New Perspectives in Science Education

Teaching competencies are one of the critical elements for achieving students' science core competencies. This research explored Korean science teachers' perceptions of the interest and practice of teaching competencies through a nationwide online survey. The survey questions were thirty-eight five Likert-type items for measuring participants’ perceptions in three domains; interests, self-efficacy on practice, and self-report on practice, each of thirty-eight descriptions within the five teaching competencies categories from the National science education curriculum documents. As a result, the participants showed interest in teachers' competencies, but their performance was not the same as their interest; even the deviations were slightly different for each statement. The highest average value was "communication and collaboration ability" category (3.8), and the median was "scientific inquiry ability", "scientific thinking ability", and "information processing and decision-making ability" (3.6), and lastly, the lowest was "lifelong learning ability in hyper-connected society" (3.5). This survey showed several challenges in enacting teaching competencies from the National science education curriculum document. The gap between interest and practice was relatively significant in two descriptions; "student discover scientific problems by him/herself" and "students recognize him/herself as community members and make community relationships." On the contrary, the gap was minimal in "students find patterns and relationships in data resources." Implications for pre-service teacher education and in-service teacher training in a rapidly changing modern society were discussed.