• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.475-493
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• 2020

In Korea, the lower elementary grades are applying a topic-oriented integrated curriculum. It causes a lack of science content and inquiry experience for young children. The purpose of this study is to understand the scientific experiences and perceptions of the lower elementary graders and to inquire about the meaning of those experiences in their science learning. Four students (male 2, female 2), their parents, and their first-year homeroom teachers participated in the study. The data collection was mainly conducted through in-depth interview of them. Results showed that the 'experiments' were the student's the main perception of science, and the epistemic emotion that students mainly feel about science was 'curiousness'. Since most experiences were dependent on non-formal educational experience, the parents were an important factor to determine their experiences about science. Various factors, such as students' scientific experiences, their epistemic emotions, and the parents, interacted to form children's perception of science. The positive perception of science affected the level of motivation and expectation for science learning as the third grade. It is suggested that improvement of curriculum and textbooks should emphasize scientific exploration for the lower graders of elementary school, which provides them meaningful scientific experience in school.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.219-231
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• 2018

This study surveyed the elementary school teachers' use of visual representations and their perceptions of the functions of visual representations in the teaching of electricity unit. A total of 110 elementary teachers who have experiences in teaching electricity unit responded to online survey. The result showed firstly that most of the teachers use visual representations in their teaching and it is mostly limited to those presented in textbooks or images that they can get easily from internet search. Secondly, elementary teachers thought that they have high ability in using visual representations and low ability in understanding students' visual presentation ability. Thirdly, visual representations are more often preferred to be used as teacher-centered ways than student-centered ways for motivating students and conceptual understanding. However, in case of scientific inquiry, both teacher-centered and student-centered ways were equally preferred. Lastly, the teachers' perceptions of the functions of visual representations were categorized into 'teaching-instrumental function', 'learning-instrumental function', 'communicative-instrumental function' and 8 subcategories were found. The most frequent function was the 'information delivery function' in the 'teaching-instrumental function' category. Implications for teacher education and further studies were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.252-259
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine the status and science teachers' perceptions of classes for those gifted in science in elementary school. For this purpose, a number of questions were posed to teachers : 27-item-questionnaires were given to 38 teachers of students gifted in science in elementary schools located in Incheon province. The results of this study were as follows : 1. most elementary teachers were in charge of classes containing students gifted in science, but this was the case with only a few secondary teachers. Therefore, it appears to be more necessary to educate elementary teachers who majored in science content and gifted education. 2. In addition, most teachers had positive perceptions of the needs, attitudes and environments needed for gifted education. Most of them attended 60-hour training programs on gifted education. They thought that it was helpful in understanding the characteristics of gifted students, but they wanted to learn more about actual pedagogical methods through such programs. 3. The teaching methods used in classes for those gifted in science were mainly experimental activities, but there were few opportunities for creative problem solving and project learning. This may be due to limited class time of about one hour every two weeks in this class. 4. When the materials used in class were first developed, they mainly used materials made by the city board of education and selected the theme of interest by themselves. Therefore, there may be problems of duplication of materials or systems regarding the science contents for one year. 5. Furthermore, the themes of the materials used were mostly related in terms of the contents of textbooks than more generally. When planning and managing the classes for those gifted in science, the above points should be considered in order to improve the education of those students gifted in science.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.221-234
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of the application of a creative thinking technique for development on the creativity and attitude toward science of the students in elementary school. In order to better assist students' levels of creative thinking process, creative thinking techniques were reorganized based on the features of creative learning content in science textbooks. Furthermore, related units from an elementary science textbook were analyzed to map out the lesson plans. The findings of the study were as follows. First, the creative thinking technique developed in this study could be applicable to teaching-learning activities. When a creative thinking technique is applied, that should carefully be selected in consideration of all the creativity elements to be covered in class, and that should be used in a manner to be covered in class, and that should be used in a manner to be appropriate at learner level. Second, the utilization of the creative technique turned out to have a good impact on boosting the creativity of the elementary schoolers. Third, the utilization of the creative technique turned out to exert a good influence on fostering the school children's attitude toward science.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.256-272
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• 2017

The purpose of this research is to study and learn more features how this type of distribution for communication in $6^{th}$ grade first semester elementary science and mathematics according to communicative expression by 2009 revised curriculum. For this study, based on an analysis standard presented in previous research on the types of communication. The results of this research are as follows. First, because the mathematics presents the number of ways to communicate twice more than science, mathematics go through with much more problems to solve than science. Second, in mathematics, spoken method and written method have similar proportion, less in physical activity method. Third, Science showed balanced proportion among four areas; earth, life, energy, and material. On the other hand, mathematics only showed small numbers in the area of geometry but similar numbers in number and operations, regularity, measurement. Fourth, there is no common feature or relevance about communicative approach for convergence thinking in 2009 revised curriculum, it seems that it doesn't consider it as a revised.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.329-347
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• 2009

Science curriculums for elementary schools were, traditionally, developed to be balanced in content and contain equal proportions of the four branches of science: physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. To develop a successful science curriculum, we asked some questions about how elementary students recognize these branches and about what they think of the domains of science in the science curriculum. Our study was designed to investigate how elementary students classify the domains of science in the curriculum. Previous research (Lee et al., 2001) seemed not to be successful, because verbal expressions in that research might be inappropriate for elementary students who were unaccustomed to the technical language of science. For this reason, instead of using only words, we developed image card instruments, made of picture duplicates of the introductory covers of each unit in the 3$^{rd}$, 4$^{th}$, and 5$^{th}$ grades' science textbooks. We asked students to classify these cards into their own categories and record the reasons for classifying them. The ratio and distribution of the units was then analyzed to identify their view of the science domains. 30% of the 4$^{th}$ grade students created the following categories: 'nature,' 'observation,' 'seasons,' 'living things,' 'sounds,' 'separating,' and 'the things necessary for everyday life'. In the case of the 5$^{th}$ grade, over 30% created the categories of 'living things,' 'weight,' and 'water.' Over 30% of the 6$^{th}$ grade created the categories of 'nature,' 'light,' 'water,' 'living things,' 'solution,' 'fire,' 'properties of an object,' and 'experiment.' Upon scrutinizing the above results, we discovered that the science domains selected by students into three types of domains: academic contents and concepts; activities related to a science class; and lessons and experiences in students ' lives. The last category was a new, complex kind of domain. We concluded that students did not utilize the four branches of science when constructing their own domains of science. Instead, they created many alternative domains, which reflected students' thoughts of and their experiences. The educational needs of elementary students suggest that when organizing science curriculum as 25 % allocation of the four science branches, newly-created domains should be considered.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.491-509
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to compare and analyze the elementary science curriculum of Finland, which ranked at the first place in the science domain of Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), a comparative study on the academic achievements of OECD member nations, for three consecutive years and recorded a high national competitiveness index, and that of South Korea, thus providing information needed to develop curriculums and textbooks in the middle of occasional curriculum revisions and giving useful implications for the implementation of curriculum in the field of education in South Korea. The research findings were as follows: First, as for the science content areas based on the ratio of large area items according to the evaluation and analysis framework of TIMSS 2007, South Korea's ratio of life, chemistry, physics, and earth hardly showed fitness for TIMSS 2007 and exhibited equal distribution among the areas. In Finland, the ratio of life, chemistry, physical, and earth was similar to the fourth grade level of TIMSS 2007. The country showed differential distribution with life accounting for the highest percentage. Second, as for the cognitive domains, South Korea showed a high percentage in "Uses and Procedures of Tools" of "1. Knowing" and "Making Connections," "Comparison/Contrast/Classification," and "Uses of Models" of "2. Application." Finland recorded a high percentage in "Information Interpretation" of "2. Application." While South Korea focused on the uses and methods of scientific instruments during scientific activities, Finland made an approach with a focus on problems related to daily life such as the interpretation of information including reports and graphs from an interpretative perspective.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.386-397
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to find a way to improve the science textbook graph through analyzing teachers' interpretation process with eye movement tracking when they try to read the science textbook graph. Participants in this project were 10 elementary school teachers while bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts in 2007 revision science textbooks were used as materials. SMI (SensoMotoric Instruments)' iView X TM RED 120 Hz was used in order to collect eye movement data. Although subjects paid attention to the title of the graph at first, the consequence of the eye fixation was changed by the composition of the graph in case of the rest of areas. In particular, the flow of visual attention and fixation time were affected by the form and configuration of the graph. The diversity of graph construction caused confusion in interpreting graphs; the manner of presenting title, the difference of background colors, size of characters, the name of X-axis and Y-axis. Out results showed that the conformation of graphs as well as the presentation of each factor should be composed in accordance with the educational purpose for helping users to easier understanding.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.275-286
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the features of inquiry activities using technology in the 2015 revised elementary science digital textbooks. For this, we analyzed the features of inquiry context and inquiry method presented in inquiry activities using three kinds of technology: Virtual experiment, virtual reality and augmented reality. As a result, firstly, the most common types of 77 inquiry activities were realistic type which shows the phenomenon actually and vividly as possible and realistic-abstract type which shows the phenomena with the abstract concepts. Second, the ways of using three technologies were different depending on the processes of inquiry and the sub-domains of science. For example, virtual experiment technologies were mostly used in the contents of physics and chemistry with the inquiry context of realistic-abstract type for investigating the relationship between variables of experiments and describing the phenomena mechanically. On the other hand, virtual reality and augmented reality techniques tended to be used more frequently in biology and earth science contents with the inquiry context of realistic type for observing and describing the phenomena. Finally, we discussed educational implications in terms of developing and applying technology-based inquiry activities.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.193-208
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• 2018

Classification is presented in the curriculum of elementary school mathematics, science, Korean language, and integrated subjects as the major function that needs to be learned. In addition, mathematics textbooks teach the classification as a basic process for organizing and interpreting collected materials in a separate unit. So, we analyzed the curriculum documents and textbooks of mathematics, science, Korean language, and integrated subjects. And we explored how to teach the classification in the context of mathematics subject. As a result, it is necessary to find different classification criteria in conjunction with detailed observation and investigation activities, and to teach that considering the circumstances and purpose of the classification. It also provided implications on how to revive converged classes that focus on big ideas and skills, which are commonly offered by various subjects.