• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.504-513
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• 2011

The preservice elementary teachers' achievement goal orientations(mastery/ability-approach/ability-avoidance/work-avoidance goal) for science teaching were measured. The student teachers(91 males and 127 females) tended to have the mastery or ability-approach goals rather than the ability-avoidance or work-avoidance goals for science teaching. The male students were more learning focused than were the females, while the female students reported stronger work-avoidance goal orientation than did the males. This study also examined how the preservice teachers' achievement goal orientations were related to their science teaching efficacy beliefs(personal science teaching efficacy belief/science teaching outcome expectancy). As expected, the results showed that there were significantly positive relationships between the mastery or ability-approach goals and science teaching efficacy beliefs, while the significantly negative relationships were found between the ability-avoidance or work-avoidance goal and personal science teaching efficacy belief. The educational implications and future directions were discussed.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.285-298
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• 2010

This study aims to analyze teachers job satisfaction according to the working environment of teachers working in child-care centers and to investigate which variables of the working environment relate to job satisfaction of child-care teachers. The main results of this study were as follows. First, married teachers are more satisfied with the job itself, supervision, and colleague relations compared to teachers who are not married. Teachers with certificates are more satisfied with the job itself compared to teachers without certificates. Second, teachers's job satisfaction is significantly correlated with their salary, welfare, and colleague relations. Also teachers' job satisfaction is correlated with responsibility in the case that teachers have a good relation with their principal and child-care parents. Third, the results of this study show that teachers consider substitute teachers, vacation systems, day care systems, compliant with the ratio of teacher and children, job security, order of legal status as important. With regard to external compensation, teachers want salary increase, payment on overtime labor, flexible work-time, use of both full-time and part-time teachers, expansion of educational materials, increase on purchasing cost for textbooks and materials. To improve the quality of child-care teachers' working environment as well as their satisfaction, practical policies need to be implemented.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.143-154
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• 2017

Science inquiry has long been emphasized in Korean science education. Scientific modeling is one of key practices in science inquiry with a potential to provide students with opportunities to develop their own explanations and knowledge thereafter. The purpose of this study is to investigate teacher's understanding of models in science and science teaching. A professional development program on Models (PDM) was developed and refined through three times of implementation while teachers' conceptions of models and modeling were examined. A total of 29 elementary and secondary teachers participated in this study. A survey based on model use of scientists in the history of science was developed and used to collect data and audio recordings of discussions among teachers and artifacts produced by the teachers during PDM were also collected. Three ways of ontological and two ways of epistemological understanding of models and modeling were found in teachers' ideas. After PDM, a quarter of the teachers changed their ontological understanding whereas very few changed their epistemological understanding. In contrast, more than two thirds of the teachers deepened and extended their ideas about using models and modeling in teaching. There were no clear relationships between teachers' understanding of models and ways and ideas about using models in science teaching. However, teachers' perceptions of school conditions were found to mediate their intention to use models in science teaching. The findings indicate possible approaches to professional development program content design and further research.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.269-281
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• 2008

In Korea, the criteria for the requirements of a secondary school science teacher's certificate are based entirely on the subjects and/or areas as prescribed in laws for the teacher's licensure examination. However, the criteria do not account for the specific competencies or qualities that a good science teacher should possess. The objective of the research was to explore and suggest the three lists of the image of an ideal science teacher, science teacher's role and science teacher's competency that might be used to establish the criteria for science teachers' certificate and the curricular content for science teacher education in Korea. In order to achieve this objective, the study used such research methods as literature analysis, status survey in combination with on-line workshop, in-depth interview, and professional consultation. The participants in the research comprised of a group of 258 students (186 middle school students and 72 high school students) and 13 in-service science teachers (8 middle school science teachers, 5 high school science teachers) for questionnaire survey and on-line workshop, and 4 science teachers for in-depth interview. The list of the image of ideal science teacher, science teacher's role, science teacher's competency contains 44, 32, and 75 statements, respectively. Based on the results of the research, this paper suggested that the criteria for the Korean secondary school science teacher's certificate requirements be selected and organized in consideration of the teachers' competencies rather than the courses and/or subject areas. It is also implied in the paper that further research over a period of time is necessary for using the competencies for curricular contents and/or science teacher's certificate standards.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.768-778
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• 2008

The most important factor in students' growth and development is the teacher. Therefore in-service science teacher education to develop the professionality is important as well as the selection of new excellence teachers. Our research is on the development and application of new education program on science experiments where in-service teachers become the lecturers in the program and provide information that is bound to the context of real lessons. This program is consisted of following 10 steps of work, which was implemented in 5 months: sharing the philosophy of the program, selecting science experiments, first application of the experiments, discussion on the first application, learning how to edit the movie clips of the lesson, second application of the experiments, in depth discussion on the second application, developing the experiment package, giving lecture to other science teachers, and evaluating the program. We describe the process of the program developed and implemented in detail to suggest a model of science teacher education program on science experiments and discuss educational implications. This program is characterized by the emphasis of the context closely linked to the real lessons, the problem solving in a real situation, and the collaboration of teachers, professors and science education researcher in a teacher education.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.403-417
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• 2010

In this research, we investigated the effect of a mentoring program implemented in science classrooms taught by beginning teachers in order to support their professional development. As a baseline data, we examined the characteristics of beginning science teachers' teaching. Then we explored any changes in mentee teachers' teaching with the implementation of a mentoring program. The three mentor-mentee pairs participated in this study. We explored six teachers' classroom teaching episodes with their videotaped classroom teaching. Using open-ended interviews and group discussions taking place on a regular basis to analyze and compare classes of six teachers, we extracted the beginning teachers' teaching characteristics in light of teaching strategies. The common features of the participated mentee teachers' teaching are analyzed in terms of (1) classroom culture and management, (2) classroom discourse, and (3) science experiments. Through mentoring, mentee teachers recognized that increased and enriched classroom dialogues had an effect on students' content understanding. Mentee teachers also acknowledged not only the necessity of laboratory activities but also the roles and ways of managing the science activities. Ways to help beginning teachers develop instructional professionalism are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.277-287
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• 2022

This study aims to investigate the main effects and interaction effects of individual variables on the epistemological beliefs of elementary school science teachers. For this purpose, a survey was conducted on 338 elementary science teachers in the metropolitan area on gender, teaching career, and epistemological beliefs. Epistemological beliefs show significant differences not only in gender and teaching career, but also in the interaction between gender and teaching career. Depending on gender, female teachers are more integrated in knowledge than male teachers, and process is more important than outcome in learning. Depending on the teaching career, it was found that high-career teachers generally value the process rather than the results, as knowledge is integrated and constantly evolving, knowledge is acquired by individual reasoning and justified through external interaction. On the other hand, teachers with low career perceive that efforts are indispensable in learning compared to other groups. Depending on the interaction between gender and teaching career, elementary school teachers believe that the higher the teaching career, the more integrated and constantly evolved, but low-career male teachers believed that learning ability was born with experience, while high-career male teachers value the learning process. Based on this study, it is expected that many training sessions aimed at improving the quality of teaching and learning will provide more effective opportunities to develop elementary science teachers' epistemological beliefs, considering teachers' personal characteristics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.467-476
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• 2012

This study explored changes of preservice biology teachers' pedagogical knowledge and science teaching efficacy belief after the science pedagogy course. Preservice biology teachers who did not take any science pedagogy courses had an opportunity to engage in discussions of educational theories and group activities of instructional design utilizing science instructional models as a first step to develop practical knowledge. These preservice teachers represented a statistically significant increase in their scores on pedagogical knowledge including theory, student development, planning, and implementation, but no statistical difference in their scores measuring science teaching efficacy belief. In addition, the correlation results indicated that the science teaching efficacy belief is related to implementation even though the magnitude is relatively moderate.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.115-128
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between mentor teachers' mentoring characteristics and mentee teachers' reflective practices and to investigate mentor teachers' mentoring methods to enhance mentee teachers' reflective practices based on the analysis. The participants were four beginning science teachers and four mentors who have more than seven years of teaching experience. This study compiled mentor and mentee teachers' journals, records and transcripts from mentee teachers' five periods of classes, lesson plans, evaluation forms of lessons, one-on-one mentoring records and transcripts, questionnaires conducted before, during, and after the mentoring program, and a questionnaire about the effects of one-on-one mentoring. The mentoring characteristics of mentor teachers were analyzed based on mentor's interaction methods and the contents and frequency of the support based on teaching feedback. Mentee teachers' reflective thinking was analyzed by being categorized as voluntary self-reflections of their classes and reflections on the support provided by mentor teachers. Mentee teachers' reflective practices were analyzed by utilizing RTOP. The conclusions of this study are as follows: Mentor teachers could promote mentee teachers' reflective practices by eliciting conversation that helped mentees perceive problems in their teaching practices. Mentors' questions evoking mentees' reflective thinking could elicit mentees' spontaneous self-reflection, and it led to the enhancement of self-reflection on mentors' support and reflective practices. When mentors offered the support based on teaching practices while playing a role as a facilitator to help mentees identify and solve problems by themselves, mentees' reflective practices could be promoted.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.585-598
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to investigate how the activity in the elementary school science teachers' study group help teachers improve their professionalism and what the motivation was for the continuous participation by analyzing the operation system of study group and the teachers' perception. For this study, the N Elementary Science Teachers' Study Group in Gyeong-gi province was chosen, which has been maintained for a long time. Data such as observation journals, contents of activities, and some documents from this study group were collected through the participant observation methodology, and the perceptions about the participating motivation, the personal satisfaction and the impact on the professionalism were investigated by interviewing 5 teachers who participating in this study group. The results of this study were as follows: First, voluntary participation activated the teachers' study group, so teachers who belong to the study group, had a great satisfaction in the activities of the study group. Second, the more teachers participated in study group, they thought their professionalism has been improved. Based on the result of this study, implications to improve the professionalism of teachers were suggested.