• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.620-632
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• 2004

This paper tries to examine differences between geography classes taught by majored and non-majored teacher and to find problems in the latter case, tv observing four middle school geography classes in Seoul, from April to May 2003. The observation was fecund on (1) organization of a class (2) dialogue between teacher and students (3) strategy of explanation. In addition, the author conducted personal interviews with social studies teachers in the schools where the observations were made. The analyses of the observed classes were made by micro-ethnographic research method. Major findings of the observation and analysis are as follows. First, the transition from one topic to another topic was not smooth in the case of non-majored teacher class. Second, the questions that the non-majored teacher posed in the classroom played less significant role in keeping up the class in an organized fashion than those that the majored teacher posed. Third, the non-majored teacher focused on the concepts, terms and contents appeared in the textbook and simply tried to explain them, whereas the majored teacher demonstrated teaching methods such as comparing and contrasting cases to provide students with a more dynamic and comprehensive understanding on the topic they teamed. Fourth, the non-majored teacher used maps less frequently and less actively than the majored teacher. In addition, although the non-majored teachers are well aware of their problems in the class as a non-majored teacher, they think that the problems are inevitable in a given curriculum structure of social studies in Korea.