• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.22-42
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• 2009

The purpose of the case study is to understand changes in the teaching practices of two secondary science teachers during the span of their careers. To investigate changes in teaching practices, this study focuses on changes in the science teachers' practical principles based on Elbaz's practical knowledge. The biographical approach was adopted because teachers' voices are a valuable source to understand their professional development. In-depth interviews and classroom observations were conducted for two science teachers with seven years' and ten years' teaching experience. The major findings are as follows: First, participants' teaching practices changed through interaction with three factors, critical experiences that have stirred changes in teaching practice, teacher's reflection on teaching, and various experiences to make specific teaching practice changes. Second, three different change aspects of practical principles were revealed; reinforcement of existing practical principles, replacing old practical principles with new one, and generation of new practical principles.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.1-36
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• 1999

The case of four classrooms analyzed in this study point to many commonalities in the challenges of reforming mathematics teaching in Korea and the U. S. In both national contexts we have seen the need fur a clear distinction between implementing new student-centered social practices in the classroom, and providing significant new loaming opportunities for students. In particular, there is an important need to distinguish between attending to the social practices of the classroom and attending to students conceptual development within those social practices. In both countries, teachers in the less successful student-centered classes tended to abdicate responsibility fur sense making to the students. They were more inclined to attend to the literal statements of their students without analyzing their conceptual understanding (Episodes KA5 and UP 2). This is easy to do when the rhetoric of reform emphasizes student-centered social practices without sufficient attention to psychological correlates of those social practices. The more successful teachers tended to monitor the understanding of the students and to take proactive measures to ensure the development of that understanding (Episodes KO5 and UN3). This suggests the usefulness of constructivism as a model (or successful student-centered instruction. As Simon(1995) observed, constructivist teachers envision a hypothetical learning trajectory that constitutes their plan and expectation for students learning from the particular if the trajectory is being followed. If not, the teacher adjusts or supplements the task to obtain a more satisfactory result, or reconsider her or his assumptions concerning the hypothetical learning trajectory. In this way, the teacher acts proactively to try to ensure that students are progressing in their understanding in particular ways. Thus the more successful student-centered teacher of this study can be seen as constructivist in their orientation to student conceptual development, in comparison to the less successful student-centered teachers. It is encumbant on the authors of reform in Korea and the U. S. to make sure that reform is not trivialized, or evaluated only on the surface of classroom practices. The commonalities of the two reform endeavores suggest that Korea and the U. S. have much to share with each other in the challenges of reforming mathematics teaching for the new millennium.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.115-128
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between mentor teachers' mentoring characteristics and mentee teachers' reflective practices and to investigate mentor teachers' mentoring methods to enhance mentee teachers' reflective practices based on the analysis. The participants were four beginning science teachers and four mentors who have more than seven years of teaching experience. This study compiled mentor and mentee teachers' journals, records and transcripts from mentee teachers' five periods of classes, lesson plans, evaluation forms of lessons, one-on-one mentoring records and transcripts, questionnaires conducted before, during, and after the mentoring program, and a questionnaire about the effects of one-on-one mentoring. The mentoring characteristics of mentor teachers were analyzed based on mentor's interaction methods and the contents and frequency of the support based on teaching feedback. Mentee teachers' reflective thinking was analyzed by being categorized as voluntary self-reflections of their classes and reflections on the support provided by mentor teachers. Mentee teachers' reflective practices were analyzed by utilizing RTOP. The conclusions of this study are as follows: Mentor teachers could promote mentee teachers' reflective practices by eliciting conversation that helped mentees perceive problems in their teaching practices. Mentors' questions evoking mentees' reflective thinking could elicit mentees' spontaneous self-reflection, and it led to the enhancement of self-reflection on mentors' support and reflective practices. When mentors offered the support based on teaching practices while playing a role as a facilitator to help mentees identify and solve problems by themselves, mentees' reflective practices could be promoted.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.251-266
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to explore the life history of a highly experienced elementary school teacher, Mr. Park and to understand how his science teaching practices have changed throughout his educational career. Using life history interviews with Mr. Park and his life history materials as data sources, a life story of the participant teacher was constructed. The ways teaching changed in the inter-relationship between external and personal factors were then analyzed according to three temporal periods of teaching changes. It was revealed that in the first period of teaching change, Mr. Park changed his science teaching practices by actively accepting influences from external factors, which in turn enabled him to start developing his expertise in student-centered science instruction. By contrast, in the second period of teaching change, Mr. Park strengthened his own ways of teaching while responding critically to the trends of educational change by external factors. In the third and final period of teaching change, Mr. Park made changes in teaching practices by taking advantage of his personal factors to convert influences of external factors into positive ones. Based on these findings, it was suggested that educational policies for teaching changes should be provided in consideration of teachers' life cycles and their expertise and that teachers should make efforts to reflect on the factors for educational change and transform them into positive ones.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.153-162
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• 2017

This study examined elementary pre-service teachers' (PSTs') perceived preparedness of high-leverage practices (HLPs) in mathematics teaching. Eighty-one elementary PSTs who enrolled in four sections of an elementary mathematics methods course at a Midwestern University in the United States participated in a survey that inquired their self-reported confidence and competence levels on HLPs. This study specifically investigated the comparison between PSTs' perceptions of HLPs and the mathematics teacher educators' expectations. Findings show several glaring differences between the PSTs' perceptions and experts' perceptions in regards to the complexity of some HLPs. This study suggests that initial teacher training programs should include more specific investment in PSTs' insights into details of each teaching practice in mathematics by deliberate decompositions.

• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.3641-3645
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• 2013

Background: Assessment of the nursing staff knowledge, attitude and practices about cervical cancer screening in a tertiary care teaching institute of rural India. Materials and Methods: A cross sectional, descriptive, interview-based survey was conducted with a pretested questionnaire among 262 staff nurses of a tertiary care teaching and research institute. Results: In this study 77% respondents knew that Pap smear is used for detection of cervical cancer, but less than half knew that Pap smear can detect even precancerous lesions of cervix. Only 23.4% knew human papilloma virus infection as a risk factor. Only 26.7% of the respondents were judged as having adequate knowledge based on scores allotted for questions evaluating knowledge about cervical cancer and screening. Only 17 (7%) of the staff nurses had themselves been screened by Pap smear, while 85% had never taken a Pap smear of a patient. Adequate knowledge of cervical cancer and screening, higher parity and age >30 years were significantly associated with self screening for cervical cancer. Most nurese held a view that Pap test is a doctor procedure, and nearly 90% of nurses had never referred a patient for Pap testing. Conclusions: The majority of nursing staff in rural India may have inadequate knowledge about cervical cancer screening, and their attitude and practices towards cervical cancer screening could not be termed positive.

• School Mathematics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.245-266
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• 2011

In this study, we surveyed on the 3rd and 4th grade teachers' perception and teaching practices towards open-ended question in the elementary mathematics textbook in the revised 7th curriculum. According to the result, teachers understood the purpose of open-ended question in general, but they recognized some problems in terms of open-ended question itself, difficulties found when they dealt with open-ended question in their classes, teacher's guide and teacher training. This research suggests ways of improvement of open-ended question on the basis of the survey results.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.363-381
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• 2012

The purpose of the study was to examine teachers' gender difference in teachers' perceptions of the affective domain in teaching practice. This study was conducted with 327 secondary mathematics teachers in Gyeonggi-do by survey method. According to the results, female teachers showed more positive responses in perceptions of the affective domain and teaching practices in the aspect of affective domain at the stage of planning lessons, assessing students, and reflecting lessons. Especially, female group showed higher mean scores than male group in the perception of the value of mathematics at the all stages of teaching.

• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.113-126
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• 2004

Explicit reference to the work of other authors is an essential feature of most academic research writings. Corpus analysis of academic text can reveal much about what writers actually do and why they do so. Application of corpus tools in language education has been well documented by many scholars (Pedersen, 1995, Swales, 1990, Thompson, 2000). They demonstrate how computer technology can assist in the effective analysis of corpus based data. For teaching purposes, tills recent research provides insights in the areas of English for Academe Purposes (EAP). The need for such support is evident when students have to use appropriate citations in their writings. Using Swales' (1990) division of citation forms into integral and non-integral and Thompson and Tnbble's (2001) classification scheme, this paper codifies academic texts in a corpus. The texts are academic research articles from different disciplines. The results lead into a comparison of the citation practices m different disciplines. Finally, it is argued that the information obtained in this study is useful for EAP writing courses in EFL countries.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.25-40
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• 2003

In order to provide pre-service teachers with rich contexts for learning to teach mathematics, teacher education programs usually combine a mathematics methods course with clinical teaching experiences. This paper explores a student-teacher's experience of loaming to teach mathematics by observing one mathematics methods course she was enrolled in and her actual classroom teaching. In particular, this ethnographic case study examines how the student-teacher understands and applies messages from the methods course to her teaching practices. Some differences emerge with regard to ideas and practices. The underlying factors for explaining the gaps are discussed. Finally, this paper provides some implications for pre-service teacher education.