussed the phenomena with the molecular motion by weights of atoms and temperature, the homogeneity of the solution of air in chemistry domain. They also discussed with the relationship between mass and gravity and distance in physics domain. And the discussion included distribution of the atmosphere, convection phenomena, etc. After the discussion, the teachers changed their pre-conceptions to post-concoctions considering combined perspectives of gravity, mass, temperature, altitude etc. Through these changes, we are able to confirm the importance of crosscutting concepts covered in various disciplines. In the integrated science, we should help teachers to provide students with these types of thinking in order to form a coherent world-view and to carry out inquiry thinking as an intellectual tool.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.137-154
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• 2012

Approximation' is one of central conceptions in calculus. A basic conception for explaining 'approximation' is 'tangent', and 'tangent' is a 'line' with special condition. In this study, we will study pedagogically these mathematical knowledge on the ground of a viewpoint on the teaching of secondary geometry, and in connection with these we will suggest the teaching program and the chief end for the probable teaching. For this, we will examine point, line, circle, straight line, tangent line, approximation, and drive meaningfully mathematical knowledge for algebraic operation through the process translating from the above into analytic geometry. And we will construct the stream line of mathematical knowledge for approximation from a view of modern mathematics. This study help mathematics teachers to promote the pedagogical content knowledge, and to provide the basis for development of teaching model guiding the mathematical knowledge. Moreover, this study help students to recognize that mathematics is a systematic discipline and school mathematics are activities constructed under a fixed purpose.