• The Mathematical Education
• /
• v.61 no.1
• /
• pp.109-126
• /
• 2022

The purpose of this study is to explore how well teachers anticipate students to understand and solve equations. For this purpose, a questionnaire of the equal sign was developed, and 20 fourth-grade classes were selected as research participants. Teachers in each class were asked to predict various strategies on how their own students would respond to the questionnaire, and a total of 450 students from the 20 classes solved the questionnaire. As a result of the analysis, the teachers could predict students' computational strategies and relational strategies easily but did not fully understand that some students used both strategies or employed incorrect computational or relational strategies. The students tended to use relational strategies better than the teachers expected. They also employed operational strategies more often than the teachers expected. The teachers predicted that students' strategies would be influenced by the types of the problems such as equation-structure items and equation-solving items, whereas the students were more influenced by the forms of equations in the problems. Based on these results, several implications for the knowledge to which teachers needed to attend were discussed so that elementary school students could enhance the relational understanding of the equal sign.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.27 no.1
• /
• pp.50-58
• /
• 2007

In this study, students' thoughts were searched according to the types of experiments related to the "law of definite proportions" in 9th grade science textbooks. The most common four types of experiments in textbooks were selected and analyzed for this study. It was found that the experiments needed various preconceptions and complex inferring process by students. But most of the students could not catch the concept understanding desired from the experiments. They just perceived simple observation from their senses. These phenomena were common regardless of types of experiments. These means that the level of preconceptions and inferring process for the interpretation of the experimental data did not match with students' level of thoughts. The goals of the experiments in science textbooks are to increase students' inquiry ability, and to acquire science concepts by themselves from the experiment results. But if the contents of experiments are not suitable to students' understanding level, the educational effects of the performance of these experiments were not positive. Therefore, these experiments need contents revisions for students to acquire the concept related to the "law of definite proportions" by themselves.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.27 no.5
• /
• pp.379-393
• /
• 2007

The purpose of this article is to analyze the conceptual change of nine 11th graders after implementing the model-based instruction of blood circulation by multidimensional framework, and to find some implications about teaching strategies for improving conceptual understanding. The model-based instruction consisted of 4 periods: (1) introduction for inducing students' interests using an episode in the science history of blood circulation, (2) vivisectional experiment on rats, (3) visual-linguistic model instruction using the videotape of heartbeat, and (4) modeling activity on the path of blood flow. Based on the data from pre-test, post-test and interviews, we classified students' models on the path of blood flow, and investigated their ontological features and the conceptual status of blood circulation. Most students could describe the path of blood flow and the changes of substances in blood precisely after the instructions. However, the modeling activity were not sufficient to improve students' understanding of the mechanisms of the blood distribution throughout various organs and the material exchanges between blood and tissues. From the interview of 9 students, we acquired informative results about conceptual status elements that were helpful to, preventing from, or not used for students' understanding. It was also found that conceptual status of students depended on the ontological categories into which students' conceptions of blood circulation fell. The results of this study can help design the effective teaching strategy for the understanding of concept of the equilibrium category.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Integrative Medicine
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.95-104
• /
• 2022

Purpose : This study aimed to investigate the effects of health science majors' communication skills on their adjustment to college life. Methods : The subjects were 336 college students majoring in health science at colleges located in Busan. The survey's questionnaire comprised 38 items, including 15 items for communication skills and 19 items for adjustment to college life. Results : In the gender-based comparison of communication skills and adjustment to college life, female students had better communication skills, with overall higher scores than male students for the understanding others and communication. In the age-based comparison of communication skills and adjustment to college life, students aged 21 to 22 showed the best communication skills, while students aged 18 to 20 exhibited the least communication skills. In terms of adjustment to college life, those aged 25 or older scored the highest, and those aged 21 to 22 scored the lowest. In the school-year-based comparison of communication skills and adjustment to college life, third- and first-year students showed the best and least communication skills, respectively. Overall, third- and fourth-year students were more adjusted at adjusting to college life than first- and second-year students. Third-year students also scored the highest in academic adjustment, whereas second-year students scored the lowest. In terms of relationships between the students' communication skills and their adjustment to college life, communication skills were positively correlated with the following subdomains: understanding of others, self-expression, and communication. Communication skills also showed a positive correlation with adjustment to the college environment, including personal-emotional adjustment. Conclusions : The present study found that communication skills did not significantly affect health science majors' adjustment to college life. However, given that communication skills are an essential factor for effective work performance and greater job satisfaction, it is recommended that colleges provide students with relevant education and experiences to help them enhance communication skills while in school.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.46 no.3
• /
• pp.279-286
• /
• 2002

The purpose of this study was to investigate undergraduate students' preconception about the needed knowledge to understand organic reactions based on electron flow and undergraduate students' ability that understand fundamental chemical reaction based on electron flow, and was to offer pertinent teaching and learning method. For this study, 18 sophomores that majored in chemistry education of H University, were sampled. Test papers were newly developed that based on previous research. Undergraduate students' response was classified and reasons of the response were qualitatively analyzed by interview. According to the results of this study, it was found that undergraduate students had good understanding on the concept about the electron configuration of atoms and on the concepts about the needed knowledge to understand chemical reactions based on electron flow. But they didn't apply the concepts to the fundamental chemical reaction. Therefore, teaching and learning strategy that apply the needed concepts to understand chemical reactions based on electron flow to chemical reactions should be developed.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.36 no.2
• /
• pp.303-312
• /
• 2012

This study was to find science high school students' perception about composing laboratory reports by grade. The instrument to survey the perception of them consisted of the perception about making a lab report, and the effect of compositing laboratory reports on the scientific concept understanding and the scientific inquiry ability. Subjects were 260 students of four science high schools in Seoul metropolitan city and Kyounggi province. Most of science high school students had a little positive perception about compositing lab reports, but they had very positive perception about the effects of it on the scientific concept understanding and scientific inquiry ability. There was the significant difference between grades, because the 10th grade students showed more positive perception toward compositing lab reports than the 11th graders(p<.05). The results suggested that different educational approaches and teaching strategies be needed for science high school students considering grades.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.40 no.6
• /
• pp.639-653
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the science gifted students' level of interpreting the oceanic graph and of understanding the oceanic physical concept through analyzing the Temperature-Salinity (T-S) diagram and inferring the SOFAR (SOund Fixing And Ranging) channel. A total of 106 gifted students in the 3rd year of a science gifted high school, using T-S diagrams published in one of the journals of Oceanology, developed descriptive questions asking the depth of the SOFAR channel to conduct the quantitative and qualitative analysis of graph interpretation ability. As a result, there was a big difference in the level of graphs interpretation and concepts understanding for each science gifted students such as interpreting, modeling, and converting, and exposed their alternative concepts about water temperature, salinity, and density. The results of this study will be used to understand the levels of science gifted students' graph interpretation in oceanology, and to provide the basic data for improving the teaching and learning methods of oceanology and also provide basic data for teaching material development related to graph analysis.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.91-97
• /
• 2008

The purpose of this study is to explore high school students' understanding of the distinction between scientific theories and scientific laws. Understanding of the distinction between these two concepts, which belong to the nature of science, has been receiving little attention. We surveyed thirty-two students from a local high school with three-part, open-ended questionnaire. The result revealed that these students shared common misconceptions such as 'scientific theories are unproven, scientific laws are proven and absolute', and 'if a theory is proven with enough evidence, it becomes a law'. Moreover, students tend to regard earth science less sophisticated than physical science, because they recognize a lot of its theories to be unproven in their view. It is indicated further that teaching the difference between scientific theories and laws explicitly could help students possess more appropriate view toward earth science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.19 no.4
• /
• pp.570-584
• /
• 1999

The units about electricity in 5th and 6th science curriculum for elementary school was analyzed and the elementary students' understanding of related concepts was investigated. This study was to make connection between the research about alternative concepts and writing textbooks. It was found that students' response had following characteristics. They had strong belief that the + and - ends of battery should be connected. However this belief was not complete because students did not understand that the other circuit elements had to be connected properly. When the circuit involve more than one bulbs or batteries, they counted the number of batteries or bulbs only and paid little attention to the connection of them. In explaining circuits and the brightness of the bulbs in the circuits. students tried to explains the circuit using scientific terms but failed to used them properly. Although the concept of resistance was not dealt explicitly. student had reasonable qualitative understanding about resistance. According to response of students, several suggestions might be made for the curriculum. The structure and the circuit elements and the proper connection needs to be taught. Also more emphasis is necessary to pay attention to the connection in addition to the numbers of bulbs or batteries. Finally, it needs to be investigated carefully if it is better to introduce some qualitative model to explain the amount of current through bulb depending on the connection and the number of bulbs. It might also be better to introduce some terms, such as current and resistance with the model.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.79-87
• /
• 2005

We compared algorithmic problem solving and conceptual understanding of chemistry with three types (algorithmic, pictorial- and wordy-formatted conceptual) of problems. The familiarity, confidence, and preference to the three type of problems were also examined. The chemistry problem solving ability test was administered to 228 students from two top high schools in the province of Gyeonggi who were preparing the chemistry examination among the four optional subjects (biology, chemistry, earth science, physics) for enter university. After administrating the chemistry problem solving ability test, the degree of familiarity to some problems and the degree of confidence of their answers in a Likert scale were asked to the students. Besides, the students were asked to place preference to the type of problems in order. The students scored better on the algorithmic problems than on the conceptual problems (pictorial and wordy problems), and were also most familiar with the algorithmic problems. The students were more confident of their answers on both of types pictorial and algorithmic problems, and preferred pictorial problems rather than both of types algorithmic and wordy problems.