The purpose of this study was to examine teachers’ competency in teaching for student competence in science. Drawing on literature on competence and science teacher education, we identified 44 indicators of science teaching competence in relation to the current Korean National Science Curriculum, from which 54 items for teachers’ self-assessment were developed and validated. Through online administration of the self-assessment instrument, responses from 210 primary and secondary teachers were collected. Factor analysis resulted in nine factors across three competence areas. Teacher competence differed across factors. One-way ANOVA analysis revealed that primary teachers indicated significantly higher competence in most aspects of teaching than secondary teachers and that years of teaching was related to professional development methods utilized by teachers. Suggestions for professional development program design and further research topics were discussed.

주제어: 소집단 비유 만들기, 비유의 유형, 대응 오류, 인식, 과학영재교육ABSTRACT: In this study, we investigated the effects of analogy-generating in small group in elementary science-gifted education upon the types and the mapping errors of student-generated analogies, and the perceptions of the instruction. Fifth graders (N=37) at two science-gifted classes in two elementary schools were selected and assigned to individualistic analogygenerating (IA, n=19) and pair analogy-generating (PA, n=18) groups. After the students of each group performed the experiment and were taught about 'saturated solution' concept in the first class, they administered the test on the self-generating analogies on the concept in the second class. The students in the PA group also administered the test on perceptions of analogy-generating in small group and some of them were interviewed deeply. The results revealed that the students in the PA group made more verbal/pictorial, structural/functional, enriched, and higher systematic analogies than those in the IA group. However, there were little difference between the two groups in the subcategories of artificiality (artificial and everyday) and abstraction (abstract and concrete). The students in the PA group fewer mapping errors than those in the IA group. Many students in PA group perceived the analogy-generating in small group positively upon various cognitive and motivational aspects. However, they also pointed a few disadvantages of the activity. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

This study investigated the types of elementary school students' coping strategies for anomalous situations in science classes. Their epistemological beliefs were then analyzed on the basis of types. To do this, the students (N=75) from 2 elementary schools were asked to respond to an open-ended question about their coping strategies on anomalous situations and some of them underwent in-depth interviews. The analyses of the results indicated five types of coping strategies and were identified as follows: Abandoning, asking a teacher for help, trying the experiment again with same methods, trying the experiments again with different methods, and trying the experiment again after actively analyzing the causes. Among these, the major types were 'trying the experiment again with same methods', 'trying the experiments again with different methods', and 'asking a teacher for help'. The five types were grouped again into four categories such as 'transferring facts', 'constructing facts', 'transferring meanings', and 'constructing meanings' on the basis of the epistemological beliefs toward knowledge and the epistemological beliefs toward relation. The results revealed that 'trying the experiment again after actively analyzing the causes' was only included in 'constructing facts' and the others were included in 'transferring facts'. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

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In this study, we investigated secondary school science teachers' actual and preferred types of assessment with focus on the purpose and the method of assessment. Participants were 92 secondary school science teachers. We developed a questionnaire asking science teachers about the types of assessment they have actually used and the preferred types of assessment for hypothetical situations that have been generally reported as the prototypical examples of constructivist assessment. The characteristics of the science teachers such as teaching career, experience on in-service training about assessment, and perspective toward constructivist assessment were also examined. The analysis of the actually implemented assessments in their responses revealed that most science teachers tended to aim at traditional purposes such as summative assessment, and that multiple-choice was the most prevailing assessment method followed by experiment, report, and essay. For hypothetical assessment situations, science teachers exhibited their preferences for various types of constructivist assessment methods, whereas their purposes of the assessment still remained to be traditional. The science teachers who have had a relatively constructivist perspective toward assessment showed a statistically significant preference for using formative assessment than their counterparts in the hypothetical assessment situations.