Although many researchers and science educators agree that understanding of the nature of science is essential in order for students to be a scientific literate person, it is not easy to compromise exactly what kind of understanding of the nature of science is required to achieve this goal (Smith & Scharmann, 1999). This study discusses a theoretical background about the nature of science (NOS) including some consensus views of the NOS that several important U.S. educational reform documents and science researchers have presented over the past several decades. Finally, this study proposes an inclusive framework of the nature of science based on the four categories of scientific literacy, which are (1) science as a body of knowledge, (2) science as a way of investigating, (3) science as a way of thinking, and (4) the interaction of science, technology, and society. Each category of the framework includes several statements about the nature of science to describe each theme of the NOS. This framework is comprehensive and inclusive because it is suggested by examining several major U.S. national-level documents and in the publications of science education researchers presented about the nature of science. Significantly, many of the key ideas were added into category (4) and category (3), which indicates that the current literature stresses the relationship among science, technology, and society as well as the work of scientists.

This study examined how a Structured Reading Framework (SRF) is related to improving students' critical thinking ability in an argument-based inquiry approach, called the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach. A total of 75 $8^{th}$ graders participated in the study, with 34 in the control group and 41 in the treatment group. The gains in critical thinking skills were compared between two groups, and relationships among the components of the reading framework and the critical thinking skills were explored at the group level. Result indicates that the treatment group who used the SRF had larger gains in critical thinking scores than control group who used the Original Reading Framework (ORF). In addition, results show that the correlations between Reading Framework (RF) components and critical thinking scores are statistically significant in the treatment group, while no correlations exist in the control group. It appears that using the SRF have an impact on developing students' critical thinking ability by providing a scaffold to assist argumentation practice.

The aim of this study was to identify students' views on the orientation of science and to investigate the relationship between their views and decision-making on socio-scientific issues (SSI). In this study, 27 university students attending a science course were asked to discuss four controversial issues: the Toyota recall, the green car, the global warming and swine influenza (influenza A (H1N1)). The study was comprised of two stages. At the first stage, we examined students' views on the nature of science and on the orientation of science with the open-ended questionnaire based on VNOS and VOSTS. While they held relatively similar views on the nature of science, their views on the orientation of science were distinct as pragmatic, intrinsic, communal and ethical views. At the second stage, to examine the role of their views on the orientation of science in decision-making, we selected four students who had similar views on NOS but different views on the orientation of science. The four students were selected from each group of views on the orientation of science and their decision-making processes were analyzed following grounded theory. Across SSIs, they relied upon their views on the orientation of science as the strategies for decision, though considered different perception, and causal and contextual conditions. This study indicates that understanding students' views on the orientation of science would be helpful for achieving scientific literacy for informed decision.

This study explored how teachers and students in different countries discursively interact to build 'Classroom Science Knowledge' (CSK) - the knowledge generated situatedly in the context of the science classroom. Data came from publicly released $8^{th}$ grade science classroom videos of five nations who participated in the Third TIMSS (Trend in International Mathematics and Science Study) video study. A total of ten video-recorded science lessons and their verbatim transcripts were selected and analyzed using a framework developed by the researchers of the study. It was revealed that a range of discourse modes were utilized and these modes were often sequentially connected to build CSK in the science classrooms. Although dominant discourse modes and their sequences varied among different lessons or different countries, the study identified three salient patterns of science classroom discourse: teacher-guided negotiation and the sequences of exploring - building on the shared and retrieving - elaborating. These patterns were found to be different from the discursive features commonly witnessed in the community of professional scientists and interpreted as implying the existence of unique epistemic cultures shared in science classrooms of different countries. Further studies are suggested to reveal detailed characteristics of these epistemic cultures of science classrooms, as well as to confirm whether any cultural traits inherently shape the differences in science classroom discourse among different nations.

The purpose of this study was to design a development frame for multicultural science program and develop a corresponding program using the frame. This study organized a development frame to design a multicultural science education program based on the culturally responsive teaching theory. This development frame consisted of the elements of purpose, teaching examples, teaching and learning methods, and assessment. This program consisted of the guideline for class teaching courses, reading materials, student worksheet, and teachers' reference materials. Based on this development frame, a multicultural science education program was developed, which was comprised of seven activities for elementary and middle school students. Each activity of the program included the concept and inquiry related to science education. In particular, by connecting the concept of science with the cultural characteristics of various countries, the activity made students aware of cultural diversity and the commonness of science principles. Compared to other subjects, the science education field has not actively undertaken studies on multicultural education. In term of dealing with universal principles, science education is suitable for making students aware of commonness. Accordingly, this gives rise to the need to draw cultural characteristics based on basic studies such as the analysis of science textbooks in various countries and develop culturally responsive programs utilizing the outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to figure out how teachers conduct an experiment in measuring the size of the Earth and how students recognize it. For this study, an in-depth interview was conducted one week after the lesson on the experiment about measuring the size of the Earth. The participants were five secondary school teachers and five secondary school students. The in-depth interview was recorded and transcribed. The result of the interview was drawn through an inductive categorized analysis method. As a conclusion of this study, the teachers taught the students the lesson using alternate angles instead of using the altitude of the Sun. Their lessons were based on Eratosthene's story or some related illustrations suggested in the textbook and not based on an explanation of the principle. Also, students measured the Earth's size only by using alternate angles and didn't understand the meaning of the shadow in the experiment. The results of this study show that teachers need to reconstruct the textbook and understand the accurate experimental principle for the students to have a meaningful experience of the experiment on measuring the size of the Earth.

Multidimensional scaling can be used to identify relationships among concepts, revealing the structure of the cognitive framework by measuring distances within perceptual maps. The current study sought to examine the relationships among concepts related to photosynthesis in 2,844 $3^{rd}-11^{th}$ grade science students. The questionnaire included items on 'location,' 'products,' 'reactants,' and 'environmental factors', presenting images related to each theme. Students provided responses corresponding to particular topics, and reported the extent to which the concept was related to the topic on a scale from 1 to 30. The survey results were as follows: first, students were not able to clearly distinguish between or understand the four main topics. Second, students organized their cognitive structures by closely associating related concepts after learning. Third, the presented concepts revealed a mixture of scientific and non-scientific concepts, suggesting that students needed to clearly distinguish the preconceptions through which they organized concepts, so that they are suitable for cognitive structures based on learning. Furthermore, non-scientific concepts within perceptions were consistently maintained throughout learning, affecting the proximity of scientific concepts.

This study aims to investigate gifted students' explanations for daily celestial motion from the Earth-based and heliocentric frames of reference. Eleven sixth-grade elementary school students were chosen for this study and data was collected through a questionnaire and an in-depth interview. The collected data was analyzed into celestial objects which are the Sun, the moon and the stars and analyzed based on the Earth-based and heliocentric perspectives again. As a result of the research, most gifted students were able to connect the Earth-based and heliocentric frames of reference with the Sun's daily apparent motion. However, they understood the daily apparent motion of the moon and the stars far less frequently compared to the Sun's motion and could not explain the Earth's rotation clearly. The result of the interview showed that the lack of understanding about the daily celestial motion was caused by inaccurate understanding of the Earth's rotation such as using memorized knowledge learned in school and guessing the answer.

The purpose of this study is to develop an inventory to classify task commitment types of science learning and to classify highschool students' task commitment types. Firstly, inventory questions were designed following the literature analysis on the task commitment components which involve self confidence, high goal setting, and focused attention. Prototype inventory underwent the content validity test, pilot test, and reliability test. Through these steps, final inventory was input to 462 high school students and underwent the factor analysis and cluster analysis. Factor analysis confirmed three components of task commitment as the three factors of inventory questions. In order to find how many clusters exist, factors of developed inventory became new variables. Each factor's factor mean was calculated and served as the new variable of the cluster analysis. Cluster analysis extracted five clusters as task commitment types. The 5 clusters were suggested by the agglomarative schedule and dendrogram gained from a hierarchical cluster analysis with the setting of the Ward algorithm and Squared Euclidean distance. Based on the factor mean score, traits of each cluster could be drawn out. Inventory developed by this study is expected to be used to identify student commitment types and assess the effectiveness of task commitment enhancement programs.