• 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 Science Education
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.119-135
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze components of conflicts and investigate causes of them between mentor teachers and mentee teachers, who participated in the collaborative mentoring program to improve beginning science teachers teaching practice. The most often occurring component of conflict for surveyed teams was class strategy on knowledge of teaching methods. Then, conflicts in understanding student characteristics as a component of understanding students and knowledge transfer of concepts in science as a component of teaching contents followed as main causes. Changes in conflicts showed that less frequency of conflict occurred with ongoing mentoring. Conflicts from class strategy decreased the most, which had been the most often occurring cause. This decrease was explained as mentees were changed gradually into the teacher's role recognition through continuous mentoring. This study suggests that education for mentor and mentee teachers be provided with consideration of causes of conflicts and reasons for those causes, which eventually lead sustainable and efficient mentoring program management.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.877-893
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate a mentor-teacher qualification standard to support professional development for beginning secondary science teachers. The participants were four mentee teachers and four mentor-teachers. The relationship between the development of beginning science teachers teaching practice and characteristics of the mentoring and interactions was investigated by analyzing conversations between mentor and mentee teachers during the collaborative mentoring. Three mentoring conversation records and transcripts during mentoring program were collected. An analytical framework of mentoring conversations was used in the analysis of mentoring conversations and RTOP was used for lesson analysis to determine the development of teaching practice. The results show that the types of interactions during mentoring varied according to the mentoring teams. Mentors who encouraged reflective thinking induced a higher level of teaching in their mentees. The mentor qualification standard was determined from the relationship between the characteristics of the interaction and the improvement in beginning teacher's teaching practice. To be an effective mentor, the mentor should be able to 1) lead the interaction in a manner that encourages the exchange of opinions, 2) induce reflective thinking and ability to achieve reflective practice following reflective thinking, 3) provide clear explanations and suggest detailed methods, 4) lead conversations that encourage reflective thinking with questions about teaching supported techniques.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.62 no.6
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• pp.441-452
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• 2018

This study investigated mentor teachers' mentoring types and how the types of mentoring changed throughout the collaborative mentoring program for beginning science teachers who had difficulties in teaching practice. One-on-one mentoring meetings were audio-taped and transcribed for analysis. The result of the study showed that mentors took various roles such as Observer, Critical friend, Provider of feedback, Instructor, Role model, Evaluator, Counselor, and Equal partner. However, if mentoring did not bring about a change in the perception of a science instruction of a mentee teacher, there was no positive change in the teaching of the mentee teacher. Therefore, mentor teacher must have enough time to concretely discuss about mentee teachers' perception of a science instruction, mentoring method, etc. with mentee teacher before mentoring.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.403-417
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• 2010

In this research, we investigated the effect of a mentoring program implemented in science classrooms taught by beginning teachers in order to support their professional development. As a baseline data, we examined the characteristics of beginning science teachers' teaching. Then we explored any changes in mentee teachers' teaching with the implementation of a mentoring program. The three mentor-mentee pairs participated in this study. We explored six teachers' classroom teaching episodes with their videotaped classroom teaching. Using open-ended interviews and group discussions taking place on a regular basis to analyze and compare classes of six teachers, we extracted the beginning teachers' teaching characteristics in light of teaching strategies. The common features of the participated mentee teachers' teaching are analyzed in terms of (1) classroom culture and management, (2) classroom discourse, and (3) science experiments. Through mentoring, mentee teachers recognized that increased and enriched classroom dialogues had an effect on students' content understanding. Mentee teachers also acknowledged not only the necessity of laboratory activities but also the roles and ways of managing the science activities. Ways to help beginning teachers develop instructional professionalism are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.64 no.6
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• pp.401-415
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to investigate the factors that affect the maintenance of the effect of mentoring for beginning science teachers. Mentee teachers for this study were ten mentee teachers who took part in the collaborative mentoring from 2014 to 2018. For this study, the videos of the first and fifth classes submitted during the mentoring program, mentors and mentees' journals, the videos of the classes recorded in 2019, questionnaires about reflection on the mentoring program, and interview materials were collected and analyzed. The result of this study is as follows. First, the reflective thinking was sustained after the mentoring program, and this played a crucial role in maintaining the effects of the mentoring. The group that showed the improvement of RTOP score had reflective thinking and made reflective practice on their teaching. Most participants in the group created the classes of constructivism based on self-reflection on their classes. However, no positive changes in the classes occurred to mentee teachers who couldn't have reflective thinking. Second, reflective practices during the mentoring program exerted a strong influence on the teaching method of mentee teachers. The group of the improvement in RTOP score strived to apply student-centered model of instruction to their classes. It was showed that most mentee teachers in the group kept applying the student-centered model to their classes after the mentoring was completed. These results indicate reflective thinking and reflective practice are crucial factors to the effect of the mentoring and its maintenance.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.94-113
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine the change in the classes of beginning science teachers through the collaborative mentoring program that induce reflective thinking practice. Participants in this study were three mentor-teachers, two teachers in doctor's or master's course, one university professor, and three mentee-teachers who have less than four years of teaching experience. We collected data such as video recordings of the mentee-teachers' classroom teaching and transcription, lesson plans, recording of one-on-one mentoring and transcription, mentor and mentee's journals, and RTOP classroom teaching observation reports. RTOP was used for the analysis of classroom teaching and mentee-teachers' recognition and changes in their classes were found out through journals and one-on-one mentoring interview materials. According to mentee-teachers' recognition and changes in their classes during the mentoring program, they themselves recognized their teacher-centered teaching style, misconception, and lack of content knowledge. Furthermore, there were changes in the mentee-teachers' classroom teaching through their reflective practice and improvement. As a result of this study, the interactions with mentor-teachers through collaborative mentoring program stimulated mentee-teacher's reflections on their teaching. Therefore, these reflections led to their reflective practice that showed progressive changes in their teaching behavioral activities. The extent of these changes varied according to the mentee-teachers' individual disposition toward reflection and the issue of whether mentee-teachers' reflective practice was in accordance with priorities in motivational ZDP or not. Also based on the results of this study, the teachers' reflection was not all accompanied by reflective practice even if the beginning science teachers made some partial changes in reflective practice through reflection. It means that it is hard to lead reflective practice for mentee-teachers through mentoring in a short period of time. Therefore, we consider that a systematic and long-term mentoring program is necessary for beginning science teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.564-579
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine the change in the classes of the beginning science teachers through a cooperative mentoring program that induces the practice of reflective thinking. Participants in this study included three mentor-teachers, two teachers in doctorate or masters courses, one university professor, and three mentee-teachers who had less than four years of teaching experience. We collected data such as video recordings of mentee-teachers' classes and transcription, lesson plans, recording of one-on-one mentoring and transcription, mentor's and mentee's journals, and RTOP class observation reports. RTOP was used for the class analysis, and the cognition and changes in mentee-teachers' classes were determined from their journal entries and one-on-one mentoring interview materials. According to mentee-teachers' recognition of changes in their classes during the mentoring program, they themselves recognized their teacher-centered teaching styles, misconception, and lack of content knowledge. Furthermore, there were changes in the mentee-teachers' classes through their reflective practice and improvement. Based on the result of this study, however, the teachers' reflection was not all accompanied with reflective practice even if the beginner science teachers made some partial changes in reflective practice by reflection. This means that it is hard to instill a reflective practice in mentee-teachers through mentoring in a short period. Therefore, we consider that more systematic and long-term mentoring is necessary for beginner science teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.621-640
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• 2011

The purposes of this study were to analyze the PCK of pre-service chemistry teachers and to know the changes of in PCK before and after the educational practice. For this study, four pre-service teachers majoring in chemistry education were selected as proteges and one professor of chemistry education department participated as a mentor. For the analysis of pre-service teachers' PCK, proteges' instructions, mentoring process, and semi-constructed interviews were collected. According to the results, most of the elements of the PCK were lack of proteges' instructions before the mentoring, because they didn't know the necessary practical knowledge for instructions. They also didn't know how they could apply their knowledge to the instructions. However, most of the pre-service teachers developed their PCK through the mentoring. This study shows that pre-service teacher's PCK could develop effectively by well-formed programs of mentoring before and after the educational practice in college education for pre-service teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.557-564
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to examine the problems in the teaching practice of beginning science teachers who participated in the collaborative mentoring program to improve their teaching expertise. The participants were six beginning science teachers and six mentors at middle and high school levels. From each beginning science teacher and mentor teacher, journals, one-to-one mentoring records and transcripts, interviews and questionnaires, and transcripts conducted at the beginning, middle and the end of the mentoring program were collected. Seven aspects of the beginning science teachers' problems in their teaching practice were identified. The result showed that mentee teachers didn't set up specific learning objectives and they organized and presented lesson contents without considering students' proficiency level. Also, they found it hard to prepare for the lessons irrelevant to their major field of study and they tended to use convergent questions more than divergent questions. Mentee teachers tend to give teacher-centered rather than student-centered teaching. Beginning teachers' recognition of their problems in their teaching practice tends to lead changes in their teaching practice. Some of the problems that mentee teachers showed could be overcome if they recognized the problem through the collaborative mentoring program, but if not, it tends to remain throughout mentoring program.This study also highlighted the importance of reflection on beginning science teachers' practice.