• Journal of Science Education
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.189-202
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• 2016

This study aimed to investigate pre-service science teachers' perceptions of significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics. To this end, 82 pre-service biology teachers and 159 non-biology science teachers answered the items to measure the perceptions of significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics. The validity and reliability were examined using Cronbach alpha, two-dimensional rating scale model Rasch analysis, and factor analysis. The finding illustrated that the test items met the benchmark to be valid and reliable test items. Second, pre-service teachers' perception of significance and usefulness of evolution was independent to that of genetics. The level of pre-service teachers' perception of significance and usefulness of evolution was lower than the level of genetics. Lastly, the levels of pre-service teachers' perceptions of significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics were not significantly different across academic years and majors (biology and non-biology). The findings of this study stressed the importance of teaching significance and usefulness of evolution and genetics in pre-service science teacher education program.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.77-88
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to analyze characteristics of environmental awareness and environmental worldviews on environmental UCCs which made by 27 pre-service biology teachers, and relationship between environmental awareness and environmental worldviews of them. Environmental worldviews were divided into planetary management worldview, stewardship worldview and environmental wisdom worldview. As for theme fo environmental UCCs, most of pre-service teachers chose themes such as environmental destruction, environmental protection, environmental conservation and coexistence with human and environment. Themes of environmental UCCs were somewhat different between females and males. Female pre-service teachers preferred UCC themes related to human's daily life as a consumer but males preferred to environmental protection. Many pre-service teachers referred that major cause of environmental problem was development of environment. Most of them had envionmental wisdom worldview, and tried to use fear appeal to express ways of solving of environmental problems and envieonmnetal worldviews. After making environmental UCCs, more pre-service teachers had envionmental wisdom worldview. This result implies that it is necessary to develop pre-service educational programs realted to environmental worldview formation.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.246-259
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service biology teachers' perception of the evolution. This study was to compare the views of pre-service biology teachers with no religion with those of christian preservice teachers. Subjects were 77 pre-service biology teachers who enrolled in an university and graduate school of education located in Seoul. The instrument of this study was a questionnaire which consisted of 14 items on 2 domains: the nature of science, the origins of human beings. The key results are as follows. Most pre-service teachers showed highly understanding of the characteristics of science. However pre-service biology teachers still possessed naive views on the distinction of law and theory. In terms of the methods of science, many of the pre-service biology teachers considered scientific theories to progress through the accumulation of observation and experiments or through changes and modifications in existing theories. Compared with the pre-service teachers with no religion, christian pre-service teachers had conflicting views and misconceptions about the origins of human beings. The factors of religion were found to be one of the important barriers which prevent them from understanding the origins of human beings. The results suggested that the education program for pre-service biology teachers integrating the concepts and development process of the scientific knowledges should be effective for understanding the nature of science. For pre-service biology teachers, It is important to understand conflicting views of the christian pre-service teachers who understand creationism as a science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.1356-1366
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• 2012

As the recent demand for human resources in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), the development of professional STEM teacher is called worldwide. It is becoming a critical need in teacher education in order to educate student teachers, and prepare pre-service and beginning teachers for high quality of teaching competency. To promote the competency for $21^{st}$ century STEM teachers, the epistemology of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) is currently considered as the essential qualities of knowledge for highly qualified teachers. The aim of this study is explore the effect of case-based learning approach on TPACK competency of pre-service STEM teachers. In order to develop the pre-service teachers' competency regarding effective integration of technologies into teaching specific content areas, a series of innovative case study teaching in science and mathematics was presented to 43 participants of pre-service physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computer teachers during a course of information and communication technology (ICT) in Education at Khon Kaen University, Thailand. After finishing a case presentation, the pre-service teachers were encouraged into a forum of critical open discussion by considering the potential impact of the case and the TPACK framework. They were investigated instructional design competency of using ICT tools into student learning process and their personal beliefs about ICT in educational process both before and after. The participant's reactions and learning was evaluated by using a self-reported questionnaire and an implementation log of content-specific learning process design, respectively. Results showed a change of their beliefs and the transformation of their TPACK competency in STEM teaching. In an effort to better serve the needs of high quality STEM teachers, the results of this study illustrated that the competency of TPACK could be particularly considered as a core attributes for future STEM teachers. By the way, case-based learning approach can play an effective part in preparing and professing the TPACK competency for STEM teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.729-737
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• 2016

Natural selection is the core idea of evolution that pre-service biology teachers need to understand to solve diverse biological problem. This study aims to investigate the level of Korean pre-service biology teachers' understanding of natural selection by comparing their knowledge with their Chinese, American, and German biology major undergraduate counterparts. In particular, this study focuses on two conceptual components of natural selection (i.e., ecology and genetics). This study used a total 1226 pre-service biology teachers and biology majors' data. The instrument measuring the understanding of natural selection concepts was Conceptual Inventory of Natural Selection, which consists of ten ecology concept items and ten genetics concept items. The Rasch model analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, and univariate analysis of variance were used for the statistical tests. The result reveals that the level of Korean pre-service biology teachers' understanding of natural selection were similar with Chinese undergraduates' understanding and significantly lower than American and German undergraduates.' In the first year student data, the level of genetics concept of Korean pre-service biology teachers were significantly lower than Chinese and German students. In the fourth year student data, the level of ecology concept of Korean pre-service biology teachers were significantly lower than American and German students. Based on these results, the ecology concept education and balanced natural selection concept education are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.468-474
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine the elementary pre-service teachers' interest in biological topics and activities. The instrument to survey the interest of them consists of 8 domains containing 27 topic items and 7 domains containing 12 activity items(three-point from 0 to 2 Likert scale). Data were collected from 108 pre-service teachers. The interest level in the topics was high, but the interest level in the activities was average. There was not different between interest levels of females and males in both topic and activity components (p > .05). Among the topics, the 'genetics' domain correlated strongly with the domains of 'nutrition and digestion', 'circulation', 'respiration' and 'nervous system', and the 'respiration' domain correlated with the 'circulation' domain(r >.450, p<.01). The correlation between the domains of 'out-of class experience activity' and 'visual information activity', and 'experimental performance following procedure' and 'discussing and debating'(r >.450, p<.01). This results suggested that the educational contents including learning materials and experiential activities be developed to activate the interest of elementary pre-service teachers in biology.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.6
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• pp.519-531
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• 2021

This study investigates the science teacher identity of pre-service science teachers (PSTs) in the context of a teaching practice course. Twenty-two PSTs who took the 'Biological Science Lab. for Inquiry Learning' course at the College of Education participated in this study. Artifacts created during the course were collected, and the teaching practices and reflections were recorded and transcribed. In addition, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine PSTs, recorded, and transcribed. We found the science teacher identity was not well revealed at the beginning of the course. Authoritative discourse appeared in the early oral reflections of PSTs, indicating that the PSTs perceived oral reflection activities as 'evaluation activities for teaching practice'. This perception shows that pre-service teachers participate in teaching practice courses as students attending a university, performing tasks and receiving evaluations from instructors. After the middle of the course, discourses showing the science teacher identity of the PSTs were observed. In the oral reflection after the middle part, dialogic discourses often arose, showing that the PSTs perceive the oral reflection activities as a 'learning activity for professional development'. In addition, in the second half, discourse appeared to connect and interpret one's experience with the teacher's activity, indicating that the PSTs perceive themselves as teachers at this stage. In addition, the perception of experimental classes was expanded through the course. During the course, the practice of equalizing the authority of the participants, providing a role model for reflection, and experiencing various positions from multiple viewpoints in the class had a positive effect on the formation and continuation of the teacher identity. This study provides implications on the teacher education process for teacher identity formation in PSTs.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.887-900
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• 2011

Teachers use explanations to communicate important scientific ideas to students. Consequently, all biology teachers should be evaluated to determine how effective they are at constructing and communicating biological explanations. Open response questions are required to detect pre-service biology teachers' abilities to communicate robust and accurate scientific explanations. Nevertheless, multiple-choice questions are typically preferred by educators because of the common drawbacks of using open-response instruments, such as scoring time, inter-rater scoring disagreements, and delayed feedback to test takers. This study aims to measure pre-service biology teachers' competence in building scientific explanations and to investigate how accurately multiple-choice questions predict the results of open-response questions. One hundred twenty four pre-service biology teachers participated in the study and were administered 20 multiple-choice items and three open-response items designed to measure the accuracy and quality of their explanations of evolutionary change. The results demonstrated that pre-service teachers displayed higher competence when tested with multiple choice items than when tested with open response items. Moreover, scores derived from multiple-choice items poorly predicted the scores derived from open-response items. Multiple-choice items were also found to be poor measures of the consistency, purity and abundance of conceptual elements in teachers' evolutionary explanations. Additionally, many teachers held mixed-models composed of both scientific and naive ideas, which were difficult to detect using multiple-choice formats. Overall, the study indicates that multiple-choice formats are poorly suited to measuring several aspects of biology teachers' knowledge of evolution, including their ability to generate scientific explanations. This study suggests that open-response items should be used in teacher education programs to assess pre-service teachers' explanatory competency prior to being permitted to teach science to children.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.1186-1198
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• 2011

The understanding of real-world application of scientific knowledge such as the evolutionary theory has been emphasized in science curriculum. Despite this, many students and biology educators misunderstand the use and practical application of the evolution theory. The purpose of this study is to explore variables related to the understanding of practical application of evolution. Methodologically, we employed large-scale survey that examined three independent variables (major, academic year, and religion) and five dependent variables (understanding of practical application of evolution, knowledge of, interest in, and acceptance of evolution, and religiosity). Two hundred and thirty three biology pre-service teachers and 405 non-biology pre-service teachers participated in the survey. The results demonstrate that the biology teacher education program does not help in increasing the understanding of the practical application of evolution. Rather, the understanding of practical application of evolution was associated with their religion. In addition, the understanding of the practical application of evolution was associated with the acceptance of and interest in evolution. The results of this study inform the development of new biology teacher education programs to improve their understanding of practical application of the evolution theory. We also suggest further areas of research for other scientific concepts that could be used to gauge teachers' understanding of the practical application of scientific knowledge.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.4
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• pp.617-628
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• 2016

This study aims to explore pre-service biology teachers' value orientation in terms of scientific observation and representation in plant cell microscope observation experiment. This study focuses on the pre-service teachers' value orientation in relation to objectivity. To achieve this aim, we used a hypothetical situation that pre-service teachers should teach tacit knowledge related to observation and representation during the cell observation class. We presented a hypothetical situation to fifty pre-service biology teachers and collected their answer about that hypothetical situation. These answers were categorized inductively based on constant comparative analysis. The result shows that four types of pre-service teachers' value orientation, 'presence confirmation', 'mechanical objectivity', 'students' subjectivity', and 'trained judgement', are confirmed. This result also shows that various value orientation could be reflected on teaching an experiment and tacit knowledge related to the experiment. Also, many pre-service teachers value 'mechanical objectivity' in observation and image representation. Also, pre-service teachers' value orientation and perception of objectivity in scientific practice could have an influence in teaching science, this result could give provide suggestions on science teachers' education in terms of scientific practice.