• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.325-337
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• 2022

This study aims to determine the implications of the efficient and effective implementation of science core competency (ScC) education by examining the state of science core competencies derived from the 2015 revised elementary school science curriculum and analyzing teachers' and students' perceptions. To this end, this paper investigated the reality of reflecting the science core competencies of science textbooks in a group of third and fourth graders from seven elementary schools who passed the test. In addition, in-depth interviews were conducted with four elementary school teachers who participated in qualification textbook selection, and 156 elementary school students were surveyed to determine their perceptions of science core competencies. Findings showed that, first, 1,586 science core competencies were reflected throughout the textbooks, with an average of 227 per textbook and biology being the most salient area. Second, teachers did not understand the difference between previous inquiry activities in textbooks and ScC education. Third, no statistically significant differences were observed in the perceptions of male and female students on science core competencies, the highest average of perceptions being those of scientific thinking ability. From these results, this study concluded that for ScC education to be realized as a curriculum, textbooks must be organized according to the purpose of core competency education, implementing practical changes, and efforts must be directed toward changing the perceptions of individuals who deliver education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.93-108
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• 2023

This study aims to analyze the types and roles of visualization materials presented in the third- and fourth-grade national and authorized science textbooks based on the 2015 revised curriculum. Using the type and role framework, 17 chapters were analyzed. The analysis revealed, first, that the national and authorized textbooks had different total amounts of visualization data and total amounts of simple illustrations. However, no difference in the amounts of simple illustrations and infographics used in the units was evident. The units that used the most infographics were Life, Earth and Universe, in that order, in both the national and the authorized textbooks. Second, simple illustrations were observed to have role differences according to the type of visualization data, but infographics had no such differences. Specifically, the motivational role in a simple illustration increased in all the authorized textbooks. Third, looking at the frequencies of the infographic subtypes, the Process, Structure, Comparative Analysis, and Timeline types accounted for 86% of the total, but the proportions of those subtypes varied in the national and authorized textbooks. Based on the results of this study, I suggest that to achieve differentiation in the types or roles of visualization materials, changes in the types, processes, and skills of inquiry must first occur, as must changes in the structure of chapters or lessons. Continuous research and discussion on the standards and methods for authorized textbooks are also needed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.5
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• pp.525-542
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to comparatively analyze the internal and external frameworks of elementary science textbooks, which first appeared as the authorization system of elementary science textbooks changed from the national government system. In order to confirm the purpose of the authorization system to support the development of diverse and creative textbooks, this study compared 7 authorized textbooks with the national textbook developed as the 'Use of Magnets' unit of the 2015 revised science curriculum. In this study, the textbook's framework was largely divided into an external framework and an internal framework for the 'Use of Magnets' unit of elementary science textbooks, and quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted in parallel according to each subcategory. According to the research results, in the external framework of textbook units, all textbooks had the same structure: unit introduction, scientific inquiry, creative convergence, unit arrangement, and scientific reading materials. The framework in the 'Use of Magnets' unit of the 7 types of authorized textbooks was found to have some differences according to the textbook development team's interpretation of the curriculum achievement standards and many commonalities that maintained the framework in the national textbooks. In addition, the characteristics of each textbook were clearly revealed in some areas not specified in curriculum such as unit introduction activities and science reading materials, a meaningful change was also found in that the level of inquiry activity was classified and operated in response to the uniform inquiry activity operation of the existing government textbooks.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.66 no.6
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• pp.493-508
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• 2022

Chemistry is the subject which includes properties, change, and composition of matter. Chemistry has the system which explains observable properties and change with microscopic level, it explains them using scientific theory and laws. In the national-level curriculum, the properties and changes of matter are continuously dealt with from elementary school to high school, and the curriculum are organized so that students could strengthen their understanding about matter. In other words, understanding of the properties and changes of matter is the base to explain everyday life with the view of chemistry, and these two are classified as domains of chemistry in the 2015 revised science curriculum. In this study, we confirmed students' understanding about properties of matter and change of matter, through the analysis about results of the National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA). For that purpose, this study analyzed the 12 items about properties of matter, and 19 items about change of matter, which were used in the NAEA from 2015 to 2019. According to the results of classifying and analyzing questions according to the core concept, the understanding about the two domains significantly changed between the proficient achievement-level students and basic achievement-level students. Depending on the achievement-level, there was a difference in explaining the phenomenon by using the perspective of particles, and by associating scientific concepts and models, or there was a difference in understanding the inquiry related to these two domains. Based on this analysis, this study discussed some implications to be improved on teaching-learning for 'properties of matter', and 'change of matter'.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.233-253
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• 2018

Since open inquiry of science was formally introduced at the 2007 Revised Science Curriculum Course, the purpose and effect of it has been positively evaluated, and it is underlined continuously until the revised science education course in 2015. However, through many previous studies, there is still a lack of awareness of open inquiry of both students and teachers in the field, and it was revealed they are continually appealing confusion and difficulties. Therefore, in this research, we analyzed the causes that make it difficult to execute open inquiry, and developed differentiated open inquiry guide materials that can contribute to the realization of teachers and students. They were developed by the brain-based evolutionary approach to provide students with authentic science. The brain-based evolutionary approach is reflecting the evolutionary attributes and the brain functions associated activities of scientists. It was revealed that, in the same way as the pilot test results, the usefulness of the differentiated guide materials were very high, and there was a statistically significant difference in the science attitude. It was found that the application of the brain-based evolutionary approach had positively influenced the stage of determining the inquiry themes, and self-confidence that could be able to do as a scientist. Analysis of top and sub group types on the basis of inquiry ability showed that both groups are improved at science attitude by the differentiated guide materials. There was a positive effect on change in the self-perception of scientific creativity. We were able to see a positive change in the post survey for open inquiry-efficacy. The developed differentiated open inquiry guide materials contributed to the improvement of open inquiry-efficacy for both the teacher and student.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.403-420
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• 2016

Some of the critical changes in the revised 2015 Korean Mathematics curriculum were that direct proportion and inverse proportion were moved from elementary school to middle school and that supplementary content related to correlation was included. These decisions were based on comparative studies of international curriculum. Therefore in this study, we selected countries for comparison; United States, England, France, Finland, Australia, Japan, Singapore, China and Taiwan. We looked into the timing and scope for direct/inverse proportion and correlation in curricula of these countries. Along with this, we established four criteria; vertical sequence, horizontal sequence, external connection, and internal connection for an analysis framework. Then we compared and analysed the direct/inverse proportion and correlation in each curriculum. As a result, in most of these curricula, the direct/inverse proportions are introduced at middle school or are introduced at elementary school and then developed further at middle school. Most of curriculums on direct/inverse proportion and correlation match the four criteria. Correlation is introduced in high school mathematics in all counties except Finland and it is dealt in diverse context introducing related concepts, for example, correlation coefficient, regression straight line, and least square. We suggested that it is necessary to refer these international trends for the next revision of curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.441-449
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• 2019

With the introduction of the 2015 revised curriculum, software education became mandatory in elementary school. The practical subject in the content for the software education consists of information ethics, algorithms, programming, and computer science. Especially, elementary school encourages the unplugged activities. Unplugged activities are preferred among the teachers in the education field as a teaching-learning method. However, those teachers pointed out that the lack of suitable unplugged activity materials was the biggest challenge. In addition, it was pointed out that the existing materials were not suitable for achievement standards, and there are many simple playing-oriented educations that are not linked to computing activities. In this study, we developed an unplugged activity-oriented robot that can be used for the elementary students to learn the basic control structure suggested in the achievement criteria SW education and to develop creative problem solving ability through various activities using sensors. The effectiveness was verified through the software class using the developed robot in this study.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.621-628
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• 2019

The 2015 revised curriculum offers elementary students an unplugged computing education as a way to learn the concepts and principles of computer science in an easy and fun way and to improve their computational thinking. Yutnori is a traditional board game unique to Korea, which contains various contents such as history, culture, and science of our people, which helps to cultivate cultural identity of learners, and can effectively promote cooperation and communication among members. In this paper, we examined the possibility that Yutnori could be used as an unplugged computing tool in elementary school software education and convergence education. Korean traditional board game Yutnori has elements that can learn the sun and movements of heavenly bodies as well as sequential, selection, and repetitive algorithm elements. Unplugged activities that apply Korean traditional culture Yutnori is expected to help foster creative convergence talents by improving elementary school students' computational thinking, communication and community.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.59 no.4
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• pp.296-307
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• 2015

The purposes of this study were to develop the experiment for gas concentration measure during combustion of a candle and to investigate the application effect of the experiment. For this study, 15 elementary school teachers were selected by considering their gender, career, 6th grade science teaching experience, and 6th grade science teaching experience according to 2007 revised s cience curriculum. The experiment using MBL is designed to confirm gas concentrations visually during the combustion of a candle which burns in an acrylic container. The experiment method is as follows. 1) Make two sets of holes in the container and then insert oxygen sensors and carbon dioxide sensors in the holes. 2) Burn a candle in the container and observe the changes in the burning of the candle. The experiment has checked oxygen concentration and carbon dioxide concentration in real-time and displays gas concentration changes by graphs. The results of the application effect of the experiment are as follows. Most elementary school teachers who had not had scientific concepts on combustion got acquainted with scientific concepts about ‘the reason why a candle is blown out when it is covered with a bottle’, and ‘the concentrations of oxygen and carbon dioxide before and after combustion’. In addition, about half of elementary school teachers got acquainted with scientific concepts about ‘the definition of combustion’, and ‘distribution of carbon dioxide during combustion’. Thus, the experiment to measure gas concentrations during combustion is helpful to improve elementary school teachers’ concepts on combustion.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.464-479
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• 2022

In this study, appropriate geosites for geological field trips were explored and measures for their effective utilization in education were discussed, focusing on Okseo-myeon, Sanbuk-dong, Bieung-do, Yami-do, Sinsi-do, and Seonyu-do areas in Gunsan City, Korea. To this end, we analyzed the geological learning elements of the curriculum that were revised in 2015 and selected 7 geosites through field work based on prior research on the study areas. These areas have immense potential as a rich source of information on the Mesozoic geology of the Korean Peninsula, including igneous rocks formed as a consequence of Jurassic and Cretaceous igneous activities, Cretaceous sedimentary rocks, dinosaur footprints, plant fossils, ripple marks, and folds. When the learning elements available at the geosites were compared to those of the curriculum, they contained essentials used in high grade of elementary school and high school, and in particular, they had most of the learning elements used in high school. Accordingly, educational activities that can be carried out in each of the geosites in Gunsan City were proposed.