초록
This study divided pre-service elementary school teachers' knowledge conversion into four types, socialization, externalization, combination and internalization, based on their inquiry activities on the life cycle of cabbage butterfly. As research subjects, this study collected results from 24 pre-service elementary school teachers who carried out inquires on the life cycle of cabbage butterfly for about 2 months. The type of socialization indicates the conversion of tacit knowledge into tacit knowledge, and this study found out that pre-service elementary school teachers acquired and accumulated tacit knowledge from their fellow pre-service teachers, professors and even acquaintances inside and outside the lab. However, there appeared no process that they shared their tacit knowledge with other pre-service teachers or delivered it to them. The type of externalization indicates the conversion of tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, and this study discovered some cases that pre-service elementary school teachers expressed their inner tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge. However, there was no case found that they converted the verbally-unexpressed tacit knowledge of their fellow teachers or experts into well-defined explicit knowledge. The type of combination indicates the conversion of explicit knowledge into explicit knowledge, and this study discovered some cases that they collected explicit knowledge and converted it into new explicit knowledge for the acquisition, integration and delivery or distribution of explicit knowledge. However, there were few cases that they creatively devised new explicit knowledge by acquiring new knowledge through direct observation and supplementing the existing explicit knowledge. The type of internalization indicates the conversion of explicit knowledge into tacit knowledge, and this study discovered both explicit knowledge embodied through personal experiences and explicit knowledge embodied through simulations and experiments that formed tacit knowledge in process of examining the existing explicit knowledge.