• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.151-171
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• 2017

Most of oceanic current maps in the secondary school science and earth science textbooks have been made on the base of extensive in-situ measurements conducted by Japanese oceanographers during 1930s. According to up-to-date scientific knowledge on the currents in the Yellow Sea and the East China Sea (YES), such maps have significant errors and are likely to cause misconceptions to students, thus new schematic map of ocean currents is needed. The currents in the YES change seasonally due to relatively shallow water depths, complex terrain, winds, and tides. These factors make it difficult to construct a unified ocean current map of the YES. Sixteen major items, such as the flow of the Kuroshio Current into the East China Sea and its northward path, the origin of the Tsushima Warm Current and its path into the Korea Strait, the path of Taiwan Warm Current, the Jeju Warm Current, the runoff pattern of the Yangtze River flow, the routes of the northward Yellow Sea Warm Current, the Chinese Coastal Current, and the West Korea Coastal Current off the west coast of the Korean Peninsula, were selected to produce the schematic current map. Review of previous scientific researches, in-depth discussions through academic conferences, expert discussions, and consultations for three years since 2014 enabled us to produce the final ocean current maps for the YES after many revisions. Considering the complexity of the ocean currents, we made seven ocean current maps: two representative current patterns in summer and winter, seasonal current maps for upper layer and lower layer in summer and winter, and one representative surface current map. It is expected that the representative maps of the YES, connected to the current maps of the East Sea and the Northwest Pacific Ocean, would be widely utilized for diverse purposes in the secondary-school textbooks as well as high-level educational purposes and even for scientific scholarly experts.

• The Sea:JOURNAL OF THE KOREAN SOCIETY OF OCEANOGRAPHY
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.234-265
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• 2013

Oceanic current maps in the secondary school science and earth science textbooks have played an important role in piquing students's inquisitiveness and interests in the ocean. Such maps can provide students with important opportunities to learn about oceanic currents relevant to abrupt climate change and global energy balance issues. Nevertheless, serious and diverse errors in these secondary school oceanic current maps have been discovered upon comparison with up-to-date scientific knowledge concerning oceanic currents. This study presents the fundamental methods and strategies for constructing such maps error-free, through the unification of the diverse current maps currently in the textbooks. In order to do so, we analyzed the maps found in 27 different textbooks and compared them with other up-to-date maps found in scientific journals, and developed a mapping technique for extracting digitalized quantitative information on warm and cold currents in the East Sea. We devised analysis items for the current visualization in relation to the branching features of the Tsushima Warm Current (TWC) in the Korea Strait. These analysis items include: its nearshore and offshore branches, the northern limit and distance from the coast of the East Korea Warm Current, outflow features of the TWC near the Tsugaru and Soya Straits and their returning currents, and flow patterns of the Liman Cold Current and the North Korea Cold Current. The first draft of the current map was constructed based upon the scientific knowledge and input of oceanographers based on oceanic in-situ measurements, and was corrected with the help of a questionnaire survey to the members of an oceanographic society. In addition, diverse comments have been collected from a special session of the 2013 spring meeting of the Korean Oceanographic Society to assist in the construction of an accurate current map of the East Sea which has been corrected repeatedly through in-depth discussions with oceanographers. Finally, we have obtained constructive comments and evaluations of the interim version of the current map from several well-known ocean current experts and incorporated their input to complete the map's final version. To avoid errors in the production of oceanic current maps in future textbooks, we provide the geolocation information (latitude and longitude) of the currents by digitalizing the map. This study is expected to be the first step towards the completion of an oceanographic current map suitable for secondary school textbooks, and to encourage oceanographers to take more interest in oceanic education.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.525-542
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• 2014

This study was performed to look into the difficulty of students in understanding science stories in 6th grade science textbooks and to analyze those factors. To do this, 6th grader (N=65) were selected from J Elementary School located in Gyeonggi-do Siheung-si as study subjects. 26 science stories in 6th grade science textbooks were classified by field and context (complement of knowledge, science history of scientists, science in life, cutting-edge science technology, environment issues) in which the characteristics were investigated and analyzed. Also, a survey about the difficulty in understanding science stories(26 items) was conducted(65 students) and a semi-structured interview was conducted for students to clarify the meaning of collected data from surveys(4 students). As result of analyzing surveys on science story context in science textbooks and interviews, 4 fields of 'energy,' 'matter,' 'life,' and 'earth' were evenly mentioned. Science in life and complement of science knowledge were mentions most for context and this had relation with the characteristic of science textbooks to provide many opportunities to apply learned knowledge in actual social issues. Reactions of students on science stories were mostly positive that they help studying science, but there was also difficulty in well understanding science stories. Difficulty of understanding context, problems of context suggesting methods, difficulty of science terminology, lack of interest, and etc. were analyzed as factors. Specific causes were mentioned to be description type class, unimportant context, lack of explanation on suggested context, problem of pictures by students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.357-384
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• 2001

In this paper, we described practical teaching-learning plans based on three different theoretical approaches to Integrated Science Education (ISE): a knowledge centered ISE, a social problem centered ISE, and an individual interest centered ISE. We believe that science teachers can understand integrated science education through this paper and they are able to apply simultaneously our integrated science teaching materials to their real instruction in classroom. For this we developed integrated science teaching-learning plans for the topic of energy which has a integrated feature strongly among integrated science subject contents. These modules were based upon the teaching strategies of 'Energy' following each integrated directions organized in the previous paper (Three Strategies for Integrated Science Teaching of "Energy" Applying Knowledge, Social Problem, and Individual Interest Centered Approaches) and we applied instruction models fitting each features of integrated directions to the teaching strategies of 'Energy'. There is a concrete describing on the above three integrated science teaching-learning plans as follows. 1. For the knowledge centered integration, we selected the topic, 'Journey of Energy' and we tried to integrate the knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science applying the instruction model of 'Free Discovery Learning' which is emphasized on concepts and inquiry. 2. For the social problem centered integration, we selected the topic, 'Future of Energy' to resolve the science-related social problems and we applied the instruction model of 'Project Learning' which is emphasized on learner's cognitive process to the topic. 3. For the individual interest centered integration, we selected the topic, 'Transformation of Energy' for the integration of science and individual interest and we applied the instruction model of 'Project Learning' centering learner's interest and concern. Based upon the above direction, we developed the integrated science teaching-learning plans as following steps. First, we organized 'Integrated Teaching-Learning Contents' according to the topics. Second, based upon the above organization, we designed 'Instructional procedures' to integrate within the topics. Third, in accordance with the above 'Instructional Procedures', we created 'Instructional Coaching Plan' that can be applied in the practical world of real classrooms. These plans can be used as models for the further development of integrated science instruction for teacher preparation, textbook development, and classroom learning.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.40 no.2
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• pp.239-252
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to develop an evolutionary STEAM education program based on the brain and to analyze its effects on scientific interest and scientific creativity of elementary school students. Four different topics based on four scientific fields (Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Earth Science) were derived from the science textbook under the 2015 revised curriculum to build a brain-based evolutionary STEAM education program. The research subjects were 90 fourth graders of S-elementary school located in Gyeonggi Province, Korea and they were divided into an experimental group of 45 students and a comparative group of 45 students. The main findings of this study are as follows. First, according to the independent samples t-test of scientific interest, no statistically significant difference were found between the two groups, but the brain-based evolutionary STEAM education had meaningful effect on improving 'interest in scientific learning' and 'anxiety about scientific learning'. Second, according to the paired samples t-test of scientific interest, the experimental group had significantly improved 'interest in science' but on the other hand, there was no effect on the comparative group. Third, scientific creativity and originality of the experimental group were significantly higher after the class than that of the comparative group. Fourth, although there were some significant differences between the two groups in scientific creativity after the class, both groups had improved scientific creativity between the results of pre and post test. Based on these results, we discuss implications for science education and STEAM education research.