This study aimed to identify the effects of students' empathy ability on group creativity, when elementary school students perform scientific activity designed to express group creativity. A total of 12 elementary students from a fifth-grade science club participated in this study. A pretest to examine the students' empathic ability was performed to classify them into three groups: A group with high, low and heterogeneous empathic members. The linguistic interaction was analyzed to determine the process of group creativity manifestation; the results were classified into 'metacognitive', 'cognitive', and 'social-communicative'. As a result, groups with high empathic ability showed more frequent interaction in monitoring, planning, and divergent thinking. On the other hand, in the case of the group with low level of empathy, it was confirmed that there are many interactions related to regulation, convergent thinking, and noncohesive prosocial interaction. Also, in the case of heterogeneous group with empathy ability, group creativity utterance on all sides was relatively higher than other groups. As a result of this study, we could confirm the influence of empathy as a strategy to help the group creativity and discuss the educational implications.

This study aimed to develop and apply the process-focused assessment, and verify the assessment's effectiveness for improving scientific communication skills in elementary science learning. To achieve the aims of this study, the unit "Action of Electricity" in elementary science text book for 5-6th students was selected, and then 13 process-focused assessments were developed to improve scientific communication skills. 119 elementary school students in 6th grade participated in this research. it was performed to compare between 60 students on the general assessment and 59 students on the process-focused assessment in the results of achievement levels on scientific concept and scientific communication skills. The results were as follows: First, this study showed that process-focused assessment had higher educational effectiveness in specific area of scientific communication skills than the general assessment. Second, the process-focused assessment can help to form students' scientific concepts as the general assessment. Furthermore, the process-focused assessment group was more effective at reducing the non-scientific concept than the general assessment.

Through the criticism and evaluation of different classes teaching the same lesson topic, this study compared the viewpoints by two ways between two groups including pre-service and experienced teachers. Through free-style criticism, this study analyzed the differences between pre-service and experienced teachers' areas of attention. Through criteria-based analysis, the study analyzed the judgement of each area and the criteria of each judgement. The results of the study found that pre-service teachers criticised more limited areas, but somewhat more positive than their experienced teacher counterparts. Also, pre-service teachers did not observe thoroughly whether or not the teacher was well-informed of the science content, the sequence of curriculum, and whether or not meaningful interaction had occurred. As well as, pre-service teachers were not actually feel importance of student-oriented lessons, and they could not look room and materials are useful to students on students' sides. Additionally, pre-service teachers thought highly of lessons which were connected to other subjects rather than connected to daily life. Therefore, to notice diverse areas in the class, pre-service teachers need to criticise lessons using a diverse criterion. Also, pre-service teachers realized simple questions and that mechanical group activities are not always effective and that they need to think how to improve meaningful interaction. Moreover, they have to perceive that an inquiry-oriented student-lead approach is very important. Lastly, pre-service teachers have to closely consider the room efficiency and materials available to the students, and they must internalize that science class has to be connected with daily life.

In order to organize various places for science experience study, this study gathered and analyzed prior research on science experience study and various science experience perated in school. To that end, a total of 162 relevant prior studies of literature published from 2000 to 2016 were collected and 2,201 cases of science experience study conducted in 2015 were collected and analyzed. The place where the science experiential learning was done is divided into three areas of natural ecology, cultural history, facility experiential learning study, and the characteristics of participating subjects are examined. In terms of the number of articles published in the field of science-related experiential learning areas, 83 ecological experience study sites (51.2%), facilities institution experience study sites 56 (34.6%), and cultural history experience study books 23 (14.2%). Through this study, it was found out that research tendency to analyze science - related attitudes became prominent by setting study subjects using natural objects around and learning to play while playing and playing in nature. There was also an analysis by subjects of participation in science related experience learning centers. Cultural history experiential learning field was significantly lower than previous studies. In the lower grades, nature ecological experience learning was mainly performed. Combining the above findings, it can provide implications for the development of science-related experience activities. First, it is necessary to develop a technology-related experience learning center using local community resources. Second, it is necessary to expand the culture and history experience learning center related to science. Third, we need an education support center to support the expansion and operation of such a technology-related cultural history learning center.

The purpose of this study is to find out what kind of difficulties teachers face in the management of the elementary gifted institutions in the rural area of Chungbuk province. In this study, rural area was defined that the area where gifted education is difficult to access due to geographical accessibility or where gifted education service is restricted. The participants of the this study were three elementary gifted teachers who manage elementary gifted education institutions and is teaching science to disadvantaged gifted students. We collected data about the difficulties and support needs for the management of the gifted institutions in the rural area through the questionnaire and the interview. The results of this study are as follows. First, the common difficulty that teachers expressed was the lack of parental attention and awareness of gifted education. Second, the teachers who participated in this study perceived different difficulties according to their area, experience, and environment. Teacher A is the lack of awareness of the managers, teacher B is the difficulty of student selection, teacher C is the most difficult factor in teacher quality management. This difference in perceptions also led to differences in the support improvements required by gifted class teachers in the rural area. Third, the three teachers commonly referred to difficulties to access due to geographical accessibility, and demanded the integrated management of the gifted class in the rural area and the support for the expansion of the class.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the characteristics of problem solving strategies that gifted students use in science inquiry problem. The subjects of the study are the notes and presentation materials that the 15 team of elementary and junior high school students have solved the problem. They are a team consisting of 27 elementary gifted and 29 middle gifted children who voluntarily selected topics related to dimple among the various inquiry themes. The analysis data are the observations of the subjects' inquiry process, the notes recorded in the inquiry process, and the results of the presentations. In this process, the knowledge related to dimple is classified into the declarative knowledge level and the process knowledge level, and the strategies used by the gifted students are divided into general strategy and supplementary strategy. The results of this study are as follows. First, as a result of categorizing gifted students into knowledge level, six types of AA, AB, BA, BB, BC, and CB were found among the 9 types of knowledge level. Therefore, gifted students did not have a high declarative knowledge level (AC type) or very low level of procedural knowledge level (CA type). Second, the general strategy that gifted students used to solve the dimple problem was using deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, finding the rule, solving the problem in reverse, building similar problems, and guessing & reviewing strategies. The supplementary strategies used to solve the dimple problem was finding clues, recording important information, using tables and graphs, making tools, using pictures, and thinking experiment strategies. Third, the higher the knowledge level of gifted students, the more common type of strategies they use. In the case of supplementary strategy, it was not related to each type according to knowledge level. Knowledge-based learning related to problem situations can be helpful in understanding, interpreting, and representing problems. In a new problem situation, more problem solving strategies can be used to solve problems in various ways.

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school teachers' perception and the status of education program on science museum field trips by using a questionnaire (188 teachers) and interview (6 teachers). The results of the research are as follows. First, factors influencing elementary school teachers who choose the science museum as a place for field trips were 'student's interest', 'teacher's own experience related to the science museum', 'science curriculum', 'suggestions from a fellow teacher', 'space available for field work' and so on. Second, 82% of the respondents conducted pre-education program, but they mainly conducted safety education. Third, the teacher conducted post-education program less than pre-education program. In the post-education program, the most activities were to express and share knowledge and experience gained from the science museum. Fourth, 52.2% of the teachers provided tasks or activity sheets during science museum field trips. Fifth, the teachers mainly served as safety guide. In addition, the teachers thought that safety guide was the most important role of teacher in science museum field trips. Sixth, the teachers thought that the method of viewing the science museum's collection, which emphasizes the role of docent rather than the teacher, was more educational.

This study investigated how elementary school teachers reconstruct science curriculum and how they perceive about their experiences. In-depth interviews were conducted with four elementary school teachers who had experience in restructuring science curriculum. Two distinct types of reconstruction were found; restructuring within the subject and integrating between subjects. The teachers who were restructuring science curriculum from personal needs usually substitute, delete, add some contents or activities and change the order of unit within science subject. In contrast, the teachers who were participating in research school usually integrated science with other subjects, developing a new unit or project. The latter recognized the need of teachers' reconstruction of science curriculum more strongly and the importance of teacher's voluntary learning community in implementing the reconstruction. Though they had some difficulties in identifying students' interests and level of understanding and lack of time, all teachers valued curriculum reconstruction by relating it to teacher professional development, identity as a teacher, and job consciousness.

This study investigated elementary students' spatial thinking and visualization when they learned the shape of volcanoes. For this purpose we used GeoMapApp to design instruction program and assessment items. In the instruction, students were asked to connect the floor plan view of Jeju island with the cross-sectional view of the same figure producted by GeoMapApp. Then they were asked to classify four sets of pictures of volcanoes based on the similarities of figures, that is, dome-shaped and shield volcanoes. In the assessment students solved three questions which examined how they connected the plan view and cross-sectional profile of Kilauea, draw cross-sectional profile of Mt. Fuji, and distinguished a shield volcano and dome-shaped one. Students' discourse data during the class were analyzed according to the amount to showing their spatial thinking and visualization. The instruction program using GeoMapApp assisted students to facilitate their spatial thinking for understanding of volcanoes. The outcomes of assessment showed even elementary students had good spatial thinking and visualization. Therefore, we argued spatial thinking and visualization for geoscientific understanding need to be included in the national science curriculum for elementary students.

This study compared the characteristics of scientific poems written by scientifically-gifted and general elementary students, and their perceptions of writing scientific poem. To do this, 5~6 graders (n=100) at two gifted science education institutes and 5~6 graders (n=93) at a elementary school in Seoul were selected. Scientific poems written by the students were analyzed according to their numbers and types. Their perceptions of writing scientific poems were also analyzed through a questionnaire and group interviews. The analysis of the results revealed that the general students wrote more scientific poems than the scientifically-gifted students for thirty minutes. The general students mainly named the titles in a direct way, while scientifically-gifted students did it in an implicit way. The free verse poems in both general students and scientifically-gifted students appeared most frequently, and the prose or narrative poems also often appeared. The general and scientifically-gifted students frequently used impersonation, and some students did not use metaphors. They didn't connect the scientific knowledge for multiple grade. While the poems of the general students evenly included the scientific knowledge for various academic fields, those of scientifically-gifted students tended to include the scientific knowledge for physics or chemistry. The poems of scientifically-gifted students tended to include more science process skills, especially in basic inquiry skills, than those of general students. The scientifically-gifted students wrote scientific poems in a more expanded form regarding the scientific knowledge, than the general students. Scientifically-gifted students perceived the educational benefits of writing scientific poems more positively based on various cognitive and affective aspects. However, many scientifically-gifted and general students had also several difficulties in the processes of writing scientific poems. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

The purpose of this study was to develop an education for sustainable development(ESD) program using community resources in Paju and to investigate the influences on ESD competencies of 6th graders. The community resources used were Unjeong lake park, environmental circulation center, environmental management center, currency museum, butterfly museum, experience center for peaceful unification, Yulgok arboretum, and Jangsan observatory. The newly developed program was related to creative-experience activity and composed of 15 sessions for 6th-grade class in elementary school, including all of the environmental, economic, and social aspects of ESD. Two classes of the 6th grade were divided into the experimental group and the control group. The results to examine the effects of the program were as follows. First, it was proven that ESD program using community resources did not help improving the perception and function competencies of learners except for the thinking abilities. Second, it contributed to the improvement of learners' attitude competencies, especially in self-reflective attitude and other-oriented attitude. Also, according to in-depth interview, the students were constantly developing their values for sustainable development, reflecting their thoughts and behaviors in a reflective way and improving their attitude toward life.