With the passing of Korea's Gifted Education Act, creativity has come to the forefront in considering the future of Korea's economic prosperity in the global economy (Korean Educational Development Institute, 2003). The purpose of this study was to examine the understanding of creativity among Korean science teachers of gifted students. Sixty teachers participated in this study with an open-ended questionnaire about their understanding of creativity. The data were analyzed based on Urban's (1995) three components of creativity. The findings indicated that these science teachers had a thorough understanding of the cognitive component and a strong association of creativity with intellectual ability, but overidentified with the cognitive component, showing less awareness of the personal and environmental components of creativity. To shift their understanding to a more balanced view, personality and environmental components, as well as attributes in other component areas, should be emphasized.

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Since the 1980s, over a thousand Korean science teachers and supervisors visited western countries to participate in overseas in‐service training programs. This study reports the evaluation of the effect of the University of Iowa's program on the development of teachers' constructivist philosophies by participating teachers. A total of 70 high school teachers who participated during the fall of 1995 and the summer of 1996 were surveyed. The Constructivist Learning Environment Survey was translated into Korean and administered to the participants three times: at the beginning and the end of the workshops and again three months after. Analysis indicated that the effect of the workshop was significant and that the learning was retained. Ways of encouraging teachers to continue improvement in the use of constructivist practices are discussed in light of the realities of Korean science education.

This work is the first extension in East Asia of the international research started with the Biohead-Citizen project on the analysis of teachers' conceptions of evolution. It presents the first results related to Buddhist teachers. The questionnaire, built and validated by the Biohead-Citizen project, and including 15 questions related to evolution, has been filled out in South Korea by 306 teachers (Primary Schools, Secondary Schools teaching Biology or the Korean Language). The results show that a majority of teachers are clearly evolutionist, including the Buddhist teachers who do not differ from their Agnostic or Atheist colleagues. Nevertheless, most of the Protestant teachers are radical creationist: their answers significantly differ from those of their colleagues. These results show a clear country effect, South Korea being economically developed, with 41% of teachers being Agnostic or Atheist, and clearly evolutionist, as are also their Buddhist or Catholic colleagues. Nevertheless there is also a religion effect, the Protestant teachers being fundamentalist and having radical creationist positions, that are also described in other countries where Protestant are fundamentalist, but not in European countries where Protestant are Calvinist or Lutheran.

This study aims to investigate the effect of inquiry-based biology program of pre-service science teachers' perceptions on the nature of science and their affective domain of science. For the study, sixty-seven preservice science teachers were sampled from students who enrolled in the 'Biology Laboratory', Spring semester, 2011. The experimental group taught by inquiry-based experiment and control group by observation-based experiment were composed. At the beginning and end of semester, pre-and post-tests on the nature of science and affective domain of science were administered. The average scores of experimental group were higher than those of control group in the post-test of the nature of science, but there were no significant differences between both groups (p>.05). For the post-test results of both groups' affective domain of science, the experimental group showed significantly higher scores than the control group in self-efficacy in science, importance of science, and importance of science for careers (p<.01). The inquiry-based biology program did not influence pre-service science teachers' perception on the nature of science, while it was effective for positive changes on pre-service science teachers' affective domain of science.: affective domain of science, the nature of science, inquiry-based biology program