• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.172-180
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• 2014

The first purpose of this study is to distinguish difficult chapters in 'Speed of objects' chapter and find the factors which give difficulty to the teachers and students. Also, it attempts to compare the students' assessment scores with the degree of difficulty in teaching and also with the degree of difficulty in learning. This report is expected to help science teachers develop their PCK(Pedagogical Content Knowledge) for teaching the chapter professionally. 15 teachers who had taught the 'Speed of Objects' chapter and their 386 students took part in the survey to acquire information about the difficulties in teaching and learning. 386 students also received a test to examine their understandings of the chapter. The results of this study are as follow; First, the degree of teachers' and students' difficulty is only affected by the contents, and the degree of onerousness felt by teachers is higher than that of students. Second, The topics caused higher difficulty to teachers were 'Understanding the meaning of motion(2nd lesson)', 'Understanding the meaning and unit of speed(5th lesson)', 'Changing unit of speed(6th lesson)', 'Drawing a distance-time graph(7th lesson)', and 'Understanding the relative motion(10th). The topics that led higher difficulty to students were the contents of 5th, 6th, and 7th lessons. Third, the 'Speed of Objects' chapter can be divided into 4 types of difficulty according to the degree of teaching and learning; 'Strong difficulty', 'Learning difficulty', 'Weak difficulty', and 'Teaching difficulty'. Last, students showed low achievement to the tasks that were related with 'Strong difficulty' and 'Teaching difficulty'.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.597-606
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to survey and analyze difficulties in teaching and learning elementary school science on the chapter titled 'electric circuit'. 28 elementary school teachers who teach 5th grade science and 73 5th grade students in elementary school were taken part in this survey. The pilot questionnaire was distributed to find out both the degree and the reason of difficulties in teaching and learning. The answers are analyzed with four areas to extract elements which make class difficult; Learner factors (L), Instruction factors (I), Curriculum & textbooks factors (C), and Environment factors (E). The results are as follows. (1) It can be seen that both students and teachers feel the highest difficulty in 7th lesson 'the direction of current', while they felt little difficulty in lesson 3 'conductor and nonconductor' and lesson 8 'the safety of electricity'. (2) The most mentioned reason of difficulties in teaching and learning was Learner factors (L). (3) Teachers felt many difficulties in experimental environment. On the other hands, students didn't think experimental failures as serious trouble. (4) Students felt many difficulties in new terms and hazy concepts or expressions. (5) Teachers felt a lot of difficulties in those from Curriculum & textbooks factors.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.531-538
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• 2005

The primary purpose of the study was to investigate the degree of difficulty and the causes of the difficulties in science instruction reported by elementary teachers and students. The secondary purpose was to suggest the effective methods to both of them to improve the efficiency of science instruction. For this study, the survey was carried out on 322 students and 156 teachers in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th grades. The questionnaires consisted of interest, difficulty and its factors. The results of this investigation are summarized as follows; 1. Teachers had relatively higher interest than students in science instruction content(textbook). Furthermore, the units that teachers showed interest differed from those that students had. This means that there is a significant difference of interest in instruction process between teachers and students. 2. Teachers felt much higher difficulty than students in the content of science instruction. This shows that the degree of interest might have little relation with that of difficulty, and that teaching of science seemed more difficult than teaming. Moreover, there was a difference of difficulty in the units between the teachers and students. The result shows a distinctive difference of difficulty in 8 units of the 3rd grade, 9 units n the 4th grade, and 12 units in the 5th grade (p<.05, p<.001, p<.005, respectively). It means that the difficulty depended on the units. 3. Students responded that they are responsible for difficulty factors of teaming, otherwise teachers thought that students are responsible for it, when the factors were divided into student factor, teacher factor, and curriculum factor. 4. Students demanded many experiments in the lab as well as easy and interesting instructions in order to reduce the degree of difficulty and to improve the condition of science instructions. However, teachers demanded the expansion of experimental equipments and materials as well as the improvement of the lab condition.

• Educational Technology International
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.193-216
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• 2020

This study investigated university students' perspectives on good class and instructional practices through social network analysis. The subjects were 321 students in the third and fourth academic years in a Korean university. The subjects completed four open-ended questions, asking about experience of good class, good instructors' teaching practice, and their feelings and attitudes when participating in good class. As social network analysis, KrKwic (Korea Key Words in Context) was used to compute word frequencies and analyze semantic network structures and Ucinet Netdraw to assess centrality in the social network, consisting of degree centrality, closeness centrality, and between centrality. The results are as follows. First, students showed 5 keywords to depict what good class is, including 'understanding', 'example', 'video', 'interest', and 'communication'. Second, the characteristics of teaching methods by professors who practice good class indicate 'assignments', 'questions', 'understanding', 'example', and 'feedback'. Third, the top 5 keywords of students' attitudes as participating in good class are 'active', 'participation', 'focus', 'listening', and 'asking'. Last, keywords depicting desirable class that students most wanted to take next time are 'assignments', 'rewards', 'understanding', 'difficulty', and 'interest'. The findings from this study include the meanings of the semantic network structures of words in the text making up messages. Also this study can provide empirical evidence for educators and educational practitioners in higher education to create effective learning environments.

• Journal for History of Mathematics
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.135-155
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• 2019

One of the reasons students have difficulty in studying probability is that they do not understand the meaning of mathematical terms precisely. One such term is a continuous random variable. Students tend not to think of the accurate definition of continuous random variables but to understand the definition of continuity of functions and the meaning of continuity in probability as equal. In this study, we try to explore the degree of pre-service teachers' understanding on the concept of continuation of functions and continuous random variables. To do this, the questionnaire items related to continuous random variables and continuity of functions were developed by experts and examined by pre-service teachers. Based on this, we make suggestions on implications for teaching and learning about continuous random variables.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.101-113
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to analyze students misunderstood types relate to trigonometric function and to devise its teaching method using GSP. To do this, we performed several steps as followings: First, we performed questionnaire survey to 70 students belong to second year at high school to find students comprehension degree about radian angle representation and trigonometric function graph. Second, we devised the teaching-learning materials relate to trigonometric function graph using GSP. And then, we used them in the class of 35 students who are at the time to learn trigonometric function in the first year at high school. Third, we conducted Questionnaire survey to students studied through teaching and learning materials using GSP. As a result of doing the survey, we found that general students were interested in the class using GSP and they could also operate computer without difficulty.

• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.31-45
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• 2000

The idea to be changed first among the general ideas of mathematics is that, from the standpoint of teachers, one-sided teaching is efficient due to the progress of classwork of excessive quantity, and, from the standpoint of students, they say they gave up mathematics publicly feeling uneasiness in every class because of the deficiency of previous learning and interest, and they think all problems are due to the educational system, neglecting their studies, not participating actively in lessons. Therefore this study is, after giving learning points and problem papers of which the degree of difficulty differs to the groups of students divided into the advanced, intermediate, and elementary by personal abilities of learning and concerns, tried out to remove uniformity and integrity of lessons through solving the problems students can, to convert lessons to the learner-oriented that learners take part in voluntarily through discussing, solving the problems, and correcting the errors of them by group-cooperative actions, for the students to realize that they can solve everything only by their own endeavors.

• Communications of Mathematical Education
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.85-101
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate how elementary school students understand and use the number line relating number concept and what is the main problem in the learning process. For the efficient achievement of this purpose, we investigated how the number line metaphor is related to the number concept and considered the role of the number line on Freudenthal's number concept teaching theory. The test conducted to find the degree of understanding and difficulty on using the number line by actual elementary school students consisted of two questions ; to find appropriate number corresponding to the given number on the number line and to identify contents of chapters about the use of number line on each grade. It was found that many students couldn't solve the problem represented by the number line though they could solve the problem represented by other ways such as number track and pictures. The only difference between the two problems was the way of representation, and they had same contents and structure. This study tried to figure out the meaning of this phenomenon. Also, by using various teaching-learning method (number track, pictures, empty number line, and double number line etc.), this study was aimed to provide the way to help learning 'related number concept' and to solve the difficulty on understanding the number line.

• School Mathematics
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.353-370
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was threefold: (1) to select the components of spatial ability that could be associated with the implementation of a polycube task, embody the selected components of spatial ability as learning elements and develop the prototype of polycube teaching-learning materials applicable to gifted education, (2) to make a close analysis of the development process of the teaching-learning materials to ensure the applicability of the prototype, (3) to give some suggestions on the development of teaching-learning materials geared toward mathematically gifted classes. The findings of the study were as follows: As for the first purpose of the study, relevant literature was reviewed to make an accurate definition of spatial ability, on which there wasn't yet any clear-cut explanation, and to find out what made up spatial ability. After 13 components of spatial ability that were linked to a polycube task were selected, the prototype of teaching-learning materials for gifted education in mathematics was developed by including nine components in consideration of children's grade and level. Concerning the second purpose of the study, materials for teachers and students were separately developed based on the prototype, and the materials were modified and finalized in light of when selected students exerted their spatial ability well or didn't in case of utilizing the developed materials in class. And then the materials were finalized after being finetuned two times by regulating the learning type, sequence and degree of learning difficulty. Regarding the third purpose of the study, the polycube task performed in this study might not be generalizable, but there are seven suggestions on the development process of teaching-learning materials.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.600-610
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• 2022

While Korean piano pedagogy has seen a remarkable growth, the relatively weak attention to intermediate level has emerged as a pending problem. The limited literature review, specifically the lack of playing Korean original works, has been considered as a serious issue. To emphasize the usefulness of Kim Kukjin's "Pieces of Korean Melody for Piano" as an intermediate work, this study presents practical teaching guidelines by classifying of difficulty in his 25 pieces and providing step by step learning goals and teaching plan. The difficulty stage was based on Jane Magret's 10-step classification table for comparison with other intermediate piano literature, and this study more specifically classified Kim's pieces according to Korean melody, rhythm, and texture. As a result of the difficulty classification, it was found that the pieces from stages 4 to 10 was organized to systematically and comprehensively learn step by step from the most basic progression to Korean 'Jangdan' rhythm patterns, various articulations and decorations that express 'Sigimsae' of Korean Traditional Music, and heterophony texture. In addition, this study proposed the order of pieces for the effective teaching according to the characteristics and difficulty of the pieces. This study suggests that the findings lead to the expansion of Korean intermediate literature study and the revitalization of Korean original works teaching method.