• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.1300-1311
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to investigate pre-service science teachers' difficulties in the 'inquiry mentoring' program, which was developed to improve pre-service science teachers' inquiry teaching ability. For this study, I developed the 'inquiry mentoring' program in which pre-service science teachers taught high school students. This program was adapted for 2.5 months, and 45 pre-service science teachers participated and taught 44 high school students. During this program, pre-service science teachers kept 'mentor diaries' and wrote 'mentoring reports' at the end of the program. Interviews were conducted with all pre-service science teachers. Results are as follows: first, pre-service science teachers thought that the difficulties in inquiry mentoring resulted from their inadequacy (mentor factor) than students' inadequacy (mentee factor). Second, pre-service science teachers perceived their lack of cognitive ability, inquiry ability and teaching ability as a mentor factor. Third, pre-service science teachers thought that they had difficulties in students' differences and lack of activity as a mentee factor. Fourth, they described difficulties caused by emotional distance as well as physical distance as an interaction factor. They also mentioned the difficulties related to teaching range and online interaction. Fifth, pre-service science teachers expressed a sense of frustration with the inquiry environment. Additionally, some implications were discussed for pre-service science teacher education through the 'inquiry mentoring' program.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2014

This study aims to investigate the opinions of students who joined the Jeju Scientific Research Academy, a scientific research program with a mentoring system. The 50 middle school students and 50 high school students in the study were chosen as participants after being judged on their research plans. According to the study, students became more confident in research activities and could have a new point of view on research through interaction with a mentor. They were also very interested in the scientific research program of the Jeju Scientific Research Academy and found it helpful to understand the scientific concepts. Therefore the study shows it is necessary to consider actively the introduction of the mentoring system for the scientific research program. The follow-up study should be done to determine which factors influence on the inquiring minds and the understanding of scientific concepts of the students during the experience of the program.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.544-556
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in beginning science teachers' inquiry-oriented teaching practice through mentoring program. Participants in this study are three mentor teachers and three beginning teachers. The three beginning teachers are middle school science teachers who have less than four years teaching experience. Also three science teachers participated in the program as mentors, who have more than twelve years teaching experience. We collected data such as video recordings of beginning teachers' classes, lesson plans, recordings of one to one mentoring and RTOP class observation reports. Mentor teachers observed and analyzed five classes of each beginning teacher. Before the mentoring program, beginning teachers' teaching methods were more concept-oriented and teacheroriented. They rarely used inquiry-elements including prediction, reasoning, hypothesizing and students were not actively engaged in communicative interactions in a classroom. But during the mentoring program, these teachers recognized and responded to student diversity and encouraged all students to participate in science learning. Beginning teachers' teaching methods have changed to become student-oriented, teachers and students collaborated in pursuit of ideas, and students often initiated new activities relevant to an inquiry. As a result, this mentoring program provided beginning teachers the opportunities to reflect on their own teaching and reform their classes. The results show that school-centered mentoring program is helpful to enhance beginning science teachers' inquiry-oriented teaching ability.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2011

The purpose of this research is to investigate ways to introduce mentoring system to support beginning and experienced teachers for their professional development. As an alternative to existing teacher training programs, we planned and implemented a mentoring system to examine its effects in developing professionalism among teachers-in-need, and those who have not met the teacher's evaluation standards. Mentoring is defined as being concerned with promoting the 'development of an individual to his/her full potential,' both professionally and personally. It is linked with professional and career development, and is somewhat characterized by an 'expert-novice' relationship. The mentoring system in science features group mentoring, where 3 prot$\'{e}$g$\'{e}$-mentor teams gathered together for instructional consulting using their videotaped classroom teaching. Through video-based discussions, teachers could share reflective experiences through collaborative investigations based on evidences revealed in classroom teaching videos. Using open-ended interviews with the teachers and video-based discussions, we extracted needs and goals of mentoring, the need of mentoring system to support beginning teachers, and the requirement of mentor quality in light of mentor's expected roles. Conclusions and recommendations related to teachers' mentoring and for the government's development of mentoring system are discussed.

• 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 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 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.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.40-50
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• 2011

This study is to investigate an effective instruction for female students in an engineering classroom through gender -sensitive teaching strategies by analysing recorded classroom instruction, reflective journals of professor, and mentoring instructions of A professor teaching "non-steel materials and design" in an engineering classroom. This study which used a qualitative approach for data collection and analysis showed changes of A professor in his way of teaching. The changes are: making rough lesson plan ${\rightarrow}$ making detailed lesson plan being satisfied with his teaching skills ${\rightarrow}$ trying to improve his teaching skills, using negative feedback ${\rightarrow}$ using positive feedback, pointing weaknesses as pre-engineers ${\rightarrow}$ providing detailed information needed to be engineers. This paper deals with the theory comparison between a conventional engineering education and new engineering education, in which conventional models may fail to give satisfactory results. Finally, we provide real application examples to evaluate the feasibility and generality of the proposed method in this paper.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.1021-1040
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• 2013

In order to explore the influences of coteaching through mentoring upon the teaching professionalism of beginning science-gifted education teachers, this case study deeply investigated the change processes in the aspects of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Two beginning teachers planned, performed and reflected together their science instructions for science-gifted students in secondary school during four 3-hour classes. Since the second instruction, pre-, during-, and post-mentoring were conducted, we collected various data related to teachers' planning processes, videotaped all coteaching science classes, and wrote field notes. We also recorded in-depth interviews with the teachers and the whole process of mentoring. All the data were analyzed by using the constant comparative method. The results of the analyses indicated that coteaching through mentoring positively changed the teachers' PCK. Above all, we found that coteaching and mentoring strategies generated a significant synergy effect through a mutually complementary relationship. The teachers developed deep practical knowledge about the enrichment curriculum, which placed more emphasis on developing cognitive and/or affective characteristics of science-gifted students. The teachers also improved their knowledge about the characteristics of science-gifted students and the instructional strategies appropriate for developing them. Moreover, practical knowledge about assessment domains and methods used in science-gifted education were improved. Knowledge on science content necessary for effective inquiry instruction was also improved.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.3-14
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• 2013

The previously developed practical inquiry activity supporting tools, deduced from the design principles and implementation principles based on the study of precedent researches and theories, applicable to conceptual learning in engineering education were implemented to an on-line learning community, a web-based Windows application, to find out its effectiveness in actual classroom situation through experimental research. The On-line learning community includes the inquiry activity menu to implement learning procedure of inquiry based conceptual learning, the functions supporting the communication among participants, the information sharing function, the scheduling function of class and inquiry activity, the mentoring function, and the evaluation of on-line activities of learners. Experimental study were also conducted in order to analyze the effects of inquiry activity supporting tools on inquiry based conceptual learning in engineering education.