Several studies have attempted to test students' misconceptions of physics and to provide teaching strategies in order to repair them. The results from these studies have revealed that the diagnosis of students' misconception is crucial, although they often failed to grasp the practice of its implementation. In terms of being a type of methodology for science education, the Internet allows large-scale surveys and investigations to be carried out in a relatively short period of time. This paper reports the results of the development, implementation, and evaluation of a WEb-based SYStem for TEsting students' Misconceptions in physics (WEBSYSTEM) aimed at three groups (science educational researchers who study students' physics conceptions using the system as a detector, school science teachers who practice it as an instructional material, and students who benefit from it for their self-directed learning). The web-based testing system is based on a review of the instructional development strategies of ADDIE (Gustafson, Branch, 2002; Rha, Chung, 2001). Results showed that WEBSYSTEM could work effectively as a multi-purposed tool for the three target groups with a further partial revision, providing educational researchers with resourceful data to study students' misconceptions in physics. Issues of administrative strategies, reexamination of questionnaires, and international collaboration via WEBSYSTEM are discussed.

The purpose of the present study was to test the validity of the confirming abduction model (CAM). CAM is a process model which explains how reasoners confirm their hypothetical explicans. To test this model, 154 8th grade students were sampled from one middle school in Korea. Three types of vapor condensation hypothesis confirming tests were developed and administered to the subjects. The results of this study revealed that student confidence increased when hypothetical explicans were borrowed into experienced phenomena from questioning phenomena. These results validated CAM. According to CAM, the process. of confirming hypothetical explican is as follows: representing a questioning phenomenon, representing an experienced phenomenon that is similar to the questioning phenomenon, representing the hypothetical explican of the questioning phenomenon, comparing the questioning phenomenon with the experienced phenomenon, and borrowing the hypothetical explican as the hypothetical explican of the experienced phenomenon from the hypothetical explican of the questioning phenomenon. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for teaching and learning in science education.

The 'Science and Technology Mania' award program is an annual nationwide award activity organized to provide teenagers with opportunities for engaging in a high-technology-based long-term project work. The task involves designing a model ship propelled by the Lorentz force (a Lorentz ship) that allows diverse approaches irreducible to one right answer, and thus adopts features of science and technology in-the-making, In this study, we attend to opportunities for learning science that the uncertain aspects of artifact-designing project provide with participants, particularly when students communicate with scientists about their design practices. We analyze oral presentation sessions of the program and articulate two findings. First, students articulate embodied knowing in the presence of scientists. Second, students enact discursive resources deployed in concrete action. We conclude that students' design practices constitute referent that communication is directed toward and therefore become resources for developing scientific discourse.

This study explores visitor learning in a natural history museum from the perspectives of situated learning. The purpose of this study is to understand how the visitors construct knowledge from museum experiences through dyadic discourses. The participants were two university students. They moved naturally through the exhibition with no predetermined path in a natural history museum in Korea. Data were collected in the form of audio-recorded dyadic discourses at and between exhibits and were transcribed. The transcription was coded using the conversation coding scheme, and categorized into specific learning types. The findings included (1) the characteristics of learning talks and (2) learning types created by dyadic discourses at and between exhibitions within learning contexts as museum learning experiences. Implications and future research related to visitor learning in informal learning settings were discussed based on the findings.

In this study, high school science teachers' and students' various conceptions related to osmosis phenomena were compared with and analyzed in relation to the content of science textbooks used in high school science classrooms and college science courses. The questionnaires developed by the researchers were administered to science teachers and students. Differences can be found between the explanations of science textbooks on osmotic pressure and semi-permeable membranes. Many science teachers and students thought of osmotic pressure as 'membrane pressure occurred by the movement of a solvent'. Moreover, the types of teachers of semi-permeable membranes were similar regardless of their academic majors. Many of the teachers thought of a semi-permeable membrane as a membrane that 'passes small-size particles'; however, many students thought of this type of membrane as being 'selectively permeable'. Also, the salt-pickling cabbage phenomenon seemed to cause significant confusion to science teachers and students. These study results show that teachers and students possess various conceptions related to the osmosis phenomena. These different conceptions related to osmosis phenomena might cause confusion and diverse conceptions including misconceptions among teachers and students.

In this study, it is assumed that understanding the nature of science (NOS) would enhance students' performance of scientific inquiry in more authentic ways. The ultimate goal of this study is to suggest new models for developing scientific inquiry activities through understanding the NOS by linking the NOS with scientific inquiry. First, the various definitions and statements of the NOS are summarized, then the features of the developmental nature of scientific knowledge and the nature of scientific thinking based on the philosophy of science are reviewed, and finally a synthetic list of the elements of the NOS is proposed, consisting of three categories: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the nature of scientific thinking. This suggested synthetic list of the NOS is used to suggest a model of scientific inquiry through the understanding of the NOS. This list was designed to provide basic standards regarding the NOS as well as practical guidance for designing activities to improve students' understanding of the NOS.