• Korean Educational Research Journal
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.109-125
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to examine how group argumentations mediated individual arguments by analyzing physics teachers' group argumentation and individual follow-up written arguments. Five in-service physics teachers participated in this study, two middle school and three high school teachers. The topics of argumentation included physics topics and pedagogy of them. Findings showed that the teachers constructed much more elaborated individual written arguments than group argumentation, which seemed to be resulted from different perceptions of teachers' verbal and written argumentations. Also, in their written arguments the teachers selectively utilized their colleagues' ideas shared during group argumentation. Lastly, teachers' argumentation showed different features between topics of physics and physics pedagogy. These differences were related to their orientations toward argumentation about content knowledge and teaching. These findings shed light on a productive physics teacher professional development in argumentation.

• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.187-193
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate some implications for optics education and improvement of the Examination for Appointing Secondary School Physics Teachers (EASSPT), by analyzing the problems in EASSPT. For these purpose, we analyzed 38 optics problems of the EASSPT from the 16 school years of 2002 to 2017. The results of the analysis are as follows: First, optics problems were presented in 10.8% of the physics subject area, which was least frequently. Second, many problems have addressed specific areas such as Snell's law, image of a single lens, or interference. Few problems were found in many other evaluation areas, including optical instruments and aberrations. Third, compared to other areas, optics problems were presented as relatively easy questions, and the problems were presented in more laboratory contexts than daily-life contexts. In addition, we have discussed implications for EASSPT and in-service physics-teacher training.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.341-353
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to explore how science teachers' views about physics and biology are different. From a survey of 45 science teachers who majored in physics, this study found that their views about physics were closer to the experts' views than their views about biology. But it seemed that their views about neither physics nor biology were similar to the experts' views. Compared their views about physics with their views about biology in six dimensions, in four dimensions including structure dimension, methodology dimension, validity dimension, and reflective thinking dimension, the scores of the views about physics were higher, in learnability dimension, the scores of the views about biology were higher, and in personal relevance dimension, the scores of the two kinds of views were similar. Specially the their views about physics in learnability dimension were closer to novices'. In addition, science teachers majored in physics seemed to think that compared with biology, physics is coherent, systematic and reasoning, but it is not learnable.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.449-457
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• 2014

Recent studies have shown that teachers should have be aware of and understand students' misconceptions, which is one of the major components of PCK. However, teachers often have difficulties in understanding misconceptions and in applying appropriate instructional strategies to change misconceptions. Thus, we designed a method course for pre-service teachers (PSTs) adapting the concept of "teacher as researcher". In the course, PSTs conducted research to investigate students' misconceptions in physics. Twenty-five female PSTs participated in the study. They went through the research process including creating question items, administering items to their target populations, collecting and analyzing student responses, and writing a research paper. Data source included individual interviews with the PSTs, field notes during classroom observation and PSTs' research papers. The results were as follows. First, the PSTs confirmed students' misconceptions and learning difficulties in physics. They experienced discrepancies between their conjecture and research findings. Second, PSTs developed the sophisticated understanding of students' misconceptions and appropriate teaching strategies. Third, the research experience provided the PSTs opportunities to reexamine their physics content knowledge while creating items and explaining scientific concepts. They realized that physics teachers should develop sound understanding of physics concepts for guiding students to have less misconception. Lastly, they realized the necessity of being a teacher as a researcher.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.458-475
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• 2013

According to instruction of standard-based assessment system, teachers with higher level of competence in student assessment are required. The purpose of this study is to offer the basic data to enhance pre-service physics teachers' competency in student assessment. 17 pre-service physics teachers, who are sophomore in department of physics education, participated in the study for a whole semester. To do this, we gave the assignment of multiple choice question construction in physics conceptest for formative assessment to pre-service teachers and observed review questions constructed by them. We also analyzed multiple choice questions of 17 pre-service teachers. They had 5 classes for the review process of the question and improved their questions through it. 16 of 17 pre-service teachers completed test design. Our results show that pre-service teachers had a little low competence in test design for classroom assessment. In addition to, constructing and revising questions, almost of them didn't have various perspectives and didn't consider to get information about the pre-conceptions of students. These findings indicate that they have difficulties with constructing multiple choice question and more specific plan needs to enhance the overall student-assessment competency levels of pre-service teachers for successful settlement of the standard-based assessment system.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.910-922
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• 2009

The purpose of the study was to investigate the professional level of the Korean non-physics major middle-school science teachers in 'force and motion' content knowledge. For the study, nine science teachers who majored in chemistry, biology, or earth science were sampled from middle-schools in a big city in Korea. The physics concept test-tool (subjective type), which the authors developed, were administered, and then followed by in-depth interviews. The research findings are as follows: Firstly, non-physics major science teachers' correct answer rate in physics knowledge test of secondary school level was not so high that they may have difficulty in teaching correct concepts in physics to middle-school students. Secondly, some teachers show that they can not apply some physics concepts from one to another situation. That means that they may have difficulty in teaching physics conceptual application in various situations to students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.848-863
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to explore how high school physics teachers perceive and understand fundamental physical constants as well as how they explain them and what methods they currently use in class. This study developed a questionnaire survey to recognize physics teachers' level of understanding of fundamental physical constants, which were measured by many scientists and contributed the to generation and improvement of scientific theories. Those questionnaire surveys were conducted among 130 high school physics teachers in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon. Among them, 124 participated in the survey and six were interviewed. The content of the survey consists of three parts: (i) basic questions about teachers, (ii) questions to measure the teachers' understanding of fundamental physical constants, and (iii) questions about the educational use of fundamental physical constants. The survey was distributed via e-mail, and respondents submitted their responses via e-mail as well. Semi-structured interviews were conducted for 30 minutes each, and all interviews were recorded, transcribed and analyzed twice.

• 한국과학교육학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2008.08a
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• pp.96.1-96.1
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• 2008

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.519-526
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to analyze the Korean high-school physics teachers' difficulties in teaching textbook physics inquiries. For this purpose, 63 high school physics teachers completed a questionnaire. We asked teachers to evaluate the degree of difficulty in teaching textbook physics inquiries. Additionally, we asked physics teachers to select the two most difficult inquiries to teach and to express their reasons for these selections. The main results are as follows: First, the degree of difficulty for all the inquiry is 2.79, indicating a little easy level of difficulty. The two most difficult inquiries are 'Meissner effect experiment' and 'Investigation of diode characteristics using $Cu_2O$ plate and ZnO powder.' Second, the difficulty reasons to teach physics inquiry was presented in the order of 'environment domain,' 'textbook domain,' 'student domain,' and 'teacher domain.' In particular, the biggest reasons for difficulty for teachers are 'preparation of experimental apparatus' and 'safety.' There are many opinions related to 'problem of the experiment itself' in 'textbook domain' and 'lack of ability to manipulate' in 'student domain.' Based on the results of this study, we added a discussion to activate the high school physics textbook inquiries.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.46 no.6
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• pp.561-568
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• 2002

This study examined secondary school science teachers' thinking on physical and chemical change. For this research, we analysed the answers of 80 secondary school science teachers. According to the result of the analysis,teachers had various opinions when they classified phenomena of dissolving ionic compound or diluting acid into phys-ical change and chemical change. Many teachers tended to classify similar phenomena into different change when those were represented with different focus. It means that teachers' opinions were not consistent.