• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.57-74
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• 2000

Students' concepts of scientific phenomena have become a point of focus in science education research. This study investigated into developmental process and mechanism of the students' respiration concept through a cross-age study. This study utilized the 1st, 3rd, 6th grade elementary students to find out changes in student's understanding of the concept of respiration. The 1st and 3rd grade level students were interviewed what the respiration mean and whether each of living things respires, etc. The 6th grade students were interviewed and tested. Respiration is a word that students come across often in everyday life. It was found that they were more likely to associate respiration with its more common concept of breathing or gas exchange as opposed to its more scientific definition as the process in which nutrients are oxidized to provide energy. This trend didn't improve as they advanced grade. This is an indication that the knowledge system of student is split into a generic knowledge system and scientific knowledge system. Understanding of concept increased and differentiated across grade levels but that understanding was limited. They overcome their tendency to base their understanding of respiration on their understanding of human phenomena and learn to integrate their understanding of biological phenomena through a one organ - one role type of logic. They also intuitively explain everything based on their own experience.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.spc5
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• pp.532-547
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• 2007

The purposes of this study were to investigate the creative science problem solving (CSPS) process amongst scientifically-gifted students and average students through the qualitative think-aloud research method, and to compare the differences in their CSP, scientific knowledge, scientific process skills, creative thinking, and finally, the affective domain used in their CSPS. For the purposes of this study, two scientifically-gifted 6th grade students and one average student were selected. The results show that one gifted student with good creative thinking skills exhibited better performance in CSPS than the other gifted student, who had the highest level of scientific knowledge. In the case of the average student, in spite of her high level of factual knowledge, she had difficulty in proceeding in CSPS due to her shallow scientific knowledge along with her low level of understanding of the given problem. This study highlights the importance of considering the factors which influence successful CSPS and which can play an important role in the education of scientifically-gifted children. These factors were identified as scientific knowledge, understanding of the scientific process, creative thinking, the affective domain, and science problem solving skills.

• East Asian mathematical journal
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.207-239
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• 2013

This research is a study on student's understanding fundamental concepts of mathematical curriculum, especially in geometry domain. The goal of researching is to analyze student's concepts about that domain and get the mathematical teaching methods. We developed various questions of descriptive assessment. Then we set up the term, procedure of research for the understanding student's knowledge of geometric figures. And we analyze the student's understanding extent through investigating questions of descriptive assessment. In this research, we concluded that most of students are having difficulty with defining the fundamental concepts of mathematics, especially in geometry. Almost all the students defined the fundamental conceptions of mathematics obscurely and sometimes even missed indispensable properties. And they can't distinguish between concept definition and concept image. Prior to this study, we couldn't identify this problem. Here are some suggestions. First, take time to reflect on your previous mathematics method. And then compile some well-selected questions of descriptive assessment that tell us more about student's understanding in geometric concepts.

• School Mathematics
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.637-660
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• 1999

Although ‘to understand mathematics’ is an important educational purpose, most student do not have a relational understanding of the basic concept of mathematics but have a instrumental understanding. This paper will investigate the possibility of using computers for enhancing relational understanding. In the ‘Qualitative case study’, three students who are in the first grade at E-High school took part in 7 activities during four weeks, and were later interviewed and engaged in informal discussion and were observed. This is the result of this study. 1. The three students were passive participants in mathematics problem solving situation at school. Therefore, student B just applied formulas which she had memorized, and student C would forgot the formulas occasionally. These common students needed to participate actively in doing mathematics. 2. The activities utilized two software healing with connection between graphs and function, giving the students the opportunity to plan, practice, and test by themselves. As a result, they understood the mathematical formulas and rules more deeply through their own trial and error, and then they gained thinking abilities necessary for doing mathematics. In addition, the activities boosted their confidence. 3. The understanding type of students was slightly different. Student A who received a high score, understood the most relationally, but student B who received a very high score, understood instrumentally and so couldn't app1y her knowledge to solving problems related to function concept. Student C who received a middle score lacked knowledge of mathematics but thought more creatively. The result is that students need an opportunity to think rotationally regardless of score. Therefore, this study concludes that using computer software will provide a positive effect for relational understanding in loaming function concept.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.920-932
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• 2010

Many topics in science, especially, abstract concepts, relationships, properties, entities in invisible ranges, are described in mathematical representations such as formula, numbers, symbols, and graphs. Although the mathematical representation is an essential tool to better understand scientific phenomena, the mathematical element is pointed out as a reason for learning difficulty and losing interests in science. In order to further investigate the relationship between mathematics knowledge and science understanding, the current study examined 793 high school students' understanding of the pH value. As a measure of the molar concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution, the pH value is an appropriate example to explore what a student mathematical structure of logarithm is and how they interpret the proportional relationship of numbers for scientific explanation. To the end, students were asked to write their responses on a questionnaire that is composed of nine content domain questions and four affective domain questions. Data analysis of this study provides information for the relationship between student understanding of the pH value and related mathematics knowledge.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.409-423
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to probe into student teachers' understanding of mathematics content knowledge and to identify the features of knowledge which is required to be emphasized in the elementary teacher education. For this, student teachers attending teacher preparation courses in Korea and Hong Kong were interviewed on tasks encompassing the 'what', 'why' and 'how' aspects of elementary mathematics. It was found that for the student teachers in the sample, their understanding of the concepts behind elementary mathematical topics was not very thorough. They were unable to retrieve the advanced mathematics that they learned in their advanced mathematics courses. It is suggested that for student teachers in mathematics, it is essential that the advanced mathematics they learn be explicitly related to the elementary mathematics they have learned in school.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.45 no.1 s.112
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• pp.75-96
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyze how elementary pre-service teachers learned the pedagogical content knowledge of mathematics and to understand the challenges and difficulties that they experienced in the course of student teaching. A qualitative case study provided an in-depth description of the whole three weeks of student teaching process. Four pre-service teachers and two mentor teachers participated in this study. Multiple data collection techniques were used; classroom observations, in-depth interviews, document analysis, and researcher's field notes. The results of this study showed how pre-service teachers learn PCK of mathematics in designing mathematics lessons, understanding mathematics learners and delivering mathematics lessons and what are the difficulties and challenges they experienced. Finally this study discussed about some suggestions to pre-service program and future research.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.59 no.6
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• pp.520-532
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• 2015

The purposes of this study were to examine what kinds of educational activities were carried out during the practice teaching based on CoRe and to identify the role of CoRe and its influence on the development of expertise of student teachers. This study was performed as qualitative case study. The subjects of this study were one practice supervisor teacher and two student teachers. Data were collected through recording CoRe discussion process, student teachers' instructional scene, and semi-constructed interview, and analyzed by an inductive method. Student teachers noticed their own misconceptions, and clarified the concepts based on CoRe during the discussion with supervisor teacher. They also supplemented their lack of knowledge and made up new strategies through the process of sharing their ideas. During the discussion, the supervisor teacher conveyed his teaching experience based on his own orientations toward science teaching. In this course, CoRe plays roles as follows. Firstly, CoRe played a role as guiding supervisor teacher's coaching process. Secondly, CoRe helped for the supervisor teacher to recognize their own PCK. Thirdly, CoRe served as a tool of helping their communication. In turn CoRe proved to be a useful frame for teaching student teachers during practice teaching. Student teachers were provided with a useful framework for preparing lessons by developing CoRe for the topic they teach. Developing CoRe with supervisor teacher at the planning stage of lessons enhenced student-teachers' subject matter knowledge and their PCK including knowledge of science curricula and knowledge of student's understanding of science. Also student teachers understood the components of PCK and experienced the positive understanding toward students, teaching activities, and themselves as a science teacher.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.67 no.6
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• pp.441-461
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• 2023

This study explore characteristics of teaching orientation and pck of science teachers in online-offline mixed learning environment. Data consisted of open-ended survey, semi-structured interview, class observation, field notes from 12 science teachers. We categorized teaching orientation considering both science education goals and science teaching·learning orientation. There were 8 different teaching orientations such as 'understanding science concepts-lecture centered' 'constructing science concepts-inquiry based' 'applying science concepts and inquiry-inquiry based' 'applying science concepts and inquiry-lectured centered' 'analyzing and judging science information-inquiry based' 'developing scientific attitude-inquiry based' 'developing scientific attitude-lecture centered' and 'developing perception of interrelationships among science, technology, and society-inquiry based'. Teachers with inquiry based teaching·learning orientation seemed to have knowledge of science curriculum specific to online learning environment for student inquiry. While teachers with 'understanding science concepts-lecture centered' teaching orientation appeared to have questioning strategy of checking student understanding and strategy of repeating a lecture, teachers with 'constructing science concepts-inquiry based' teaching orientation appeared to have knowledge of instructional strategies to perform online group activities targeting student construction of knowledge and to replace face-to-face group activities with virtual experiments and individual experiments. While teachers with 'understanding science concepts-lecture centered' teaching orientation did not show knowledge of student science learning, teachers with 'constructing science concepts-inquiry based' teaching orientation appeared to have knowledge of student difficulties in inquiry based learning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.641-648
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to analyze pre-service science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge. For this study, two senior education students were selected. The data of this study were collected through interviews, CoRe questionnaire, and classroom observation recordings during the period of student-teacher practice. Data were analyzed using the constant comparative method. The results indicated that the two pre-service science teachers had low level pedagogical content knowledge. Two pre-service science teachers' knowledges of science curriculum were different from each other. Orientations toward teaching science shifted to undesirable direction after the experience of a student-teacher's practice-teaching. Their subject matter knowledges were imperfect. They also had low levels of knowledge of students' understanding.