• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.97-112
• /
• 2018

Conducted within the methodological framework of action research, this study examines the ways in which a beginning science teacher in a Korean elementary classroom engaged in collaborative research with her own students to resolve problems preventing effective science teaching and learning. Specifically, this study uses cogenerative dialogue between teachers and students to develop new teachers' knowledge of how to manage the classroom to be able to more effectively implement inquiry instructional strategies and knowledge of students as learners. Findings from this research suggest that by involving students in cogenerative dialogues, beginning teachers are provided with valuable insights into how elementary students think about school, science, and teaching and learning, which can help expand a beginning teacher's capacity to be an effective science teacher of science for all learners, especially diverse learners. These findings suggest that teacher education programs could better support beginning teachers by placing greater emphasis on how to conduct action research, including how to implement cogenerative dialogues to catalyze positive changes in their own classrooms. We conclude by discussing the important implications this research has for supporting new teachers struggle to effectively teach science and who would benefit from using strategies to foster improved relationships with their students and improved understanding about the challenges faced by diverse learners in their classroom.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.255-270
• /
• 2001

The purpose of this study is to consider pre-service and in-service elementary school teachers' beliefs about STS (Science-Technology-Society), by investigating their opinions on STS interactions. 222 of the seniors in Jinju National University of Education, namely pre-service elementary school teachers, and 185 of the active teachers in Kyung-Nam Province were selected as the objects for researching these matters. Their beliefs about STS interactions were examined. The results were analyzed with a percentage as an examining tool of TBA-STS(Teachers' Beliefs about Science-Technology-Society). The results were as follows; First, on the nature of science, most of them showed simple opinions. On the nature of technology, most of them also showed simple opinions. most of them recognized the interactions among science, technology, and society affirmatively. They showed simple opinions on the interactions between science and technology. In fact, they didn't recognize the interactions between science and society, but they knew the influence of technology on society relatively concretely. Second, if one consider the cognitive situation or the distributing route of STS, he can easily find that most teachers never or little know it. At present, pre-service teachers learn STS from the lectures in their universities, and in-service teachers get information about it from science magazines/newspapers and training.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.30 no.1
• /
• pp.1-9
• /
• 2011

The purpose of this study was to analyze elementary school teachers' teaching style and elementary school students' science anxiety according to teachers' teaching styles for science class. Data were gathered through the teaching style test and the science anxiety test. The teaching style test was taken in 293 elementary school teachers and the science anxiety test was taken in 1,523 elementary school students. The results were as followings: First, elementary school teachers' teaching style for science class were most in provider, expert and least in enabler. Second, elementary school students' science anxiety according to elementary school teachers' teaching style for science class were highest in facilitator and lowest in Enablers. There were significantly differences in science anxiety according to the teaching styles in elementary school. Third, elementary school students' science anxiety increased as grade goes up.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
• /
• v.26 no.1
• /
• pp.134-147
• /
• 2014

The purpose of this study was to analyze stages of the concern on open inquiry of elementary school teachers. To achieve this purpose, this study used the instruments of CBAM, including stages of concern questionnarie. The results of this study was as follows. Firstly, most teachers were in 0 stage, which meant they had little concern on open inquiry in science instruction. Secondly, the teachers who had teaching career of less than or 10 years were no more interested in open inquiry than teachers who had teaching career of 11-20 years. Thirdly, the training experience and teaching experience of open inquiry didn't show a statistically significant difference. Based on these results, this study suggested that we need educational programs and supporting strategies to heighten concerns and enthusiasm of teachers and pre-service teachers on open inquiry in science instruction.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.27 no.2
• /
• pp.93-101
• /
• 2008

We investigated the characteristics of lesson session and the professional development of teachers who conduct good teaching science subject. Seven teachers' were selected the finalists at the elementary school science and teaching competition. The study was based on a semi-structured questionnaire and interviews. To prove validity of the study, the collected data were verified by subject teachers for feedback. The results showed that the teachers believed that their lesson contents and methods were superior to other teachers. To enhance professional development in their lessons, they are only being made through help from colleagues and personal efforts, and a systematic development was involved with necessary situation. As a plan for enhancing an effective quality enhancement of lessons, open classes and conversation between colleagues were proposed. An organization or a group that can motivate teachers and provide systematic support for quality enhancement of lessons by teachers is needed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.14 no.2
• /
• pp.199-213
• /
• 1994

The quality of science teachers is one of the most important factors to improve the science education in secondary schools. In this study the current status of preservice education of secondary science teachers was surveyed and the directions for the improvement were suggested as follows: 1. The purposes of departments of science education have to be partially revised to include other education programs related to science education than preservice training courses of science teachers. 2. Training courses of integrated science teacher should be organized differently from those of physics, chemistry, biology or earth science teachers because their requirements are different. 3. Strict standards of curricula for training science teacher have to be established and applied practically. 4. The curricula of departments of science education have to reflect the contents and the changes of secondary science education. 5. More credits to subjects on the science education, the nature of science, and the laboratory experiments should be taken in the preservice courses of science teachers. 6. Professors at the department of science education have to use various methods to teach inquiry lab and evaluation techniques so that students can experience them at the training courses. 7. The number of professors majoring in science education at the department of sciece education should be increased. 8. Enough research funds have to be supported to activate the researches in science education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.28 no.2
• /
• pp.213-228
• /
• 2009

The purpose of this study was to examine whether the new introduction of elementary science experiment specialist is appropriate under the current situation of serious emphasis of the importance in science experiments in elementary science in Korea. For this study, the survey items were developed twice through the preliminary study. The results show that most elementary teachers consider the importance of experiment in elementary science and the critical role of science experiments to increase students' curiosity and scientific understanding. About 80% of the teachers stressed the professionalism in elementary science. Although 65% of the teachers believed their having basic professionalism, 53% of them appealed the difficulty in teaching science experiments to students. Nevertheless, 67.5% of the teachers opposed to the idea of teaching elementary science in separation between experiment and theory in science, and only 8% of them agreed the idea of induction or adoption of the college graduates majoring in science and engineering, or holding the secondary teacher's certificate. Further, over 60% of the teachers responded no necessity of inducing the new policy of elementary science specialist. Many numbers of teachers revealed their serious worries about the new policy because of their past experience to suffer from the side effects of inducing the teachers with secondary teacher certificate to the elementary school. In particular, they also made a proposal to make a good use of the current system of exclusive elementary science teacher in Korea. The educational implication and suggestions for policy making were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.28 no.3
• /
• pp.253-268
• /
• 2008

This paper has two major purposes. One is to introduce the essentialist methodology as a way to articulate subjective aspects of human beings (e.g. teachers' personal values and concerns, philosophies, subjective experiences, etc.) at a deeper level. And the other is to present two portraits, as examples, of science teachers who actively address socioscientiifc issues (SSI) out of their own motivations. The primary data source was consecutive in-depth interviews with two science teachers, Jenna and Thomas, and the interviews were conducted on the basis of the principle of the "participant as ally" (Witz, 2006). The articulation based on the essentialist methodology shows that teachers' deep-rooted values and convictions often play a significant role as a personal social capital enough to expand their teaching practice (i.e. teaching SSI). Namely, this study confirms that teachers who are motivated out of their own convictions are likely to actively develop their own personal practical knowledge, and to implement particular topics or teaching strategies.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.86-92
• /
• 2010

Although constructivist assessment has been emphasized by many science educators, most elementary school teachers are still not familiar with this. In order to investigate the causes of this problem, we examined the perceptions of pre-service elementary school teachers toward constructivist science assessment and the relationships among the perceptions toward constructivist science assessment, the views on science teaching and learning, science teaching efficacy beliefs, and the perceptions toward constructivist science learning environment. Analyses of the results revealed that the perceptions of pre-service elementary school teachers toward constructivist science assessment were higher than those of the elementary school teachers reported previously. The results of a stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that the views on constructivist science teaching and learning and personal science teaching efficacy beliefs were the significant predictors of the perceptions toward constructivist science assessment.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.44 no.2
• /
• pp.133-144
• /
• 2020

As a part of the second-year monitoring study on the implementation of the 2015 revised science curriculum in middle schools, this study focuses more on examining middle school science teachers' perceptions on the process-based assessment (PBA). A total of 105 middle school science teachers (44 teachers from science leading schools, 61 teachers from ordinary schools) responded to the survey questionnaire, and 16 teachers participated in interviews. The results include teachers' perceptions on the changes in their teaching and assessment methods, some challenges of implementing PBA, and educational implications of PBA. Survey results indicate that the teachers perceived themselves using more PBA methods after the 2015 revised science curriculum was launched. The teachers in science-leading schools present statistically higher average scores to the items on the PBA utilization than the ones in ordinary schools. However, the teachers felt confused in conceptually differentiating PBA from prior performance-based assessment. They also experienced some conflicts when implementing PBA under the achievement-oriented school atmospheres. In addition, they often faced difficulties in securing objectivity and reliability of PBA and felt the burden of evaluating individual students. This study suggests the necessity of giving more authority and trust to science teachers regarding PBA, constructing more supportive environment to cultivate teacher competency as evaluation experts, and the need to reduce task burden. However, some teachers who actively implemented PBA express some level of satisfaction as observing students' positive reaction to PBA.