• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.450-458
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• 2012

This study explored ways to implement a competencies-based curriculum in schools by reviewing exemplary cases that have introduced Key Competencies (KCs) in the school science curriculum. Since the OECD redefined key competencies as 'what people should know and do in order to lead a successful life in a well-functioning society', many countries have emphasized the use of a competencies-based curriculum. Foreign and domestic classroom cases, which have used a competencies-based curriculum in science teaching, were collected and analyzed. Through open-ended interviews with teachers and principals, we investigated changes of teachers' professional knowledge and practice that were evident as a result of the implementation of competencies-based curriculum in science class. Foreign science teachers suggested ways to relate competencies-based curriculum and science curriculum including maintaining a balance between competencies-based curriculum and content-based curriculum. They also integrated KCs into all subject-based curriculums, gave priority to KCs over subject matter knowledge, and developed KCs through teaching science contents that students wanted to learn. On the other hand, Korean science teachers suggested reconstructing competencies-based curriculum by extracting common attributes from the existing subject areas. They also made KCs realized through content teaching, and developed various KCs within science contexts. Implications of the competencies-based curriculum for science teaching and learning were discussed at the end.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.17-30
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• 2001

The 7th Science Curriculum of Korea is applied in elementary schools from 2000, and the New Science Curriculum of Japan is applied in schools from 2002. In this study, we made a comparison between the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea and the New Science Curriculum of Japan in relation to Elementary school in aspects of construction, aim, and contents. The major findings of this study are as follows. 1. The New Science Curriculum of Japan presents a specific aim, treatment of content, and process skills according to grade, but the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea does not classify them according to grade. Hence the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea emphasize on the sequence between grades. 2. In aim of Science Curriculum, the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea show more emphasis on the practical application than the New Science Curriculum of Japan. 3. In construction of content, a area of science content is handled with gradual advance in several grades and several areas of content are treated in a grade in the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea. On the contrary, a area of content is treated intensively in a grade in the New Science Curriculum of Japan. Therefore, the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea shows more reflection of connection and hierarchy between grades. 4. The statements of the 7th Science Curriculum of Korea are centering around specific matters and include specific activities, but the New Science Curriculum of Japan focuses on concepts to team and does not state specific activities.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.164-176
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to find some suggestions for reorganization of contents about particle concept of matter in Korean science curriculum. For the purpose of this study, authors analyzed features of Korean science curriculum and compared science curricula of Korea, USA, UK, Japan and Finland. From the result of this study, authors find some features and important suggestions about reorganization of contents about particle in science curriculum. First, the sequence of contents about particle concepts in 2009 Revised National Curriculum was similar to that in the 6th National Science Curriculum. And the feature of 2009 Revised National Curriculum showed the articulation of contents about particle concept. If contents about particle concept is increased in elementary science curriculum, the total articulation would be increased. Second, the presenting sequence of atomic structure-first and laws about atom-later should be changed to laws about atomic-first and atomic structure-later. This presenting sequence is grounded by science curricula of other countries, history of science and developmental psychology. And science curriculum of Korea was required specific extended concept statement like science curricula of USA or UK. Also, Korean science curriculum could benchmark Finnish science curriculum if we want to develop some integrated learning activities such as those in STS or STEAM program.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.730-744
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• 2006

The United States curriculum reform movement has recently started in each area of science education. The initiatives on curriculum reform stem from a notion that the low rate of science curricula offered in schools has been a serious problem. The schools in the United States are not only facing a lack of offerings within science curricula but also low enrollment in science courses, especially in physics, chemistry, and earth science. This trend resulted in low performances on international achievement tests including TIMSS and PISA. This paper introduces the efforts to solve existing problems through curriculum reform; including ChemCom, BioCom, EarthComm, and Active Physics. In this paper, a discussion is presented to show how the curricula can help address the status quo in science education. More specifically, this paper focuses on curriculum reform in high school earth science (EarthComm), providing a closer look at the scope and sequence of the reform movement. EarthComm was chosen because it was released based on the development of the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 1996). Consequently, EarthComm became a curriculum that espoused the visions of the Standards, which has been guiding the reform of the US curriculum. At the end of this paper, two research outcomes of the EarthComm curriculum implementation in schools are discussed in terms of student learning and differences from conventional curricula.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.183-193
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• 2015

Teacher guidebooks are practical and commonly used resources for teachers to deliver the goals and contents of science curriculum in classroom teaching. Thus, the alignment of teacher guidebooks and science curriculum could be critical to undertake the effectiveness of curriculum implication in science classrooms. This study is to investigate how the learning objectives of science curriculum are implicated in teacher guidebooks by analyzing the dimensions of knowledge and cognitive process in learning objectives in both documents. Grade 3~4 learning objectives (82 objectives in the curriculum, 459 in the teacher guidebook, 541 in total) in 2009 Revised science curriculum and teacher guidebooks were coded and analyzed based on the Revised Bloom's Taxonomy. The analysis focused on how the knowledge dimensions and cognitive processes of the curriculum were emphasized and restructured in the teacher guidebooks to examine the coalition between the two important documents. The study found: 1) the learning objectives in Grade 3~4 in both documents were skewed to certain knowledge dimension (conceptual) and cognitive process (understand); 2) there was a high coalition between unit objectives and lesson objectives in the teacher guidebooks, however, relatively low coalition between the curriculum and the teacher guidebooks; and 3) learning objectives in the curriculum were delivered in teacher guidebooks in various patterns (similar, detailed, additional, in portion, and the same), and 'detailed' and 'additional' were frequently shown. There also appeared new objectives in the teacher guidebooks, which were not present in the curriculum. The findings in this study could provide some suggestions to the current project of developing 2015 Science Curriculum in regard to understanding the dimensions of knowledge and cognitive process of learning objectives and their alignments with textbooks and teacher guidebooks.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.102-115
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• 2019

This study investigated how elementary school teachers reconstruct science curriculum and how they perceive about their experiences. In-depth interviews were conducted with four elementary school teachers who had experience in restructuring science curriculum. Two distinct types of reconstruction were found; restructuring within the subject and integrating between subjects. The teachers who were restructuring science curriculum from personal needs usually substitute, delete, add some contents or activities and change the order of unit within science subject. In contrast, the teachers who were participating in research school usually integrated science with other subjects, developing a new unit or project. The latter recognized the need of teachers' reconstruction of science curriculum more strongly and the importance of teacher's voluntary learning community in implementing the reconstruction. Though they had some difficulties in identifying students' interests and level of understanding and lack of time, all teachers valued curriculum reconstruction by relating it to teacher professional development, identity as a teacher, and job consciousness.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.621-630
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• 2020

This study compared and analyzed the contents of secondary earth science curriculum in Mongolia and South Korea to check the contents of earth science education in both countries and to prepare basic data necessary for future earth science curriculum revisions. The research questions of this study are: first, to understand the changes and current operating conditions of earth science curriculum in both countries, to compare and analyze with other foreign cases, and second, to compare and analyze the contents of earth science and curriculum in both countries. The TIMSS evaluation framework is used to compare and analyze the earth science-related contents included in the science curriculum of middle schools. For analyzing the contents of high school, the contents of NGSS in the United States and the earth science curriculum contents of high schools in South Korea were mixed and the analysis frameworks were created and validated by experts. As a result of the study, countries that follow the Russian-style education system did not organize and operate earth science as an independent science subject, and deal with earth science-related content in the natural geography area of the geography subject. The earth science contents covered in middle school science curriculum in both countries, 18 of the 27 content elements of the TIMSS content analysis framework were matched in Mongolia and 20 in South Korea. In high school curriculum, the contents of earth science in Mongolia were described more briefly and not covered than in South Korea. In particular, the Mongolian geography curriculum dealt with many environmental issues. The emphasis on the operation method of the earth science curriculum in Mongolia and the contents related to the environment can be used as a reference when developing an interdisciplinary integrated curriculum of science and social studies in South Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.32-42
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to provide meaningful basic materials for organizing a science curriculum in future by analyzing the status and changes of contents about astronomical phenomena in textbooks according to the changes of the science curriculum of elementary school. A main target of analysis is science textbooks of elementary school in curriculums from 1st to 7th. For the analysis, the analytic frame based on contents in astronomy textbooks of teachers colleges and colleges of education was used. The result of the analysis is as in the following. First, astronomy accounted for average about 7% of all pages of textbooks in all of science curriculums. The 1st educational curriculum had the most learning quantity of 10.40%, and the 6th curriculum had the least quantity of 4.39%. These results show that astronomy was not a small part and was considered important in each science curriculum of elementary school considering that earth science accounted for 17-26% of all pages in elementary school science curriculum. Second, the things that have been dealt with in common in all science curriculums from 1st to 7th of elementary school are the shape of the earth, the rotation and the revolution of the earth, the occurrence of the seasons, the apparent motion of the sun, the status and motion of the moon, the movement of a star, the brightness and distance of a star, constellations, the sun, planets and others. These contents are expected to be dealt with continuously as basic contents to organize astronomy regardless of the changes of curriculum. Third, in science curriculum of elementary school, astronomical phenomena based on life experiences regarding the earth, the moon and the sun are mainly dealt with in the first and the second grade. Contents requiring principles-understanding and research are dealt with in the fifth and sixth grade. These results show that elementary school science curriculum dealing with astronomy reflects the developmental stages of students and considers principle of learning possibility.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.194-206
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• 2002

This article describes the major themes to change in historical and philosophical perspectives of science education that lead the US and Korean science curriculum reform movements since 1957. Inquiry teaching and criticism of teaching science as inquiry in the late 1950s and the 1960s, Science-Technology-Society (STS) Curricula, and Science Literacy and the 1980s science literacy crisis are discussed. In the US, three major curricular projects as responses to the scientific literacy crisis are exemplary such as the Project 2061 sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Project on Scope, Sequence, and Coordination (SS&C) initiated by the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA), and the National Science Education Standards (NSES) published by the National Research Council. To identify how each set of national content standards differ, we compared specific content standards related to the theory of plate tectonics in Earth and Space science in grades 9-12 over the three national standards: Benchmarks of AAAS, NSES of the NRC, and SS&C of the NSTA. Against this historical background of the US science education reform movements, the curriculum reform movements in Korea is briefly discussed. In general, Korean science curriculum reform movements have reflected and resembled the recommendations of the US reform movements. In addition, it is important to note that throughout the history of curriculum revision in Korea, there have been continuing pendulum swings between a theoretical, discipline-centered curriculum and a liberal, humanistic, and student-centered curriculum, which pays more attention to students in terms of their interest and psychological preparedness. In conclusion, the sixth and seventh national science curriculum revisions reflect rather a student-centered movement by reducing technical and sophisticated topics, taking constructivism learning theory into consideration, and adding more STS related topics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.468-480
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• 2004

It has been criticized that there are discrepancy between 'general statements' of the curriculum and subject-matter curricula. The possible reasons for this are as follows: The developers of the general statements were educational curriculum specialists. These specialists were not good enough to develop general statements and guidelines of subject matter curricula reflecting the characteristics of science contents, to examine developed science curriculum, and to give feedback to science curriculum developers. Under the present curriculum developing system where curriculum is developed in ten months or less by the research team commissioned unpredictably and imminently, it might be difficult to develop valid and precise science curriculum reflecting the purport of the general statements and teachers' needs. The inadequacy of these curriculum development processes resulted in (1) inconsistent statement about the school year to be applied to differentiated curriculum, (2) abstract and ambiguous stating about the characteristics, teaching-learning and assessment guidelines of enrichment activities, and (3) failure to reduce science contents to a reasonable level. Therefore curriculum development centers should be designated in advance to do basic research at ordinary times, and organized into a cooperative system among them. Two years or more of developing time and wider participation of scientists are recommended to develop more valid and precise science curriculum. In addition, commentaries on science curriculum should be published before textbook writing begins.