• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.390-404
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• 2013

The premise of the study is that teacher communities or teacher interest groups are one of the representative examples of Communities of Practice (CoP) formed by teachers who engage in the process of collective learning regarding science teaching. Based on the theory of CoP, we investigated and interpreted the process of identity development of six science teachers who have been actively involved in teacher communities. We conducted 2-3 individual interviews with the teachers in order to explore their narratives and personal experiences of being involved in the communities over the years. Results indicated that a teacher community is a place where the teachers not only generated and shared repertories of ideas, documents on teaching and learning, or routines (i.e. practices), but also formulated a set of relationships through social participation. Teacher communities actively provide the teachers a sense of joint enterprise and identity, and where the teachers have an opportunity to develop themselves personally and professionally as science teachers playing major roles in their communities.

• Educational Technology International
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.87-116
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• 2016

In this research, we designed a teacher professional development (PD) program where a small group of mathematics teachers could share, reflect on, and discuss their pedagogical knowledge and practices of ICT-integrated lessons, using a video annotation tool called DIVER. The main purposes of this paper are both micro and macro: to examine how the teachers were engaged in the meaning-making process in a video-based PD (micro); and to derive implications about how to design effective video-based teacher PD programs toward a teacher community of practices (macro). To examine teachers' meaning-making in the PD sessions, discourse data from a series of 10 meetings was segmented into idea units and coded to identify discourse patterns, focusing on (a) participation levels, (b) conversation topics, and (c) conversation depth. Regarding the affordance of DIVER, discourse patterns of two meetings, before and after individual annotation with DIVER were compared through qualitative vignette analysis. Overall, we found that the teacher discourse shifted the focus from surface features to deeper pedagogical issues as the PD sessions progressed. In particular, the annotation function in DIVER afforded the teachers to exercise descriptive analyses of video clips in a flexible manner, thereby helping them cognitively prepared to take interpretative and evaluative stances in face-to-face discussions with colleagues. In conclusion, deriving from our research experiences, we discuss the possibilities and challenges of designing video-based teacher PD in a school context.

• Human Ecology Research
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• v.54 no.4
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• pp.365-384
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• 2016

The purpose of this research is to apprehend what the power of professional learning community (PLC) to make home economics teachers participate is and how PLC activity contributes to reflective practice and change of participating home economics teachers by experiencing reflective practices. For this, self-reflective action research of Kemmis and McTaggart was conducted. Six home economics teachers participated voluntarily and totally 18 PLC sessions from May 31, 2013 to May 19, 2014 were held. Two themes of 'looking in classes' as a main practice theme and 'designing classes together' as a supporting theme were carried. Findings and conclusions of this study are as following. First, participants of PLC to get data and information on teaching and to solve problems with fellow teachers for better classes at first. However, they have become to comfort and sympathize each other about difficulties in school as home economics teachers. Second, through the PLC activity, they found they had uncomfortable belief about teaching and tried to practice solutions by critical and reflective thinking. Third, they put efforts in finding alternative framework of looking inside their classes for the fundamental improvement in teaching. For this, they formulated questionnaire to describe their own reflective practice through the alternative framework from a critical perspective in teaching, a view of student's learning, and a teacher's inner view for improvement of practice. Fourth, PLC activity for a year allowed them to combine theory and reality though reflective process by designing classes together and reflectively practicing them in classes.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.251-272
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• 2006

The purpose of the present study is to explore the process of teacher change as elementary school teachers participated in a community focused on improving mathematics teaching. To do so, a professional community lot improving instructional practice consisted of a group of voluntary elementary school teachers. The professional community provides participating teachers with great opportunities to share their understanding of practical knowledge related to mathematics teaching and learning and change mathematical beliefs as well as to learn pedagogical content knowledge. This study approached to teacher professionality in terms of mathematical beliefs and teaching practice. The change of teaching practice was measured coherently both with a questionnaire and with a mathematics teaching standard developed for this study. The findings of this study point out that techers' beliefs about how students learn mathematics have chantged. This study also indicated that after participating in the professional community focused on improving mathematics teaching, teachers' mathematical teaching is changed toward the more students' oriented way. Especially, it is observed that the meaningful change in participating teachers' teaching practice took place with respect to the role of teachers, students' interaction, mathematical tasks, and problem solving. Finally, this study implies that teachers can have an opportunity to change their beliefs and deepen their professionality about elementary mathematics teaching and learning through participating in the community of practice, through which participating teachers can share their practical knowledge and their understandings about teaching and learning of elementary mathematics.

• School Mathematics
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.203-222
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• 2015

This study analyzed the classroom discourse between teacher and students based on the Mehan(1979a)'s theory to examine the characteristics of the classroom discourse between teacher and students in high school statistics class. The results of this study on the structure of class showed that the statistics class in this study adopted knowledge transmission-oriented teacher-led class in which the framework of introductiondevelopment- arrangement, which is Mehan's basic 3 stages, is clearly represented. The results of examining I-R-E sequence showed that $I_T-R_T$ structure, in which the teacher asks questions and the teacher talks about the answer, frequently appeared. And the statistics class in this study was monological class in which students hardly participated. Through these results of this study, it was found that teacher should form the statistical context, in which students can participate in discourse, and build discourse learning community and induce argumentational discourse through metaprocess elicitation.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.257-271
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• 2002

As a part of attempts to understand better mathematics classroom culture, this paper first reviews plausible factors which influence the mathematics teacher's own development of instructional goals. The proposed factors consist of teacher characteristics and sociocultural factors. The teacher factors include learning and teaching experience, knowledge, beliefs, and personality traits. The sociocultural factors include cultural and educational norms, curriculum development and administration, teacher education, and professional models with community, This paper then presents detailed interview questions to explore significant influences on the teacher's conceptions of mathematics and its teaching. The interview probes 12 topic areas: (a) early influences on becoming a teacher, (b) the decision to become a teacher, (c) the teacher education years, (d) early mathematics interests, (e) early teaching experiences, (f) career path, (g) influence of peers within the school, (h) influence of administrators, (i) professional development, (j) professional self-development, (k) mathematics teaching, and (i) educational policies.

• 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 Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.52 no.2
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• pp.209-233
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• 2021

This study aims to obtain implications for educational information services for elementary school teachers by analyzing their information seeking behavior. The in-depth interview was carried out in-depth interviews with 11 elementary school teachers and it analyzed of the core roles and tasks of elementary school teachers, the required information and usage behavior of information sources. The study result showed that elementary school teachers perceived homeroom duties, teaching/learning activities, school duties, and other as their works and tasks, and the response to the importance of task performance was homeroom teacher, teaching-learning activities, school works, and other tasks. Also, elementary school teachers needed information in order of teaching-learning activities, homeroom teacher, school works and they used various information sources including web, interpersonal sources and book. Moreover, this study observed some factors that elementary school teacher mainly used web information source which other elementary school teacher developed and that they got teaching-learning materials from fellow teachers. Based on these findings, the author proposed teacher librarian share library based instruction materia in web resource, provide cooperative educational information service through learning community, and provide homeroom work material for elementary school teachers.

• Journal of Korean Library and Information Science Society
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.363-384
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• 2009

School library programs are a specific strategy connecting user to resources. Accordingly in order to strengthen school libraries, it is necessary for teacher librarians to develop partnerships that can form relationships between internal and external resources. As a result of analyses of partnerships appeared in current middle school library programs, its most programs are based on the internal reading events. In addition to, classroom teachers and external human resources rarely participate in the program. To improve these problems, it is essential to develop teacher librarians' leadership and collaborative networks fostering educational presence of school libraries in a learning community.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.12-24
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• 2015

This study aimed to investigate how middle school teachers perceived major features of the 'Free Learning Semester'. In 2013, the Free Learning Semester has been proposed by Korean government to provide students with the educational programs which deals with various activities in classroom in order to increase student's learning ability. The Free Learning Semester helps students to figure out their dreams and develops their talents. The government plans to expand the Free Learning Semester to all middle schools by 2016. Since teacher's perception is an important matter in the application of the Free Learning Semester, this study seeks to document the changes in curriculum by observing the perception of teachers in the school that implemented the Free Learning Semesters and those that did not implemented the Free Learning Semesters. 172 teachers from nine middle schools in Busan that their school schedules allowed were surveyed. Two school which operated the Free Learning Semester were compared to seven schools which did not operate the Free Learning Semester. The results are summarized as follows: First, almost all (97.7%) teachers in the Free Learning Semester schools have completed a training whereas 74.6% of the teachers in the non-Free Learning Semester schools have not. The usefulness of the training was satisfactory, but the teachers in the Free Learning Semester Schools wanted more practical help with the curriculum. Second, the result, which was statistically significant(p<.05), revealed that the first grade second semester of middle school was the best time to implement the Free Learning Semester. In order for its successful establishment in schools, there needs to be a reliable and effective evaluation system. However, the results regarding the introduction and management of the new system were not statistically significant. Lastly, in the Free Learning Semester Schools, the changes in teachers' perception were statistically significant (p<.05). The results show that the teachers need the training and the teacher's community to implement the curriculum and set a basis for valuation.