• Journal of the Korean School Mathematics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.679-695
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• 2014

In this paper we survey the career awareness, demand, and preparation of the students of the department of mathematics education and provide basic data for establishment of career diversification strategies. For this we examined the followings: (1) department selected time and motivation, (2) satisfaction with the selection and training courses, (3) hope and change for a career after graduation, (4) related jobs and career awareness. As a result, most of the students over the course of the high school and middle school chose a career in mathematics education, the biggest motivation appeared to be due to selection was deemed suitable for individual aptitudes. Due to this reason he/she is satisfied with the selection and training process and the curriculum of mathematics education appeared to think it would be helpful to his/her career. It can be observed that the number of students increased to think of another job, depending on the grade ascent. Mostly due to the difficulty of major study as grade up, high competition and low success rate of teacher employment test, employment reduction in the number of teachers.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.99-112
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• 2015

This study aimed at investigating elementary teachers' stages of concerns and its changes about STEAM education. The participants of this study were 90 elementary school teachers implementing STEAM education in their schools. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) was administered after the permission was granted by Hall. Data were collected three times from April, June, and December in the year of implementing the exemplary STEAM school. The results indicated that elementary school teachers' concerns toward STEAM education, the differences of the percentile scores of each stages of concerns, showed slightly low. The SoC of teachers in April showed that Awareness(Stage 0) was relatively very high and Consequences(Stage 4) was very low. However, in December, both Awareness(Stage 0) and Management(Stage 3) were very low. In particular, the percentile scores of Consequence(Stage 4) showed the big difference from 54.7 to 74.3. In addition, teachers who took science track in their high schools showed the relatively low score in the stage of Management(Stage 3). Teachers having the degree of Master of Arts presented the relatively low percentile score in the stage of Management(Stage 3). Teachers who majored in STEM related areas at the university presented the relatively low score in the stage of Management(Stage 3). The findings of this exploratory study may provide the useful insights into the integrative approaches of STEAM education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2001

The extended science investigations, comprehensive investigations contrasted with exercises of process skill components and cookbook style experiments, should be pursued for giving opportunity of more authentic science activity. The characteristics of the extended investigation tasks were emerged from critical argument on school practical work. And one of important educational objectives in students' investigations is to achieve motivation for investigation. The purpose of this study is to explore how the characteristics of the extended investigation tasks, that is practical context, openness and continuity, affect middle school students' motivation for investigation. On the basis of questionnaire results and students' school science achievement, ten students were interviewed to see the change of motivation for investigation and its causes while they perform two textbook investigations and four extended investigation tasks. Among the interviewees, the students who showed positive motivation for the extended investigations were critical about textbook experiments as they are just confirmations of theories and perceived practical context and openness as the main causes of their positive motivation. The students who showed negative motivation for extended investigations preferred textbook experiments as there was enough guidance from teacher and textbook-centered learning. They recognized the openness of the tasks as a main reason of their negative motivation for investigation. Some students showed negative responses about continuity of the extended investigation tasks but continuity was not recognized as a main cause for their motivation for investigation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.289-301
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• 2015

This study noted that elementary school students were unable to accurately comprehend the principles of moon phase changes and that teachers themselves lacked a full understanding of it as well. Therefore, this study classifies conception types through 161 5th grade respondents and suggests how to change students' conception types through the use of reconstructed teaching and learning materials (that have been developed in existing studies). It verified the changes in the learning achievement of 129 5th grade respondents and analyzed how to think about reconstructed teaching and learning materials through four teacher respondents and four 5th grade respondents from the same study. The results of this study are as follows: First, the conception types on moon phase changes were classified into C and W types. W types consisted of W1, W2, W3, W4, and W5 types. Students had difficulty in understanding the principles of a waxing crescent moon and first quarter phase changes. Second, the group taking classes, which implemented reconstructed teaching and learning materials, showed greater improvement in learning achievement posttest and long-term tests compared to those who have not. Finally, teachers and students reacted positively to the reconstructed teaching and learning materials as shown in exit survey results. In conclusion, it is suggested that teachers are better off utilizing reconstructed teaching and learning materials so that elementary school students may fully understand the principles of moon phase changes rather than just memorizing the results.

• Journal of Digital Convergence
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• v.15 no.12
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• pp.79-93
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to investigate the perception and need for the revised child care practicum (January, 2017) in Korea. The participants were in three groups: 32 directors, 143 child care teachers and 130 pre-service teachers. Questionnaire were used ot collect the data and t-test, x-test and ANOVA were done for analysis. All three groups responded positively for the revised edition (extending the period of practicum from 4 weeks to 6 weeks). And perceived the extending the period is necessary for the quality of child care centers. Directors with the higher level of education perceived the revision clearly than others. Most of teachers perceived the change through teacher retraining program. All groups pointed out for the implementing the revised edition successfully, supporting and cooperative system is in need for three groups.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.423-434
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate preservice earth science teachers' mental models through applications of Coriolis force experiment apparatus. After the root of preconception was examined by face to face interviews based on the questionnaire, five preservice earth science teachers were finally selected for this study. The mental models about concept of Coriolis force was classified into naive mental model, static unstable mental model, dynamic unstable mental model, and scientific mental model through the result of individual interviews and their drawings. According to the mental model analysis about Coriolis' force conception, students C and M showed naive mental model about concept of Coriolis force before experiment. After the experiment, student M's model changed to static unstable mental model. Student C's model improved to dynamic unstable mental model. In adiition, students D and O's model improved from static unstable mental model to dynamic unstable mental model. In the case of student B, the dynamic unstable mental model was maintained after the experiment, however, student B's preconception changed to scientific concept. It turned out that a change occurred from low mental model level to integrated mental model after the application of the developed Coriolis' force experiment apparatus. According to the results, national curriculum is similar to static unstable mental model and the result of developed Coriolis' force experiment apparatus is similar to dynamic unstable mental model. It is suggested that it become the theoretical foundation to develop more comfortable and advanced Coriolis force experiment apparatus by improving the experiment apparatus.

• 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.33 no.5
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• pp.1021-1040
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• 2013

In order to explore the influences of coteaching through mentoring upon the teaching professionalism of beginning science-gifted education teachers, this case study deeply investigated the change processes in the aspects of pedagogical content knowledge (PCK). Two beginning teachers planned, performed and reflected together their science instructions for science-gifted students in secondary school during four 3-hour classes. Since the second instruction, pre-, during-, and post-mentoring were conducted, we collected various data related to teachers' planning processes, videotaped all coteaching science classes, and wrote field notes. We also recorded in-depth interviews with the teachers and the whole process of mentoring. All the data were analyzed by using the constant comparative method. The results of the analyses indicated that coteaching through mentoring positively changed the teachers' PCK. Above all, we found that coteaching and mentoring strategies generated a significant synergy effect through a mutually complementary relationship. The teachers developed deep practical knowledge about the enrichment curriculum, which placed more emphasis on developing cognitive and/or affective characteristics of science-gifted students. The teachers also improved their knowledge about the characteristics of science-gifted students and the instructional strategies appropriate for developing them. Moreover, practical knowledge about assessment domains and methods used in science-gifted education were improved. Knowledge on science content necessary for effective inquiry instruction was also improved.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.229-248
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to develop sequential concept tests (ConcepTest) for teachers' conceptual change on the straight propagation of light through in-service training of science teachers by peer instruction. We revised the ConcepTests for attaining the goal concept by implementing similar training courses for teachers three times and analyzing the results using both Hake gain and verbal protocol. The final form helped most teachers to reach the goal concept. While teachers are solving a given concept problem test, they had shown not only significant cognitive conflict to select one among candidate answers, but also used the concept obtained through the previous problem. The sequential ConcepTests developed in this study can be useful for training elementary and secondary teachers or pre-service teacher education.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.62 no.4
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• pp.288-298
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• 2018

In this study, we surveyed pre- and post-perceptions of fourteen science teachers related to the atmosphere composition of molecules with different masses by the developed test. As a result of the test, the teachers were classified into two types of thoughts; One of them is considered the atmosphere to be a homogeneous solution, and the other is a thought that the composition ratio of the atmosphere was not homogeneous considering the different weights of particles. The two types were reclassified into three categories; one of them is considering large gravity effect, another is considering small gravity effect, and the other is considering medium scale gravity effect. Total six types of thoughts were found from the pre-test. After introducing crosscutting concepts which are related to the composition of atmosphere. The teachers discussed the phenomena with the molecular motion by weights of atoms and temperature, the homogeneity of the solution of air in chemistry domain. They also discussed with the relationship between mass and gravity and distance in physics domain. And the discussion included distribution of the atmosphere, convection phenomena, etc. After the discussion, the teachers changed their pre-conceptions to post-concoctions considering combined perspectives of gravity, mass, temperature, altitude etc. Through these changes, we are able to confirm the importance of crosscutting concepts covered in various disciplines. In the integrated science, we should help teachers to provide students with these types of thinking in order to form a coherent world-view and to carry out inquiry thinking as an intellectual tool.