• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.507-518
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of verbal analogy activities on science achievement and science attitude of elementary students. Students consolidated lessons by making short sentences with core words that a teacher gave for scaffolding instruction. Many researches about analogies have been conducted in science education. However, most of them considered analogy as learning tools, whereas this research considers analogy as a cognitive process. To see the effects of verbal analogy activities, two groups were selected from 6th grade elementary school students; one was an experimental group working with the student-generated verbal analogy and the other was a control group with teacher-centered and textbook-centered activities. Science achievement, scientific attitudes, attitudes toward science and retention were tested after the treated lessons.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.15-25
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• 2020

In this study, we investigated elementary and preservice elementary school teachers' actual and preferred types of science assessment focusing on the purpose and the method of assessment. Participants were 75 elementary school teachers and 93 preservice elementary school teachers. The questionnaire adopted from previous relevant studies was administerd in order to examine the types of assessment which the teachers have actually implemented and the preferred types of assessment for hypothetical situations known as the prototypical examples of constructivist assessment. The results revealed that most teachers and preservice teachers tend to possess the summative-oriented purpose of assessment. An affective assessment purpose focused on evaluating students' interest, attitude, and curiosity toward science was newly identified in this study. In analyzing teachers' responses from the viewpoint of the method of science assessment, responses of an informal mode such as observation and portfolio were noticeable. However, most of them were found to correspond to the traditional summative-oriented purpose of assessment. For prototypical constuctivist assessment situations, teachers and preservice teachers were found to prefer the performance and the informal modes than the measurement mode of the assessment methods, whereas their purposes of the assessment were not found to be constructivist.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.240-249
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• 2011

The purposes of this study is to compare the beliefs in the nature of science, science teaching and learning of the elementary teachers in charge of the gifted and the general teachers. For this study, a survey on beliefs of the nature of science, science teaching and learning was conducted to 88 elementary teachers for the gifted and 90 elementary general teachers. Data was analyzed by their academic career and major. The results of this study were as follows: There were no significant differences in beliefs in the nature of science and science teaching between the elementary science teachers in charge of the gifted and the general elementary teachers, but the former has a more constructivism in science learning than the latter. In the some sub-domains of the beliefs of the nature of science, science teaching and learning, there were statistically significant differences according to their academic career and major. Implications from findings of this study were suggested, such as recruiting and in-service training system for teachers in charge of the gifted.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.287-296
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• 2004

The purposes of this study were to analyze the problems of elementary science instruction, especially in experiment and observation, and suggest the directions to improve current elementary science instruction in terms of teaching methods and strategies. Data from instructions implemented by 7 elementary teachers were used to extract the problem of elementary science instruction. According to the results of instruction observation, such problems as follows are identified: 1) shortage of discussion regarding results of students' activities, 2) insufficiency of interactions among teacher-student/student-student, 3) shortage of guidance for students on observation, 4) absence of explanation on apparatus, 5) teachers' insufficient knowledge on science, 6) inappropriate use of teacher-made worksheets. Desirable directions for the improvement of present elementary science instruction were proposed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.93-101
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the internal factors whether teachers execute experiments at the science classes in the elementary school. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were performed with 9 elementary school teachers who have served for more than three years. In-depth interviews were performed individually and all the interviews were recorded. Data sources were analyzed by grounded theory. The results were as follows: The internal factors that they did experiments at the science classes were science teaching faiths in experiment, self confidence in experiment, interest in science. and the internal factors that they did not experiment at the science classes were lack of science content knowledge, lack of science education knowledge, memory of failure at experiment, and so on. The investigation results imply inquiry activities should be more strengthened in elementary teacher education program and pre-service teacher curriculum. And it needs to give a materials of receiving information and guidance detailed about the experiments.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.97-107
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to discover and develop any implications which may arise in relation to science teachers' professional growth and development by investigating the difficulties experienced by elementary school teachers in science classes. 196 elementary school teachers were requested to write an anecdotal report regarding their science lessons. 30 science teachers in middle school also answered the same questionnaire. By means of inductive categorical analyzing, the difficulties were grouped into several categories. The results were as follows: (1) The difficulties elementary teachers experience in their science lessons fall into three categories; 'professional science knowledge(9.8%)', 'science laboratory activities(78.3%)', 'teaching methodology(11.2%)'. (2) Science teachers in middle school experienced similar difficulties. However, distribution differed from that of elementary school teachers; 'professional science knowledge(39.0%)', 'science laboratory activities(35.6%)', 'teaching methodology(27.1%)'. (3) The causes of these difficulties were identified as follows; a lack of time to prepare for science classes, insufficient substantial pre-service teacher education, and a lack of adaptive support to elementary school teachers.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.191-205
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to explore strategies used by pre-service elementary science teachers in planning a science lesson. The participants were six senior students from a national university of education located in the midwestern area of Korea. Data regarding their planning strategies were gathered through both thinking-aloud and observation. Research findings suggest that: three of the teachers had little understanding of the necessity of reviewing unit contents or prior learning for planning a science lesson; five student teachers relied heavily on learning objectives presented in teachers' guidebooks without considering their appropriateness; all teachers exhibited an intention of composing different activities or teaching approaches from teachers' guidebooks; only two teachers thought about learners' prior knowledge or understanding levels; five and three teachers had poor understanding of discovery learning models and importance of teacher's questioning, respectively; and five teachers paid little attention to assessment.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.269-284
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate the epistemic process in elementary science classrooms by analyzing classroom discourse as a epistemic practice. Data came from four elementary teachers in the form of video-recordings. A total of 12 elementary science lessons were examined to reveal the discursive modes and sequences in which the teacher and students participated when they constructed and developed scientific knowledge during the lessons. Three representative discursive patterns were found in the elementary science lessons explored: (i) 'Retrieving-Retrieving-${\cdots}$' by which well-established scientific knowledge was retrieved repeatedly, (ii) 'Exploring-Building on the Shared' which allowed introducing new scientific knowledge based on the scientific phenomena explored by the teacher and students together through practical work, and (iii) 'Retrieving-Elaborating/Reformulating/Narrating' or 'Building on the Shared-Elaborating/Reformulating/Narrating' which expanded and strengthened scientific knowledge already learned. These discursive patterns were suggested as discursive-epistemic mechanisms employed frequently in the epistemic process in elementary science lessons and as a basis for defining epistemic cultures of science classrooms.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.134-143
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• 2008

We investigated the understanding of elementary school teachers on the current science issues. As a first step of the research, we choose 10 science issues which are influencing current society. Then we asked 119 elementary school teachers in Seoul, Inchon and Daejeon how important they think and how much they know the issues. As a result, we found that almost elementary school teachers know much on alternative energy, atomic bomb, nuclear power generation and global warming while they less know about high technology as Korean supersonic trainer($T-5^{TM}$) and Synchrotron radiation accelerator. Also we know that teachers take an interest on the articles about current science issues only for a while and forget to study on the issues for themselves. It is more important than whatever for the teachers to have exact understanding on current science issues in order to make civil society by acquiring the science literacy. Therefore elementary teachers and preliminary teachers should have a chance to study on current science issues. We suggest that teacher communities should be supported to improve the competency by cooperation.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.211-220
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• 2008

This study examined pre-service science teachers' perceptions of informal learning by adopting a discourse analysis method suggested by Mortimer and Scott(2003). The guiding research questions were: (1) What are some general patterns of the discourse occurring in science museums between a teacher and a student? (2) In what ways do the pre-service teachers perceive informal learning and teacher's role in informal settings? The 7 pre-service science teachers participated in this study. Each of them shepherd an elementary student around the museum and implemented their own instruction using a pre-planed lesson plan. Results indicated that even though the teachers had learned some characteristics of informal teaming in their college courses, they tended to implement their traditional view of science teaming into the instruction and the view affected them to set up their teaching purposes and contents, and to select communicative approach, patterns of discourse and ways of intervention.