• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.7
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• pp.1040-1054
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• 2011

This formative evaluation study presents a professional development program, "Earth Science Systems for Teachers (ESST)" held in a Midwest State in the United States. This study investigates how a professional development for urban teachers affects the teacher participants' perceptions of using the urban environment for their science teaching and their lesson unit development. The purpose of the program was to help urban teachers create science units using the urban geologic environment and its connection to urban students' everyday lives. The participant teachers' daily journal entries during the program, their lesson plans before and after the program, as well as their teaching reflections were collected as major data source. The teachers' daily journal entries were analyzed qualitatively and their pre-post lessons were analyzed quantitatively using a lesson plan analysis tool, Culturally Relevant Science Teaching Perspectives (CRSTP) was developed by the author. The lesson analysis tool was used to assess teachers' science lesson plans in the perspective of culturally relevant pedagogy and place-based pedagogy. The major findings include: 1) The teacher participants' field experiences in urban geologic sites and urban environments help the teachers to change their perceptions of using the urban environment as a teaching resource and 2) there were significant differences in their pre and post lesson unit scores based on CRSTP (P<. 01). The implications of this study are also discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.474-484
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• 2011

This study presents how a professional development program (PD) of K-12 teachers affects participants' use of the earth system approach and their perceptions of using the urban environment for their science teaching and lesson unit development. This study utilized mixed methods to collect and analyze the data. Eleven urban teachers' pre-post lessons (45 lessons) were analyzed quantitatively using a lesson plan analysis tool, modified by the author, and their lesson reflections were analyzed qualitatively. The findings of this study show that the PD program influences the teachers to choose more topics and content knowledge based on the earth system approach and to assess the topics and content knowledge with more appropriate methods. Specifically, the teachers use more urban environmental factors/topics in their post lesson to teach the environmental topics of urban area. However, according to the statistical analysis of pre-and postlesson plan scores, the accuracy of the earth system knowledge that participants used in their lessons did not change significantly (p<0.05) (Table 4), which means that the PD program did not affect the improvement of the teacher's content knowledge in earth system science. Implications of this study are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.583-594
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to investigate beginning elementary teachers' characteristics and improvement of their teaching skills in science class. The methodology of this study was a qualitative approach that included interviews, classroom observations, and teaching materials. In urban area, low beginning elementary teacher were selected. Four beginning elementary teachers were observed and recorded with VCR in their classroom at seven-times. The results showed that the beginning elementary teachers did not improve in their teaching skills in science teaching, and their characteristics of teaching skills in science were summarized as following; 1) their teaching methods were not inquiry-based science teaching, but explaining-based science teaching, 2) their main aims of the science teaching were focused on the science knowledges, 3) there were little students' science processes involved in their classes, 4) they focused on using textbook as teaching materials, 5) there were little waiting times after their questioning, and they usually used closed-questions rather than open-ended questions.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.243-252
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to analyze affective characteristics and the demands of elementary science gifted students on gifted educations in urban and rural areas. The subjects were 196 science gifted students. The survey questionnaires were consisted of self-esteem, interests in science, scientific attitudes, and demands regarding gifted classes. The results of this study were as follows. First, self-esteem and interests in science, particularly interests toward science, toward science learning, toward science related careers, in urban gifted students were higher than those in rural areas. Whereas interests toward science activities and science anxiety of science gifted students in rural areas were significantly higher than those in urban area. Furthermore, scientific attitudes of science gifted students in urban area were higher than rural those in open-mindedness, critical-mindedness, voluntariness, creativity, whereas science gifted students in rural areas were higher than urban those in cooperation. Second, for the analysis on demands regarding class contents and methods, 'teaching content that challenges and exciting stimuli' of science gifted students in rural areas were significantly higher than those in urban area. Third, for the analysis on demands regarding educational environments, 'satisfaction with class materials provided by gifted classes' of gifted students in urban area were higher than those in rural area.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.399-416
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between science teaching practices and beliefs about the nature of science. Defining teachers' beliefs as a broad construct, the researcher tried to examine not only the teachers' understanding about the nature of science, but also the effect and reflection in science teaching practices with regards to the nature of science. Guiding research questions were how the teachers' science teaching practices reflected their beliefs about the nature of science. The methodology of this study was qualitative approach that included interviews, classroom observations, and instructional materials. At an urban area of Korea, five beginning elementary teacher was chosen. The cross-case and grounded theory study design were adopted as data analysis process. The results of data analysis were checked by teachers for internal validity. This study identified the teachers' beliefs about the nature of science suggested by many researchers and revealed that these teachers' beliefs reflected a little in science teaching practices. On the occasion it was reflected, restricted merely within the narrow limits the way to teach the concepts and contents presented in science curriculum. In addition, some of the obstacles that these teachers' beliefs did not reflect the science teaching practices with regards to the nature of science were investigated in this study.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.620-634
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of EarthComm implementation in the U.S. high schools in terms of demographic background including school size, urban/rural area, and teachers' teaching experiences. In addition, this study examined impact of students' higher-order thinking skills by using the visions of National Science Education Standards. Two modular of the EarthComm curriculum were used for this purpose with thirty one teachers and around thousand students involved across four states. Findings were that EarthComm did not significantly impact student achievement differentially in schools of varying sizes and school location, i.e., urban and rural areas. The years of teaching experiences did not impact student achievement scores for Module I but did significantly impact for Module II. It is noted that the two results seemingly conflict with each other similar to other research findings (Ferguson, 1998; Yager et al., 1988). Student higher-order thinking skills, on the other hand, were significantly improved as a result of studying with EarthComm. Implications were discussed at the end of the paper.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.430-453
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to explore how an elementary school teacher developed PCK by utilizing her knowledge domains in teaching practice, regarding the specific science topic of 'animals:' A case study approach was adopted with the participation of a 1st grade teacher, in a poor urban neighborhood elementary school in NYC. Data was collected through interview and the participant observation method in order to investigate: a) the teacher's existing knowledge base in terms of subject matter knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and contextual knowledge; b) how she develops PCK during classroom practice, centering on the relationship between knowledge domains. The findings illustrate the ways in which the three knowledge domains are closely related and developed as PCK through the whole teaching process. In particular, the findings indicate that the teacher's contextual knowledge plays a critical role in shaping and developing PCK. Before instruction, her contextual knowledge regarding the administrative policies and the school test system in the district enabled her to make decisions and plans about teaching science. During classroom teaching, her knowledge of students' sociocultural backgrounds and living conditions in the urban setting helped her to identify specific teaching strategies and resources suitable to the students' needs and interests. The study results imply that science instruction can be more feasible in meeting the demands of particular groups of students if teachers make an effort to become knowledgeable about their own teaching context and utilize it in developing their PCK.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.552-566
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• 2010

This paper is an in-depth case study to analyze integrated elementary science lesson planning and practical teaching by two teachers at an urban elementary schools. One is an experienced teacher and the other is a beginning teacher. For this study, researchers asked teachers to design 5 stages of lesson planning after sharing basic theories about the integrated science education. The first of the 5 lesson planning stages is curriculum analysis and choice of integrated science topic. The second stage is constructing the frame of integrated science lesson contents, and the third is drawing a diagram of the integrated science lesson development. The fourth stage is making a table of lesson plans, and the last stage is writing integrated science lesson plans. Then, the teachers implemented the lessons they created. They taught students one unit of science which is composed of 8 lessons. Difficulties that teachers meet during designing plans and integrated science class were analyzed. 5 staged lesson planning, video transcriptions, teacher interview about lesson planning and teaching, researchers' checklists, reports of inspection classes, teachers' self evaluation, and students interviews were used for this study. One of the significant results of this study is that both experienced and beginning teachers had many difficulties in deciding on time to teach and contents of science and other subjects, as well as selection and organization of whole topics of integrated science teaching. The beginning teacher especially had greater issues with developing definite teaching-learning strategy to conduct thoughts and views for integrated science at the whole unit and each lesson. However, the experienced teacher was using various teaching-learning strategies by utilizing integrated science teaching professionalism to develop students' integrated thinking ability during the instruction of other subjects. The outcomes of this study are that both teachers could deeply understand the need and value of integrated science education at the elementary school through planning and teaching 8 lessons, and that they could have self-confidence with development of teaching professionalism for integrated science teaching. It may be possible that this study could help the development of pre- and in-service program for improvement of integrated science teaching professionalism for elementary school teacher.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.231-243
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate misconceptions regarding the structure of flowers and the function of the course based on the 'Flower' section of 5th grade elementary school science courses. It also sought to investigate how misconceptions are changed before and after the application of a Driver learning model, and finally analysing any differences in the correction of misconceptions. A questionnaire was created for 199 5th grade elementary school pupils. The major results before and after using an applied Driver learning mode teaching plan are as follows: In the response for questions, 13.6% and 14.5% of misconceptions were corrected for male and female pupils, respectively. For rural and urban pupils, 14.8% and 11.2% of misconceptions were corrected, respectively. In the comparison of male and female pupils according to the reasons for selection of responses before and after using an applied Driver learning model teaching plan, 27.8% of male and 30.0% of female pupils scientific conceptions showed improvement. For rural and urban schools, 26.6% and 32.2% of scientific conceptions were improved, respectively. Data from this study may help teachers to reconsider their own conceptions regarding the study of the flower as it is presently conducted in elementary school.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.63-71
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• 2009

The aim of this study is to provide the basic data on misconception correction through the investigation of perception extent for 'environmental pollution' concepts in the elementary school students. For this, 18 investigation questions for concepts were created. And then a questionnaire was inputted for 446 elementary school students. The rate of average wrong answer for total questions was 34.9%. The eight questions were appeared as rate of wrong answers over average, suggesting that the misconception extent for 'environmental pollution' was still high. The extent of concepts for total questions between living environments of the study subjects did not show any significant differences. However, the urban students had significantly higher rate of wrong answers than rural students in the three questions, indicating that it is necessary to develop various teaching-learning materials on 'environmental pollution'. Therefore, the teachers have to study the various ways to induce the cognition conflicts through the application of proper teaching-learning for correction of 'environmental pollution' concepts.