This study was initiated to investigate sixth graders' gender characteristics in science problem solving process and thus find out the proper learning and teaching strategies for each gender. A total of 14 students, each of seven male and female students, were selected through three tests, including items of science knowledge, science inquiry, and creativity. Students were required to solve 26 items and to think aloud for researchers help understand how they thought in their problem solving process. Males and females showed some similarity and difference in four steps of problem solving process, understanding, planning, solving, and reviewing. We found gender differences in self-confidence of their answer. This study is expected to help develop teachers' differential teaching strategy for male and female students' science problem solving.

This research was to examine the understandings of elementary school teachers on the phenomena related to light and image, and to survey their perception change related to learning contents of optics. The subjects were selected from the elementary teachers who were enrolled in a graduate course, 'Science education seminar' at an education college located in Chungchungbuk-Do, South Korea. Among the five students who exposed their perceptions clearly in the class, the three of them were selected who agreed to the proposal of the case study. To achieve the purpose of this study, semi-structured interviews following the conception test with the 3 elementary teachers were conducted. During the analysis of the data, additional interviews by phone, e-mail, and internet messenger were conducted if necessary. According to the results, all of the elementary school teachers lacked the scientific conceptions of the phenomena related to light and image. Unfortunately, their learning experiences did not help them to understand the scientific concepts. During the interviews, the teachers recognized the importance of the viewpoints of seeing, image, cognition of light, point light source to understand the phenomena related to light and image.

The purpose of this study was to analyze the elementary students' selection of representable value and confident method that appear in measuring activities by using a microgenetic method. The participants were seven elementary students in the fourth grade. They performed the same measuring activities six times for the study period. Data were collected by interview and observation with their activity recording papers and video tape transcription. Their activities were recorded and documented for the analysis. Results were as follows. First, in the time measuring activity, elementary students developed desirably as their measuring experience increased, for example they selected a representable value in use of a repeated measurement and used a various method in the domain of a time measurement and they showed an increase of a quantitative observation in the volume domain except in the length domain. Second, in a confident method of a representable value, though they must rely upon a repeated measurement, they only measure repeatedly in the time domain. Also in the time domain, it doesn't get accomplished a exact confidence of a representable value at a shortage of skill about a measurement. Accordingly this study will be implications for teachers to teach a handling abilities of measuring instruments to elementary students and to be promote understanding a nature of measurement.

This study is intended to develop plant inquiry instruction using Rapid-cycling Brassica rapa (RcBr) whose life cycle is relatively short, and to apply it to the elementary science instruction of the 4th grader and examine their plant concept, science inquiry skills and science-related attitudes. The materials were consisted of laboratory manuals for the students as well as teachers' guide. By observing the life cycle of RcBr, students can experience the conceptual learning of the plant's life cycle. In addition, this study investigated the cause of change in science inquiry skills and science-related attitudes by interviewing 12 students. It has shown that plant inquiry instruction using RcBr has meaningful effects on students' understanding of the plant concept, improving students' science inquiry skills, and changing students' science-related attitudes. Students who showed improvement in science inquiry skills were able to answer questions regarding science knowledge correctly. And students whose science related attitudes were improved had a positive attitude on cultivating RcBr. Students told that RcBr was an interesting and good material to inquire plant. Because of its small size and its relatively short life cycle of RcBR, it should be a desirable plant material for the inquiry instruction which can give rise to useful and meaningful results for the elementary school students.

In this study, we investigated the characteristics of the analogies, the mapping understanding, and the mapping errors on saturated solution of scientifically-gifted and general elementary students. Fifth graders (n=60) at four scientifically-gifted education institutes in Seoul and/or Gyeonggi province and fifth graders (n=91) at three elementary schools in Seoul were selected and assigned to the scientifically-gifted group and the general group respectively. After the students of each group performed the experiment and were taught about the target concept in the first class, they administered the test on the self-generating analogies on the target concept in the second class. The results revealed that the students in the scientifically-gifted group made more analogies, especially verbal/pictorial, structural/functional, enriched, and higher systematic ones, and had deeper understanding of the analogy than those in the general group. The numbers of the shared attributes included in the student-generated analogies and the scores of the mapping understanding of the students in the scientifically-gifted group were significantly higher than those in the general group. The students in the scientifically-gifted group had fewer mapping errors than those in the general group. However, not a few students in the scientifically-gifted group had at least one mapping error. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

We have investigated the effects of participation in science fairs on perception, science related attitudes and science inquiry process skill of thirteen fifth-grade elementary school children in the science subjects. Questionnaires were prepared to find out student's reactions to the participation in science fairs. All participated children responded that the activities at the fairs were interesting and helpful to learning scientific knowledge and inquiring scientific questions. From the analysis of the responses we have found that the participation process including preparatory ones during the fairs may help children to enhance their science related attitudes and science inquiry process skill and can be considered as a useful science curriculum.

It takes elementary school teachers long time to search for instructional materials. They have also difficulties with choosing proper contents among much of the overlapping materials. Thus this study set out to investigate the current utilization of web materials by teachers, analyze the materials in the existing homepage, and identify useful materials for teachers. For those purposes, the investigator developed an evaluation framework to analyze science education materials in the existing homepage and analyzed materials using the framework. The materials had developed in the past failed to reflect the demands of teachers, who were the users, actively. Therefore, we took a survey to analyze their demands and reflected the results to establish a set of criteria to analyze materials. After dividing materials according to utilization and format, the external and internal elements of materials were assessed according to the evaluation items. If they systematically select many teaching and learning materials developed for elementary science and make efforts to vitalize their educational usage by sorting out overlapping materials and developing new needed ones, they will be able to save a huge amount of expenses and maximize the efficiency as educational materials.

This study investigated the effects of teaching-learning lesson plan using cognitive acceleration instructional strategies applied to the unit, 'The Light and Shadow' in elementary school. Two classes of the second grade elementary students (N=63) in Chungcheongbukdo districts were assigned to control and treatment groups each, and were taught about 'The Light and Shadow' for 8 class hours. For the treatment group, teaching-learning lesson plan using cognitive acceleration instructional strategies developed by this research was applied. The traditional instruction by textbook and teacher's guides was used for the control group. All students were tested with the test for concept of the shadow and the test for academic achievement about the unit. As the result of the post-test, the scores of the treatment group were higher than those of the control group. However, it was not statistically meaningful difference. The scores of the treatment group were significantly higher than those of the control group in the delayed-post-test for concept of the shadow. No significant interaction was observed with respect to the students' gender, instruction and pre-level for the concept of the shadow. Data analysis indicated that the scores of the treatment group were significantly higher than those of the control group in the post-test and delayed- post-test for the concept of the shadow in the area of object permanence. Our research work shows the effectiveness of the teaching-learning lesson using cognitive acceleration instructional strategies for the development for concept of the shadow for elementary school students, and suggests the necessity for this kind of teaching-learning program in the fields.

The purpose of this study is to make a list of scientific terms to decrease students' difficulties of science learning. By using inductive method, database has established from elementary school science textbooks and laboratory observation books. All terms from physics area of science textbooks and laboratory observation books at the levels of grade 3 to 6 were analyzed based on the Standard Korean Dictionary (1999) and Book of Physics Terminology (2005). As a result, we made a list of 204 scientific terms by grade level. Those were 51 words for grade 3, 55 words for grade 4, 56 words for grade 5, and 42 words for grade 6. And there were some incongruities among textbooks, the Standard Korean Dictionary and the Book of Physics Terminology.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of case-based learning program on three elementary students' scientific problem solving and attitudes in science class. For this study, case-based learning program was designed for bridging students' scientific knowledge and their personal experiences in real life through 4 stages: understanding the problem, planning for problem solving, conducting problem solving, and making conclusion. This study was carried out through 17 lessons of 4th grade for 6 weeks. The data was collected through close observation on three students in two groups in a class. The results include that cased-based learning program showed overall positive effects on the elementary students' scientific problem solving and attitudes in class. In particular, it turned out that the continuous emphasis of real world examples in case-based learning had powerful impacts on students' problem solving abtsity, motivation, and participation in classroom activities. The key factors to successful problem solving in school science was discussed.

In this study, we investigated the relationships among elementary school teachers' perceptions of constructivist science assessment, views on science teaching and learning, science teaching efficacy belief, and the perceptions of constructivist science learning environment. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to validate the factor structure of the perceptions of constructivist science assessment test. The test consisting of 3 factors with 21 questions in the previous research was reconstructed as one consisting of 2 factors with 22 questions as a result of the factor analysis. A stepwise multiple regression analysis was also conducted to predict the explanatory powers of the variables on perceptions of constructivist science assessment. The results indicated that the perceptions of constructivist science learning environment, views on constructivist science teaching and learning, and personal science teaching efficacy belief were the significant predictors of the perceptions of constructivist science assessment.