• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.747-761
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analyze differences in the teaching practices of biology teachers according to their awareness of the importance of evolution. For this purpose, two teachers who experienced study of evolution and recognized its importance, along with two teachers with no experience in evolution education in the comparison group, were included in the sample. To observe teaching practices, two classes each on biological evolution and non-evolution were selected, recorded and transcribed. The content analyzed included the teachers' view on evolution education and teachers' evolution concepts reflected in teaching practice. As a result, the level of understanding of the teachers' evolution concept was unrelated to teachers' awareness of the importance of evolution. Instead, each teacher would not feel the need for religious beliefs or awareness of the importance of evolution to have a negative impact on the awareness of the importance of evolution. Inexperienced teachers tend to reject the retraining opportunities to recognize the importance of evolution. In addition, inexperienced teachers were only superficially aware of the evaluation and improvement of evolution presented in textbooks and curricula. In actual teaching practice analysis, inexperienced teachers' utilizing ratio of the evolution key concept was higher than that of experienced teachers. Only experienced teachers were aware of the misconceptions presented in their execution and described the causes that appear in these misconceptions. Teachers who recognized the importance of evolution were widely using the key concepts of evolution, as well as more practical in preventing the misconceptions related to evolution forms. It indicates that biology teachers who do not realize the importance of evolution in biology education need to experience explicit and practical education programs as well as instructional materials on evolution.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.691-707
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• 2015

This study aims to develop biology teachers' education program based on argumentation activity about core concepts of evolution and to analyze the characteristics of core concepts of evolution learned during the program. The eight core concepts of evolution in this study were variation, heritability of variation, competition, natural selection, adaptation, differential reproductive rate of individuals, changes in genetic pool within a population, and macroevolution. The performances of teachers participating in the program were compared before and after argumentation activities; consisting of seven sessions on the eight core concepts of evolution. The process of the program was specially designed by learning cycle model for teacher education, consisting of seven phases: identification of the task, production of a tentative argument, small group's written argument, share arguments with the other groups, reflective discussion, final written argument, and organization by an instructor. Participants in the study were two pre-service biology teachers and four in-service biology teachers. The results suggest that biology teachers reduced the teleological explanation for biological evolution and improve its adequacy after the intervention. Teachers lacked the opportunity to discuss variation, heritability of variation, competition, and macroevolution because science textbooks lack information on the concepts of biological evolution. The results of this study suggest that because the argumentation program developed for teachers helps to improve understanding the concepts of evolution and to reduce inadequate conceptions in biology, teacher education programs using argumentation activity and eight core concepts of evolution will play a role for efficient evolution education for biology teachers.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.1-16
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to explore the variables of knowledge, acceptance of theory of evolution and epistemology that could be keys for teaching and learning the theory of evolution within school contexts, and to suggest instructional tips for teaching evolution in relation to the grade levels of education. This cross-sectional study examined the grade level differences (8th, 11th, and preservice teachers) of four variables: evolutionary knowledge; acceptance of theory of evolution; and both domain-specific epistemology (nature of science in relation to evolution) and context-specific epistemology (scientific epistemological views) and their relationships. This study, then, built conceptual models of each grade level students' acceptance of theory of evolution among the factors of evolutionary knowledge and epistemology (both domain-specific and context-specific). The results showed that the scores of evolutionary knowledge, evolution in relation to NOS, and scientific epistemology increased as the grade levels of education go up(p<.05) except the scores of acceptance of theory of evolution(p>.05). In addition, the 8th graders' and the 11th graders' acceptance of evolutionary theory was most explained by 'evolution in relation to NOS', while the preservice teachers' acceptance of evolutionary theory was most explained by evolutionary knowledge. Interestingly, 'scientific epistemological views' were only included for the 8th graders, while evolutionary knowledge and 'evolution in relation to NOS' (context-specific epistemology) were included in explaining all the level of students' acceptance of evolutionary theory. This study implicated that when teaching and learning of the theory of evolution in school contexts, knowledge, acceptance of evolutionary theory and epistemology could be considered appropriately for the different grade levels of students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.440-454
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• 2011

This study proposes a new instructional strategy and corresponding materials designed from various alternative frameworks to help students understand evolution as a biologically acceptable theory. Biology teachers have normally taught the evolutionary mechanism by means of comparing Lamarckism with natural selection. In this study, a new instructional strategy in which the Lamarckian explanation is first excluded because Lamarckism is known to be subsumed in a learner's cognitive structure as a strong preconception of evolution is suggested for teaching evolution. After mutation theory is introduced, Darwinism including natural selection is explained separately during the next class hour. Corresponding instructional materials that aid student understanding of the evolutionary mechanism were developed using recently published articles on human genetic traits as scientific evolutionary evidence instead of the traditional evolutionary subject matter, giraffe neck. Evolutionary evidence from human genetic traits allows students to exclude anthropocentric thoughts effectively and raise concern for the phenomenon of evolution positively. The administered instructional strategy and materials in this research improved student conception, concern, and belief of evolution and it is believed that they helped students understand the evolutionary mechanism effectively.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.145-159
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• 2005

Students' alternative concepts of evolution are similar to misconcepts and disputes which scientists had in science history. The aims of this study are to analyze the elementary children's concept in evolution based on science history. Lee (2004)'s two tests were applied to 6th grade to investigate the children's evolution concepts and genetic concepts related to the historical development of the evolution concepts. The test results were analyzed in accordance with 4 stages of science history based on Lee (2004)'s method. These stages are divided to stage 1 (Before Lamarck), stage 2 (Lamarck), stage 3 (Darwin), stage 4 (After Darwin). The major results are as follows. Most of elementary school children are fixed to the stage 2. They usually do not show the consistency of evolution concepts in the three dimensional aspects such as mechanism, time, and subjects. Many children do not have concrete meaning of gene, inheritance, sexual reproduction, mutation and could not connect these concetps and process of evolution. Also, they believe the inheritance of acquired traits and spontaneous generation. Therefore it is confirmed that they still have similar misconcepts and disputes which scientists had in transition time between stage 2 and 3 and most of children already have strong Lamarckian thought acquired from daily life experience before learning about natural selection and evolution.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.767-778
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• 2014

Many biologists and various educational associations define evolution as a unifying theme as well as a central idea in biology. In this study, teacher education programs were developed as 18-hour courses on understanding the unified role and significance of evolution in biology, and their effectiveness was tested. As factors for the program content, enhancement of the acceptance of evolution, reinforcement of the conception of evolutionary theory, and recognizing and practicing evolution as the unifying nature of evolution were considered. Hands-on activities, self- and peer-evaluation, and projects based on the small teams including frequent questioning and feedback by instructors were considered methodological factors. Six in-service biology teachers and seven pre-service teachers took part in the programs of the graduate school of H university to testing their effectiveness. They were effective in improving the acceptance of evolution, the understanding of evolutionary mechanism, the perception on the unified role of evolution. The programs also induced a positive change in self-evaluation for knowledge of evolution and perception on importance of evolution in biology. Subsequent studies on whether the changed perceptions of the teachers who participated in the programs reflect on their biology classes in secondary schools after finishing the graduate program are required.

• The Pure and Applied Mathematics
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.245-257
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• 2008

In this paper, we find the sufficient conditions of controllability of semi-linear neutral functional differential evolution equations with non local conditions using by fractional power of operators and Sadovskii's fixed point theorem.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.352-362
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• 2006

Many misconceptions regarding biology and evolution have been reported by students prior to being exposed to a formal education program of evolution which challenged them. This study sought to investigate and to analyze the misconception formation process of evolution originating from TV animation and science books for children. Firstly, to identify TV animation's influence on students' misconceptions of evolution, a questionnaire including TV animation characters was constructed and administered to 146 elementary school students, 161 middle school students, and 156 high school students. The data collected was analyzed. Secondly, 17 science books for children were sampled and the contents related to evolution were selected and analyzed in terms of five evolutionary explanations: creationism internal will explanation, teleological explanations, explanations of use and disuse, mutation and finally, natural selection. Children have understood 'growth' and 'metamorphosis' on TV animation as 'evolution'. The processes by which characters on TV animation undergo some forms of change, which are in fact a kind of metamorphosis has often been understood as 'evolution'. Many respondents have defined evolution incorrectly as the process of growing and changing shape. On the other hand, some science books fur children contained descriptions of evolution including' mutation and finally natural selection explanation'; however, most of the science books fur children sampled in this study were written through the perspectives of alternative evolutionary views such as 'teleology view', 'internal will view', and 'use and disuse view'. It is apparent that TV animation and science books fur children influence the formation of various misconceptions regarding evolution by children.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.10
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• pp.1537-1550
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• 2012

This study aims to explore the differences between Korean and United States college students regarding their degree of religiosity, interest in, understanding and acceptance of evolution, and the effects of their interaction on these variables. A total of one thousand and fifteen Korean and US biology majors and non-majors college students participated in this study and a sub sample of 516 students were randomly selected for statistical tests. The results illustrated that Korean college students harbored significantly lower degrees of religiosity and interest in evolution but significantly higher degrees of knowledge and acceptance of evolution than US college students. The path analysis uncovered that the knowledge of and interest in evolution played a mediating role between religiosity and acceptance of evolution. Korean college students' interest in evolution was less correlated to other variables than US college students' interest. The acceptance of evolution was less predicted by knowledge of evolution in the Korean biology major sample than in the US biology major sample. The acceptance of evolution was predicted more by religiosity in the Korean non-major sample than in US non-major sample. This study suggests that future Korean science curriculum for evolution needs to enhance the degree of students' interest in evolution. In addition, future Korean science curriculum needs an instructional strategy in developing students' ability to make scientific decisions, such as the acceptance of evolution, without interference from their personal religious belief.

• Journal of Electrochemical Science and Technology
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.323-329
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• 2020

The cathodic hydrogen evolution ability of different pure metals and their long term galvanic corrosion behavior with pure Mg were investigated. The hydrogen evolution ability of pure Ti, Al, Sn and Zr is weak, while that of Fe, W, Cr, and Co is very strong. Initial polarization test could not completely reveal the cathodic behavior of the tested metals during long term corrosion. The cathodic hydrogen evolution ability may vary significantly in the long term galvanic tests for different metals, especially for Al whose cathodic current density reduced to 1/50 of the initial value. The anodic polarization shows that Al and Sn as alloying elements are supposed to provide relatively good passive effect for Mg alloy, while Ag can provide a slight passive effect and Zn has little passive effect.