Understanding Biotechnology: An Analysis of High School Students' Concepts (생명공학의 기본 개념에 대한 고등학생의 이해도 조사 및 개념 분석)
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- Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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- v.18 no.4
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- pp.463-472
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- 1998
Biotechnology is the process of using biological system for the production of materials. Genetic engineering, a subset of biotechnology, is the process of altering biological systems by the purposeful manipulation of DNA It is a new field in biology and no topic in biology is more likely to impact our personal lives and is therefore more worthy of our attention and understanding. The purpose of this study was to investigate students' understanding of the concepts of biotechnology, and a test tool which is made up of 20 basic questions was developed for the study. The subject of this study was high school students and the sample size was 486. In order to find out the source of students' misunderstanding, we also analysed high school textbooks and teachers were given the same tool applied to students. Two-way ANOVA was used for the analysis. Major findings of this study are as following; 1. Mean score of students was 41, and there was a significant difference between the scores of boys and girls(p<0.05). Female students scored higher than male students. The variables "region" and "major" had no significant influence. 2. Students' the most misunderstood concepts were "monoclonal antibody" and "gene cloning". Many students thought that a plamid DNA originally has a useful DNA in it, which is apparently wrong. 3. Mean score of teachers was 82, and the variabes of gender and career did not have statistically significant influence on the result(p>0.05). 4. Teachers got the lowest scores on the concepts of "gene therapy", "the accomplishment of biotechnology in agriculture and medicine", and "plasmid DNA". The results of item analysis implied that teachers' misunderstanding might be a part of the sources of students' misunderstaning. 5. Out of 18 basic concepts selected in the study, only 10 concepts were explained well enough in most textbooks. The results of item analysis indicated that textbooks also could be a part of the source of students' misunderstanding.
There are various understandings how to define death. In the context of medicine, death is defined as the irreversible change of the tissue according to the cessation of circulation and respiration. According to the psychologists, a person need to accept the finiteness as a human being and remain conscious that the death is not avoidable. And they say if a person doesn't regard death as unavoidable reality of life he or she will not confront the humanistic death and after all will die like animals. In philosophy, death is viewed as an unwelcome reality in the end of the journey of life. Sociologists usually understand that the society is the organization composed with living persons and human beings which construct and transmit the culture from generation to generation between the both ends of life and death. In society, the generation is changed, maintained, and developed through the phenomenon of death. Although death of human being is natural event in society, the death of a specific person brings a sense of loss, crisis, and anxiety to the communities like family, regional society, nation, and the world. In this context, death is not confined to personal dimension and it can be regarded as a social problem. It is valuable to summarize the religious perspectives on the meaning of death for the better hospice care. In shamanism, there are basic idea that although the flesh of human being disappears, soul never die. If human dies, the flesh of human being disappears but soul never disappear and come back to the origin of soul as it is called chaos. So in shamanism, it is said that shaman can solve the mortified feeling, restore the broken harmony, send the soul to comfortable space- the origin, and guarantee the blessing of descendents. Buddhists regard the death as an essential component through the cycles of life. Through this cycle, human being exits as an endlessly transmigrating being and the death is just a restoration to the original status. In Confucianism, the view on the death based on the philosophy of the "Yin and Yang" and "Five elements". In Buddhist tradition, many believers said the philosophy of "Death is the same as life". Unlike usual thoughts that a god governs "life and death" and "fortune and misfortune", Confucianists deny the governance of a god and emphasize the natural orders in which every phenomenon in the world moves according to the principle. Confucianists understand the death as a natural order with this principle. In Confucianists' belief, the essence of human being remains in their own descendent's lives after the death of ancestor, so in Confucianism there is no concept of immortality of the soul. In the history of Christianity, death has been defined generally as the separation of the immortal soul from the mortal body. In the earlier days of Old Testament, the death is regarded as a disappearance of just a flesh and human never disappear and always live in the relationship with God. Later days in Old Testament, we can find the growing concern for the life after the death because of the entrance of the theodicy. In the New Testament, the death is not regarded as the normal process of the human life and regarded as the abnormal status in which death come to human because of sin as a decisive factor and it should be conquered. In fact, the most of us afraid death because not of the fear of death itself but of the sense of the emptiness and regrets. so many people often make the monument hoping to live forever. But Christian usually regard this behavior as a sinful act because human being usually think themselves as a master of their life and attempt to become immortal in this kind of trial mortal. But if we live with God, we cannot confront such a condition because we aware limits as a mortal human being and entrust everything on Him and want to live according to His guidance. Therefore, in the Christian tradition, the death is regarded as accomplishment of life, fruits of life, invitation to the eternal life, and the last stage of human growth. For human being, the death is the great step of maturation as a human in the final stage of life.
Franchise businesses in South Korea have contributed to economic growth and job creation, and its growth potential remains very high. However, despite such virtues, domestic franchise businesses face many problems such as the instability of franchisor's business structure and weak financial conditions. To solve these problems, the government enacted legislation and strengthened franchise related laws. However, the strengthening of laws regulating franchisors had many side effects that interrupted the development of the franchise business. For example, legal regulations regarding franchisors have had the effect of suppressing the franchisor's leadership activities (e.g. activities such as the ability to advocate the franchisor's policies and strategies to the franchisees, in order to facilitate change and innovation). One of the main goals of the franchise business is to build cooperation between the franchisor and the franchisee for their combined success. However, franchisees can refuse to follow the franchisor's strategies because of the current state of franchise-related law and government policy. The purpose of this study to explore the effects of franchisor's leadership style on franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. We classified leadership styles according to the path-goal theory (House & Mitchell, 1974), and it was hypothesized and tested that the four leadership styles proposed by the path-goal theory (i.e. directive, supportive, participative and achievement-oriented leadership) have different effects on franchisee's commitment. Another purpose of this study to explore the how the level of franchisee's self-efficacy influences both the franchisor's leadership style and franchisee's commitment in a franchise system. Results of the present study are expected to provide important theoretical and practical implications as to the role of franchisor's leadership style, as restricted by government regulations and the franchisee's self-efficacy, which could be needed to improve the quality of the long-term relationship between the franchisor and franchisee. Quoted by Northouse(2007), one problem regarding the investigation of leadership is that there are almost as many different definitions of leadership as there are people who have tried to define it. But despite the multitude of ways in which leadership has been conceptualized, the following components can be identified as central to the phenomenon: (a) leadership is a process, (b) leadership involves influence, (c) leadership occurs in a group context, and (d) leadership involves goal attainment. Based on these components, in this study leadership is defined as a process whereby franchisor's influences a group of franchisee' to achieve a common goal. Focusing on this definition, the path-goal theory is about how leaders motivate subordinates to accomplish designated goals. Drawing heavily from research on what motivates employees, path-goal theory first appeared in the leadership literature in the early 1970s in the works of Evans (1970), House (1971), House and Dessler (1974), and House and Mitchell (1974). The stated goal of this leadership theory is to enhance employee performance and employee satisfaction by focusing on employee motivation. In brief, path-goal theory is designed to explain how leaders can help subordinates along the path to their goals by selecting specific behaviors that are best suited to subordinates' needs and to the situation in which subordinates are working (Northouse, 2007). House & Mitchell(1974) predicted that although many different leadership behaviors could have been selected to be a part of path-goal theory, this approach has so far examined directive, supportive, participative, and achievement-oriented leadership behaviors. And they suggested that leaders may exhibit any or all of these four styles with various subordinates and in different situations. However, due to restrictive government regulations, franchisors are not in a position to change their leadership style to suit their circumstances. In addition, quoted by Northouse(2007), ssubordinate characteristics determine how a leader's behavior is interpreted by subordinates in a given work context. Many researchers have focused on subordinates' needs for affiliation, preferences for structure, desires for control, and self-perceived level of task ability. In this study, we have focused on the self-perceived level of task ability, namely, the franchisee's self-efficacy. According to Bandura (1977), self-efficacy is chiefly defined as the personal attitude of one's ability to accomplish concrete tasks. Therefore, it is not an indicator of one's actual abilities, but an opinion of the extent of how one can use that ability. Thus, the judgment of maintain franchisee's commitment depends on the situation (e.g., government regulation and policy and leadership style of franchisor) and how it affects one's ability to mobilize resources to deal with the task, so even if people possess the same ability, there may be differences in self-efficacy. Figure 1 illustrates the model investigated in this study. In this model, it was hypothesized that leadership styles would affect the franchisee's commitment, and self-efficacy would moderate the relationship between leadership style and franchisee's commitment. Theoretically, quoted by Northouse(2007), the path-goal approach suggests that leaders need to choose a leadership style that best fits the needs of subordinates and the work they are doing. According to House & Mitchell (1974), the theory predicts that a directive style of leadership is best in situations in which subordinates are dogmatic and authoritarian, the task demands are ambiguous, and the organizational rule and procedures are unclear. In these situations, franchisor's directive leadership complements the work by providing guidance and psychological structure for franchisees. For work that is structured, unsatisfying, or frustrating, path-goal theory suggests that leaders should use a supportive style. Franchisor's Supportive leadership offers a sense of human touch for franchisees engaged in mundane, mechanized activity. Franchisor's participative leadership is considered best when a task is ambiguous because participation gives greater clarity to how certain paths lead to certain goals; it helps subordinates learn what actions leads to what outcome. Furthermore, House & Mitchell(1974) predicts that achievement-oriented leadership is most effective in settings in which subordinates are required to perform ambiguous tasks. Marsh and O'Neill (1984) tested the idea that organizational members' anger and decline in performance is caused by deficiencies in their level of effort and found that self-efficacy promotes accomplishment, decreases stress and negative consequences like depression and emotional instability. Based on the extant empirical findings and theoretical reasoning, we posit positive and strong relationships between the franchisor's leadership styles and the franchisee's commitment. Furthermore, the level of franchisee's self-efficacy was thought to maintain their commitment. The questionnaires sent to participants consisted of the following measures; leadership style was assessed using a 20 item 7-point likert scale developed by Indvik (1985), self-efficacy was assessed using a 24 item 6-point likert scale developed by Bandura (1977), and commitment was assessed using a 6 item 5-point likert scale developed by Morgan & Hunt (1994). Questionnaires were distributed to Korean optical franchisees in Seoul. It took about 20 days to complete the data collection. A total number of 140 questionnaires were returned and complete data were available from 137 respondents. Results of multiple regression analyses testing the relationships between the each of the four styles of leadership shown by the franchisor as independent variables and franchisee's commitment as the dependent variable showed that the relationship between supportive leadership style and commitment (