• Title/Summary/Keyword: classroom environments

Search Result 111, Processing Time 0.023 seconds

A Survey on Asbestos Exposure Possibility in Indoor and Outdoor Environments of Childcare Centers (어린이집 실내·외 석면노출 가능성 조사에 관한 연구)

  • Park, Whame;Son, Byeung-Hun
    • Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
    • /
    • v.24 no.2
    • /
    • pp.122-129
    • /
    • 2014
  • Objectives: Because of its properties such as resistance to heat, chemicals and corrosion; tensile strength; sound absorption; and affordable price, asbestos has been widely used as a building material, fire resistant and retardant, thermal and heat insulator, soundproofing material, and electrical insulation. Since the prolonged inhalation of asbestos can cause serious illnesses such as lung cancer, mesothelioma, and asbestosis after an incubation period of 20 to 40 years, the mineral was classified as a Group 1 carcinogen by the International Agency for Research on Cancer, an intergovernmental agency forming part of the World Health Organization. Children and infants are more at risk than are adults if they are exposed to carcinogens, due to aweaker immunity that has not yet been fully developed. Most childcare centers are operated all day and children tend to spend a great amount of time in the centers. This is why it is important for them to be systematically isolated from environments that may expose them to asbestos. Materials: In order to understand both indoor and outdoor hazards to which children may have been exposed, the study focused on actual surveys of asbestos used in childcare centers, paying special attention to slate-roofed buildings in the vicinity of the centers. Results: A survey of a total of 211 childcare centers showed that the buildings of 18.1% of the centers contained asbestos, with 60.53% of the material being found in classroom ceilings. "Tex" was the most used material for ceilings, making up 89.47% of all ceilings. An outdoor survey showed that childcare centers in Daegu Metropolitan City had an average of 143 slate-roof buildings within a distance of 1km. Conclusions: Buildings housing mainly toddlers, children, teenagers and others more vulnerable to the toxicity of asbestos are not subject to asbestos investigation by law. A legal and practical basis for asbestos control is required for such buildings. In particular, housing materials which contain asbestos in day care centers require asbestos control. GIS should be used to identify the location of buildings with slate roofing materials in the vicinity of daycare centers in order to gauge toxicity of exposure to asbestos caused by potential asbestos friability possibility in outdoor conditions.

A Mathematics Teacher's Reflective Practice as a Process of Professional Development (전문성 신장 과정으로서의 한 수학교사의 성찰적 실천)

  • Kim, Dong-Won
    • Communications of Mathematical Education
    • /
    • v.23 no.3
    • /
    • pp.735-760
    • /
    • 2009
  • Most of every teachers' life is occupied with his or her instruction, and a classroom is a laboratory for mutual development between teacher and students also. Namely, a teacher's professionalism can be enhanced by circulations of continual reflection, experiment, verification in the laboratory. Professional development is pursued primarily through teachers' reflective practices, especially instruction practices which is grounded on $Sch\ddot{o}n's$ epistemology of practices. And a thorough penetration about situations or realities and an exact understanding about students that are now being faced are foundations of reflective practices. In this study, at first, we explored the implications of earlier studies for discussing a teacher's practice. We could found two essential consequences through reviewing existing studies about classroom and instructions. One is a calling upon transition of perspectives about instruction, and the other is a suggestion of necessity of a teachers' reflective practices. Subsequently, we will talking about an instance of a middle school mathematics teacher's practices. We observed her instructions for a year. She has created her own practical knowledges through circulation of reflection and practices over the years. In her classroom, there were three mutual interaction structures included in a rich expressive environments. The first one is students' thinking and justifying in their seats. The second is a student's explaining at his or her feet. The last is a student's coming out to solve and explain problem. The main substances of her practical know ledges are creating of interaction structures and facilitating students' spontaneous changes. And the endeavor and experiment for diagnosing trouble and finding alternative when she came across an obstacles are also main elements of her practical knowledges Now, we can interpret her process of creating practical knowledge as a process of self-directed professional development when the fact that reflection and practices are the kernel of a teacher's professional development is taken into account.

  • PDF

Understanding the Role of Wonderment Questions Related to Activation of Conceptual Resources in Scientific Model Construction: Focusing on Students' Epistemological Framing and Positional Framing (과학적 모형 구성 과정에서 나타난 사고 질문의 개념적 자원 활성화의 이해 -인식론적 프레이밍과 위치 짓기 프레이밍을 중심으로-)

  • Lee, Cha-Eun;Kim, Heui-Baik
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
    • /
    • v.36 no.3
    • /
    • pp.471-483
    • /
    • 2016
  • The purpose of this study is to explore how students' epistemological framing and positional framing affect the role of wonderment questions related to the activation of conceptual resources and to investigate what contexts affect students' framings during scientific model construction. Four students were selected as focus group and they participated in collaborative scientific model construction of mechanisms relating to urination. According to the results, one student whose framings were "understanding phenomena" and "facilitator" asked wonderment questions, but the others whose framings were "classroom game" and "non-respondent" were not able to activate their conceptual resources. However, they were able to activate their conceptual resources when they shared the epistemological framing of "understanding phenomena" and shifted between the positional framings of "facilitator" and "respondent." Although they were able to activate their conceptual resources, these activated resources were not able to contribute to their model when they shifted to the framings of "classroom game" and "receiver." In contrast, when students constantly shared an "understanding phenomena" framing and dynamically shifted between the framings of "facilitator" and "respondent," they were able to activate various conceptual resources and develop their group model. The students' framings were affected by the contexts. These included: when students were confronted with cognitive difficulties and were not provided proper scaffolding; when the teacher played the role of answer provider and guided the activity with correctness; when there were several possible explanatory models that students could choose from; and when the teacher played the role of thought facilitator. This study contributes to supporting teaching and learning environments for productive scientific model construction.

Intelligent Tutoring System based on Wired and Wireless Internet for the living English 300-certifications Program (생활영어 300 인증제를 대비한 유무선 기반 지능형 교육 시스템)

  • Lee, Young-Seok;Cho, Jung-Won;Kim, Byung-Gyu;Park, Jung-Hwan;Kim, Su-Min;Choi, Byung-Uk
    • Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
    • /
    • v.9 no.3
    • /
    • pp.533-548
    • /
    • 2005
  • According to the increasing of the internet infrastructure and growth of contents technology, the users can access an education service at anytime and anywhere. In a field of English education, especially, internet technology has enabled learners to communicate with their teachers and multimedia contents technology has been able to provide learner not only lots of interests, but also good effect on English learning. In this paper, we propose a method diagnosing learner's level by using some question-items, which consist of item's type and item's function. Futhermore, the proposed system can support three devices which are PC, PDA, and Mobile Phone on wired and wireless internet communication environments. Also, the system provides multimedia contents including flash movies, image, and audio contents. We have applied the system into real classroom, and we verified that the question-items that system provides has no problem, and our method could improve each learner skill on English education. Therefore, we expect that learner who uses the proposed system will get level-based English learning service at anytime and anywhere.

  • PDF

The Current Situations of Enhancing Affective Characteristics focused on the case of secondary school in Korea (수학 교과에서의 학생의 정의적 특성 요인의 성취 실태 -국내 중등 수업 사례를 중심으로-)

  • Choe, Seung-Hyun;Hwang, Hye Jeang
    • Communications of Mathematical Education
    • /
    • v.28 no.2
    • /
    • pp.235-253
    • /
    • 2014
  • This study aims to develop strategies for improving the affective characteristics of Korean students based on results from international achievement tests. In pursuing the goal, different research methods are employed including a) analysis of the theories and literature regarding the affective domains included in PISA and TIMSS studies; b) analysis of the current situation and needs of Korean students with respect to the affective factors based on PISA and TIMSS results; c) case studies of best practices in relation to students' affective domains in Korea and abroad; and d) development of strategies for improving and supporting Korean students' affective characteristics. Especially, this paper deals with the analysis of the results from in-depth interviews and class observations, so as to identify the current situation and best practice cases of students' affective characteristics education in Korea. The results are classified into a) curriculum, which is in turn divided into national curriculum and reconstruction of curriculum school and classroom; and b) teaching, learning and evaluation, which is in turn divided into learner characteristics, motivation, teaching strategies, class grouping, activities and interaction, question and feedback, evaluation methods, and evaluation tools. Support plans in terms of school and social environments are also suggested based on the results.

Localization of Text-development on Regional Learning in Social Studies (사회과 지역학습 교재개발의 지역적 적합화 연구 -경남 산청과 충남 서산의 지역학습을 사례로-)

  • Son, Il;Jeon, Jong-Han
    • Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
    • /
    • v.10 no.2
    • /
    • pp.466-478
    • /
    • 2004
  • Regional learning in social studies has an important educational meaning in that it is a tabloid edition of social studies and it also satisfies the regionalization of national curriculum. Social studies in Korea have mainly been led by the social study curriculum of elementary school. But the local textbook which was currently used in elementary school is structured in a negative meaning of regionalization rather than positive one. It is suggested in this study that the regional learning of social studies in middle school should be pursued by the co-work of teachers and students. For this purpose, the theoretical and practical processes to develop the local textbook are compared between two distinctive localities such as Sancheong and Seosan. At first, the relative ratio among the six strands is decided to develop several themes for regional learning, considering the landscape, region-related discourses and ecological environments in each region. Secondly, several themes are extracted to organize the contents of local textbook in each region. Lastly, examples of content-organization are suggested in each region. The processes above are just an example of content-organization, not a fixed one. The process, themes extracted, and the content-organization for each region may be changed according to the school location, local situation, and the quality of classroom.

  • PDF

Classifying and Identifying Asbestos and Non-Asbestos Fibers by a Rule Building Expert System (전문가시스템을 이용한 석면 및 비석면의 분류 및 확인)

  • Choi, Young-A;Lee, Tae-Jung;Kim, Dong-Sool
    • Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
    • /
    • v.24 no.3
    • /
    • pp.346-356
    • /
    • 2008
  • Asbestos is the name of a group of minerals with long and thin fibers that originate naturally in the environment. Asbestos mainly affects lungs and the membrane that surrounds the lungs. In general, PCM (phase contrast microscopy) and PLM (polarized light microscopy) have been used to analyze asbestos fibers. However, these methods have often problems to over-estimate number concentration when counting real asbestos fibers. Moreover, there are many difficulties when separating and identifying various asbestos and non-asbestos fibers. In order to determine quantitative information on fibrous particles, source profiles for asbestos and non-asbestos fibers must be initially developed on the basis of their chemical compositions and physical parameters. In our study, a SEM/EDX was used to develop source profiles from known asbestos samples as reference samples. We could make the source profile matrix consisting of 6 types of asbestos fibers and 2 types of non-asbestos fibers by analyzing 380 fibers. Based on these profiles, a rule building expert system was developed by using the visual basic application (VBA). Various fibers were successfully classified by 2 simple rules in the EXCEL environment based on several visual steps such as inserting data, viewing results, and saving results. For a case study to test the expert system, samples from a construction materials and from various indoor environments such as a residental area, a preschool classroom, and an underground store were collected and analyzed. As a result of the survey, a total of 76 individual test fiber particles was well classified into 5 different types of particle classes; 9.3% of chrysotile, 15.4% of amosite, 0.8 of crocidolite, 4.2% of tremolite, 5.8% glass fiber, 21.1% of other fibers, and 43.5% of unknown fibers in terms of number concentration. Even though unknown portion was high, it will be decreased markedly when expanding fiber source profiles.

The Status of Science-Technology-Society Approach at the Junior High School Science Class in the Capital Area of Korea and Japan (한국과 일본의 수도권 소재 중학교 과학수업에서 과학-기술-사회적 접근의 적용 실태)

  • Park, Jong-Yoon;Kim, Sook-Hyun;Nagasu, Namio
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
    • /
    • v.20 no.4
    • /
    • pp.599-610
    • /
    • 2000
  • In this study, a questionnaires survey was administered to Korean and Japanese junior high school science teachers in the capital area to investigate the extents of Science-Technology-Society(STS) education practiced in science classroom. The responses of 69 Korean teachers and 33 Japanese teachers were analysed. The results showed that most of teachers in both country knew well about the meaning and the purpose of STS education. Also they realized the needs of applying the STS education in science class and had wills to do it. However, only about a half of teachers - more than a half of Japanese and less than a half of Korean - were practicing the STS related subjects, activities and assessments in the class. Teachers in both country responded that their science textbooks did not contain enough amounts of STS related contents and other STS education materials available were not much. Therefore, it is needed to include more STS related contents in the science textbooks and to develop various STS education materials and circulate them as well as to establish adequate teaching and assessment methods for STS education. Also activating teachers' meetings to circulate the informations and materials and improving the school environments are recommended.

  • PDF

Effects of Educational Programs Utilizing Forests on Maladjusted Behavior of Mentally Retarded Students (숲을 활용한 교육이 정신지체학생의 부적응행동에 미치는 영향)

  • Park, Kyoung-Lee;Sim, Woo-Kyung
    • Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture
    • /
    • v.38 no.5
    • /
    • pp.64-79
    • /
    • 2010
  • Students with intellectual disabilities typically have great difficulties communicating their needs and wants and may get frustrated, anxious or show signs of aggressive behaviour. They are often unable to understand the concept of relationships with other people as well. This lack of social communication and interaction leads to poor motivation which increases other areas of difficulty in their lives. Therefore, to teach students with intellectual disabilities, it is essential to find special teaching methods to support their positive behavior. This paper proposes that special educational curriculum for students with intellectual impairments utilize natural environments(forests) and materials. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Educational Programs Utilizing Forests on maladjusted behavior of students with mental retardation and to examine the positive effects of such planning practices. The subjects were middle school students who attended a special school for mentally-retarded students. They were divided into two separate groups- an experimental group and a control group. All subjects received the pre and post test using the same method. This program was applied to the formal educational process of middle school from March 1st to October 30th, 2009. In this experiment the results indicate that the effect of using a natural environment(forest) and the materials within a formal educational curriculum was positive as a type of horticultural therapy and that it supports positive behavior strategies in students with intellectual impairments. The usage of various natural materials including plants and flowers within the natural environments provide students with increased opportunities to participate. Teaching methods including natural materials help teachers engage with their students more easily during routine activities as their interest is already stimulated. This project will help students with intellectual impairments to build skills which enable effective participation and increase independence throughout their lives. This should be embedded into both routine and planned activities of the classroom Also, it offers a needed interior plan for the treatment space through an analysis of psychological factors of how the environment affects students.

A Template-based Interactive University Timetabling Support System (템플릿 기반의 상호대화형 전공강의시간표 작성지원시스템)

  • Chang, Yong-Sik;Jeong, Ye-Won
    • Journal of Intelligence and Information Systems
    • /
    • v.16 no.3
    • /
    • pp.121-145
    • /
    • 2010
  • University timetabling depending on the educational environments of universities is an NP-hard problem that the amount of computation required to find solutions increases exponentially with the problem size. For many years, there have been lots of studies on university timetabling from the necessity of automatic timetable generation for students' convenience and effective lesson, and for the effective allocation of subjects, lecturers, and classrooms. Timetables are classified into a course timetable and an examination timetable. This study focuses on the former. In general, a course timetable for liberal arts is scheduled by the office of academic affairs and a course timetable for major subjects is scheduled by each department of a university. We found several problems from the analysis of current course timetabling in departments. First, it is time-consuming and inefficient for each department to do the routine and repetitive timetabling work manually. Second, many classes are concentrated into several time slots in a timetable. This tendency decreases the effectiveness of students' classes. Third, several major subjects might overlap some required subjects in liberal arts at the same time slots in the timetable. In this case, it is required that students should choose only one from the overlapped subjects. Fourth, many subjects are lectured by same lecturers every year and most of lecturers prefer the same time slots for the subjects compared with last year. This means that it will be helpful if departments reuse the previous timetables. To solve such problems and support the effective course timetabling in each department, this study proposes a university timetabling support system based on two phases. In the first phase, each department generates a timetable template from the most similar timetable case, which is based on case-based reasoning. In the second phase, the department schedules a timetable with the help of interactive user interface under the timetabling criteria, which is based on rule-based approach. This study provides the illustrations of Hanshin University. We classified timetabling criteria into intrinsic and extrinsic criteria. In intrinsic criteria, there are three criteria related to lecturer, class, and classroom which are all hard constraints. In extrinsic criteria, there are four criteria related to 'the numbers of lesson hours' by the lecturer, 'prohibition of lecture allocation to specific day-hours' for committee members, 'the number of subjects in the same day-hour,' and 'the use of common classrooms.' In 'the numbers of lesson hours' by the lecturer, there are three kinds of criteria : 'minimum number of lesson hours per week,' 'maximum number of lesson hours per week,' 'maximum number of lesson hours per day.' Extrinsic criteria are also all hard constraints except for 'minimum number of lesson hours per week' considered as a soft constraint. In addition, we proposed two indices for measuring similarities between subjects of current semester and subjects of the previous timetables, and for evaluating distribution degrees of a scheduled timetable. Similarity is measured by comparison of two attributes-subject name and its lecturer-between current semester and a previous semester. The index of distribution degree, based on information entropy, indicates a distribution of subjects in the timetable. To show this study's viability, we implemented a prototype system and performed experiments with the real data of Hanshin University. Average similarity from the most similar cases of all departments was estimated as 41.72%. It means that a timetable template generated from the most similar case will be helpful. Through sensitivity analysis, the result shows that distribution degree will increase if we set 'the number of subjects in the same day-hour' to more than 90%.