• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.3
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• pp.482-496
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• 2013

This study aims to investigate high school students' misconceptions in the subject of Korean geography, and further to create categories to systematically understand the misconceptions. The researcher asked experienced geography teachers to produce a list of students' geographic misconceptions, and then classified the misconceptions. The following five categories were created: 1) self-centered understanding based on everyday life and experience, 2) confusion by words, 3) inappropriate applications of operational definition or geographic concepts, 4) naive inference, and 5) inflexible generalization. The validity of this classification was established through a panel discussion with experts in geography education. The misconceptions that belonged to the categories of naive inference and inflexible generalization occupied a great portion. The misconception list in this study provides a useful data-set for researchers whose interest lies in misconception, and geography teachers can devise a lesson plan that explicitly emphasizes correct geographic concepts to prevent students from establishing misconceptions.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.601-614
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate high school students' geographic misconceptions and their mechanisms of formation. Three main theories explaining why students develop misconceptions exist: 1) framework theory, 2) p-prim(phenomenological primitive) theory, and 3) categorization theory. This study chose three target geographic concepts, or, 1st and 2nd mountain ranges, secondary central business district and satellite city, and the Nopsae wind and the F$\ddot{o}$hn phenomenon. Then, this research explored students' typical misconceptions regarding these concepts and attempted to examine which theory explains the misconception forming processes most well. As a result, the following misconceptions were found. First, students understood that the numbers 1 and 2 denote the order of the formation of mountain ranges. Second, despite differences in their main functions, students tended to subsume the secondary central business district and satellite city under one functional category. Third, students believed that the Nopsae wind and the F$\ddot{o}$hn phenomenon are identical in hierarchy. This study explained students' creation of these misconceptions by applying the categorization theory in which students located a concept in an inappropriate location of an ontology tree.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.51 no.3
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• pp.327-344
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• 2016

We may have an incorrect view of Korea and the world by misunderstanding them with a number of geographic misconceptions. Such misconceptions constructed socially tend to perpetuate through reproducing and learning repeatedly from one generation to the next. 'Daegu city is in the intermontane basin.' It is also identified that this geographic misconception had constructed (made) by two Japanese geographers (Tamura, 1933; Tada, 1940) in the Japanese colonial period, and have been reproduced and diffused by many Korean geographers (professors and teachers) as well as journalists in the post-colonial days. In terms of the definition of an intermontane basin in the Encyclopedia of Geomorphology published by the International Association of Geomorphologists, Daegu seems not to be a basin city but to be a plain city, since the central plain of Daegu is surrounded by higher terrain like mountains and hills only on the north and south directions of all sides, and also it is well developed thanks to its location where the downstream of the Geumhogang river flows from east to west. This paper hopes that the landform recognition as 'Daegu intermontane basin city' should be corrected as soon as possible, and also many geographic misconceptions will be studied actively for an accurate understanding of Korea and the world.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.43 no.3
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• pp.446-463
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• 2022

This study suggests the need for polar literacy education as an effective conceptual system to explain climate change in terms of science education in line with the common effort of humankind to respond to global environmental changes. To this end, we investigated the status of polar literacy in high school students through quantitative tests and qualitative interviews and discussed the resulting implications. A total of 329 high school sophomore students from two high schools participated in a test consisting of 25 true and false questions developed by referring to the Polar Literacy Principles, while 13 students agreed to be interviewed. The results showed that a somewhat insufficient understanding and conceptual gaps appeared regarding several areas of the Polar Literacy Principles. Knowledge of the geographic features of the polar regions was weak, and little was known about the components and key characteristics of the cryosphere. The lack of understanding of these concepts results in the inability of students to link the operational mechanisms of polar and global climate change sufficiently. While accepting unsatisfactory concepts in the school curriculum without criticism from outside media, students perceived the mechanism of climate change as somewhat monotonous or distorted. Moreover, linguistic information, analogies, and visual observation were used as cognitive strategies to compensate for the ambiguous understanding of polar and climate change. Based on the abovementioned results, we argue that polar literacy education should be introduced as a new knowledge system that can be used to aid a systematic and comprehensive understanding of climate change within the school science curriculum. Additionally, we suggest the following implications: review the consistency of knowledge related to polar literacy in other subjects, provide critical standards for out-of-school media information related to climate change, examine students' misconceptions, and identify improved thinking strategies.