• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.1300-1311
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to investigate pre-service science teachers' difficulties in the 'inquiry mentoring' program, which was developed to improve pre-service science teachers' inquiry teaching ability. For this study, I developed the 'inquiry mentoring' program in which pre-service science teachers taught high school students. This program was adapted for 2.5 months, and 45 pre-service science teachers participated and taught 44 high school students. During this program, pre-service science teachers kept 'mentor diaries' and wrote 'mentoring reports' at the end of the program. Interviews were conducted with all pre-service science teachers. Results are as follows: first, pre-service science teachers thought that the difficulties in inquiry mentoring resulted from their inadequacy (mentor factor) than students' inadequacy (mentee factor). Second, pre-service science teachers perceived their lack of cognitive ability, inquiry ability and teaching ability as a mentor factor. Third, pre-service science teachers thought that they had difficulties in students' differences and lack of activity as a mentee factor. Fourth, they described difficulties caused by emotional distance as well as physical distance as an interaction factor. They also mentioned the difficulties related to teaching range and online interaction. Fifth, pre-service science teachers expressed a sense of frustration with the inquiry environment. Additionally, some implications were discussed for pre-service science teacher education through the 'inquiry mentoring' program.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.544-556
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in beginning science teachers' inquiry-oriented teaching practice through mentoring program. Participants in this study are three mentor teachers and three beginning teachers. The three beginning teachers are middle school science teachers who have less than four years teaching experience. Also three science teachers participated in the program as mentors, who have more than twelve years teaching experience. We collected data such as video recordings of beginning teachers' classes, lesson plans, recordings of one to one mentoring and RTOP class observation reports. Mentor teachers observed and analyzed five classes of each beginning teacher. Before the mentoring program, beginning teachers' teaching methods were more concept-oriented and teacheroriented. They rarely used inquiry-elements including prediction, reasoning, hypothesizing and students were not actively engaged in communicative interactions in a classroom. But during the mentoring program, these teachers recognized and responded to student diversity and encouraged all students to participate in science learning. Beginning teachers' teaching methods have changed to become student-oriented, teachers and students collaborated in pursuit of ideas, and students often initiated new activities relevant to an inquiry. As a result, this mentoring program provided beginning teachers the opportunities to reflect on their own teaching and reform their classes. The results show that school-centered mentoring program is helpful to enhance beginning science teachers' inquiry-oriented teaching ability.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2014

This study aims to investigate the opinions of students who joined the Jeju Scientific Research Academy, a scientific research program with a mentoring system. The 50 middle school students and 50 high school students in the study were chosen as participants after being judged on their research plans. According to the study, students became more confident in research activities and could have a new point of view on research through interaction with a mentor. They were also very interested in the scientific research program of the Jeju Scientific Research Academy and found it helpful to understand the scientific concepts. Therefore the study shows it is necessary to consider actively the introduction of the mentoring system for the scientific research program. The follow-up study should be done to determine which factors influence on the inquiring minds and the understanding of scientific concepts of the students during the experience of the program.

• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.141-158
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• 2011

In recent years, an increasing number of viewpoints hold that students should be engaged in a learning environment where understanding and knowledge transfer take place. This study introduces Mathematics Created by You (MCY)-mentoring program, which allows students to construct artefacts that are required to learn. This program is online-based and so can be shared by several people and mathematics leaning takes place through interactions within this carefully designed environment. Also, MCY intends to provide students a series of sequential activities related to creative play, creative learning and creative inquiry based on a Constructive and interactive environment. Furthermore, a creative activity- constructing a creative product using building blocks- was presented as an example. Finally, we investigate the pedagogical implications and suggest directions for the further development.

• Journal of Engineering Education Research
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.3-14
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• 2013

The previously developed practical inquiry activity supporting tools, deduced from the design principles and implementation principles based on the study of precedent researches and theories, applicable to conceptual learning in engineering education were implemented to an on-line learning community, a web-based Windows application, to find out its effectiveness in actual classroom situation through experimental research. The On-line learning community includes the inquiry activity menu to implement learning procedure of inquiry based conceptual learning, the functions supporting the communication among participants, the information sharing function, the scheduling function of class and inquiry activity, the mentoring function, and the evaluation of on-line activities of learners. Experimental study were also conducted in order to analyze the effects of inquiry activity supporting tools on inquiry based conceptual learning in engineering education.

• 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.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.45 no.3 s.114
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• pp.295-313
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• 2006

University teacher education programs have sought for ways of how to improve student teaching in order to supply mathematics teachers with practical theory to achieve the goals of the current educational reform in school mathematics. In this context, the purpose of this research is to investigate the effect of student teachers' teaching experience in the after-school mathematics programs and the ways of how to develop the after-school learning programs as an effective site for learning to teach based on the inquiry into student teachers' own teaching experience. For the purpose, data were collected through the interviews with the student teachers who had taught after-school mathematics class. In addition, data were collected through survey, class observation, and seminal meetings with the student teachers in order to supplement the findings from the interview analysis. Data analysis focused on the student teachers' experience with teaching in after-school mathematics classes, that is, what and how they had learned as teachers, what kinds of difficulties they encountered in their teaching and supports that they expect to improve their learning through teaching. The analysis shows that the teaching experience in the after-school programs had positively contributed to their development as future mathematics teachers. Specifically, the after-school programs provide the site for learning through teaching at the early stage of teacher education program. The after-school programs provided the students teachers for the opportunity to participate peripherally in educational practice of school. Through the participation, the student teachers developed positive attitudes toward teaching career and became to have more solid ideas about how to teach mathematics. Based on the analysis, this research provides following suggestions concerning how to improve student teaching. First, it is necessary to provide student teachers to participate into the practice of teaching at the early stage of teacher education programs. Second, it is important to give students teacher opportunity to participate in teaching at peripheral and legitimate positions. Finally, it is necessary to construct mentoring networks to support student teachers to move from a peripheral position toward a center of teaching practice.

• Journal of Creative Information Culture
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.319-328
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• 2019

This study aims to deeply understand the possible difficulties faced by a single-parent family raising a gifted child, based on the case of an Information Science gifted child raised under a single-parent family. For this purpose, there had been three interviews with the single mother who raises an elementary school gifted child on her own. As a result, it was discovered that a single mother raising an Information Science gifted child faces three difficulties that are the lack of educational support due to financial problems, deficiency in the absence of father, and facing social prejudice against a single-parent family. These three problems were similar to those faced by a single-parent raising an ordinary child, but there were slight differences due to the unique characteristics of an Information Science gifted child. Additionally, through the mentoring with the researcher, it was identified that in order to help these families, they need to be given personalized support for their specific defects.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.297-310
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• 2021

This study explores the characteristics of within-school and across-school science teacher professional learning communities (hereafter, PLC) qualitatively. In-depth focus group interviews were conducted with science teachers belonging to seven PLCs within the science core school and three PLCs across schools. Interview questions include identity and motivation, major activities, and outcomes of PLC, as well as shortcomings and support plans for PLC. The results include both within-school and across-school science teacher PLCs formed for professional development related to science teaching and learning. Both science PLCs participated in the study showed the characteristics of a 'practice community' that developed a cooperative relationship through reciprocal participation, focusing on shared issues among members. Regarding issues, within-school PLCs focused on microscopic problems such as curriculum reconstruction of subject-matter, while across-school PLCs focused on macro problems such as teacher professional development. Regarding activities and roles as PLC, within-school and across-school science PLCs shared such features as collaborative professional development, and interpersonal education such as mentoring for novice teachers. In terms of PLC's influence and outcomes, science teacher PLCs has a positive effect not only on the teachers themselves, but also on the students and the teacher culture in the school. In addition, science teacher PLCs need improvement of the physical conditions for community operation, and software support such as protocol provision for PLC operation and joint research or re-education with universities. In particular, joint research between universities and science teacher PLCs shows the future orientation of the PLC as an 'inquiry community'. Based on the results, the necessity of active support for science PLC, the necessity of developing a cooperative system between science teacher PLC and universities, and ways to spread the PLC of science core schools to that of general schools were proposed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.881-901
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• 2011

The science museum in the past satisfied visitors only by interacting them with simple objects and exhibition, while one in modern times was requested to meet the need of visitors in their engagement in educational programs. To meet the visitors' need, the science museum made efforts to train, educate, and assign docents so that they can interact with visitors and serve the educational purpose of visitation. In this study, we analyzed the strengths and weakness of docent training programs from science museums/science centers nationally and internationally, to make implication on how to design a docent training and professional program. Programs from four national and four international science centers/museums were selected as a sample for analysis. Their docent training programs were compared with the data of surveys and interviews and emails from docents and docent managers/evaluators. Artifacts and documents of the docent training programs were also collected and used to construct the validity in analyzing the data, resulting in the well-developed docent training program as the critical one for enriching science museum education. The results included; First, we need to recruit and train docents who interact visitors directly but they need to be differentiated from regular volunteers for promoting science museum education for the purpose of popularization of science. Additionally, Second, we need to develop and run docent training program where docents can experience 'informal learning' exhibition interpreting strategies through the real field from mentoring from the experienced/senior docents beyond 'formal learning' exhibition content. Third, we need to equip docents with skills to make scientific literacy possible at science museum-such as experiencing scientific ethics through scientific inquiry-which happens limited at school education.