• Journal of Science Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.167-178
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• 2017

It has been suggested that character education, taught only in ethics and social science, should be integrated into other subjects including science education. In terms of inquiry and the nature of science, science education is related to character education, which is emphasized by SSI (Socioscientific Issue) education. Followed by necessity of character education, the Character Education Promotion Act was established in 2015. To investigate what and how character education is conducting in schools, analysis of curriculums and textbooks is needed in terms of elements underlined in the Character Education Promotion Act. For this purpose, this research analyzed general remarks and science sections in the 2009 revised and the 2015 revised curriculums and science textbooks based on the 2009 revised curriculum with regard to essential virtues in the Character Education Promotion Act. Results showed that parts of essential virtues were included in both curriculums, of which elements were inconsistent with those of science textbooks. Curriculums and textbooks reflecting whole elements faithfully need to be developed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.37 no.6
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• pp.373-386
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• 2016

This study aims to investigate the kinds of content and science communication included in the exhibits and the exhibition panels in order to suggest a direction of desirable educational development in the nuclear power information halls in Korea. The four local nuclear power information halls in Korea and the nuclear power science center in Japan are selected as the subject. The results of this study show that the 'conceptual' exhibits are a dominant topic among the four topics of contents, and the concept (CON) and interest (INT) are found as the most dominating component of science communication. Meanwhile, the nature of science (NOS), awareness (AW), enjoyment (ENJ), and opinion (OP) components are little exhibited. The findings of this study indicate that the nuclear power information halls can be more professional to enhance scientific literacy, as the informal education institutions, providing information of nuclear energy and radiation on various perspectives for visitors to make decisions by themselves and to improve their scientific attitudes and understanding of science communication. In addition, the limited science communication can be fully reinforced by docents or commentators. Further research needs to investigate the development of a specialized program to produce professional docents or commentators.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.389-403
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• 2019

This study aims to analyze criteria and characteristics for preservice elementary teachers' critiques of their peers' inquiry-based instruction. This study reviews critiques written by 31 preservice elementary teachers enrolled in an elementary school science inquiry methods course wherein the teachers designed and implemented inquiry-based instruction. These preservice teachers participated in inquiry-based instruction as if they were elementary students and then evaluated their peers' instruction. Analysis of the critiques reveals that preservice teachers evaluated their peers' instruction on the following criteria: instruction context, science content, teaching strategies, students, instructional goals, non-verbal attitude, and assessment. Their beliefs about teaching science inquiry were reflected in the critiques. Additionally, it was found that four orientation for teaching inquiry-didactic, academic rigor, activity-driven, inquiry orientation-reflected in critiques; some of critiques held more than one of these orientations. And they did not merely criticize but suggested alternatives to general teaching strategies; furthermore, of inquiry-instruction specific teaching strategies. They showed higher epistemic understanding of inquiry-based instruction after mid-term demonstrations. The evidence demonstrated that the proportion of critiques specifically about inquiry-based instruction increased after the mid-term demonstrations. Moreover, the post mid-term critiques emphasized interaction between students as well as understanding of the nature of science. These findings could provide implication for teaching inquiry and criticizing others' instruction as part of elementary school science courses in preservice elementary teacher education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.565-575
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• 2017

This study analyzes the epistemic considerations and the argumentation level revealed in the discourse of the key concept of natural selection for science-gifted elementary students. The paper analyzes and discusses the results of a three-student focus group, drawn from a cohort of twenty gifted sixth-grade elementary students. Nature, generality, justification, and audience were used to analyze epistemic consideration. Learning progression in scientific argumentation including argument construction and critique was used to analyze students' scientific argumentation level. The findings are as follows: First, Epistemic considerations in discourse varied between key concepts of natural selection discussed. The nature aspect of epistemic considerations is highly expressed in the discourse for all natural selection key concepts. But the level of generality, justification and audience was high or low, and the level was not revealed in the discourse. In the heredity of variation, which is highly expressed in terms of generality of knowledge, the linkage with various phenomena against the acquired character generated a variety of ideas. These ideas were used to facilitate engagement in argumentation, so that all three students showed the level of argumentation of suggestions of counter-critique. Second, students tried to explain the process of speciation by using concepts that were high in practical epistemic considerations level when explaining the concept of speciation, which is the final natural selection key concept. Conversely, the concept of low level of epistemic considerations was not included as an explanation factor. The results of this study suggest that students need to analyze specific factors to understand why epistemological decisions are made by students and how epistemological resources are used according to context through various epistemological resources. Analysis of various factors influencing epistemological decisions can be a mediator of the instructor who can improve the quality and level of the argumentation.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.221-233
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• 2002

This study investigated preservice science teachers' understandings of philosophical foundations(i.e., ontological and epistemological beliefs) underlying constructivist notions of learning. The teacher education program these subjects participated in explicitly addressed philosophical notions consistent with different views of constructivism. For these preservice science teachers, the program provided them with the opportunity to reflect upon the implications that their ontological and epistemological commitments had for their role as a science teacher. Data from four in-depth interviews were used to explore changes in each preservice science teacher's ontological beliefs, epistemological commitments, and pedagogical preferences. Results indicated that ontological beliefs and epistemological commitments were not necessarily consistent with conceptions of science teaching and learning for these preservice teachers. While some students internalized idealist and relativist perspectives, they did not integrate these relativist epistemological views into their preferred instructional practices. Also, regarding the fallible and tentative nature of knowledge, data in this study indicated that participants' epistemological beliefs about scientific Knowledge did influence how they were thinking about their roles as science teachers. Implications for teacher education programs and research on preservice science teacher's philosophical beliefs are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.719-730
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• 2004

The International Astronomy Olympiad (IAO) was established and its foundation were published by the Euro-Asian Astronomical Society (EAAS), in order to spread astronomical knowledge, promote international cooperation in astronomical education area, and recognize the importance of astronomy in far-reaching field of science and human culture. In 1996, the first IAO was held at the Special Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) of the Russian Academy of sciences (RAS) located in the north Caucasus of Russia. Since then, it has been held every year. Here, we will describe the present status of the International Astronomy Olympiad, its major results by year, related institutions, organizations, and the main regulations regarding its operation. In order to measure the levels of scientific knowledge and thinking abilities, we develop a rubric to analyze the characteristics of problems in the IAO with regards to cognitive aspects of scientific inquiry. These problems require high levels of content knowledge and scientific method knowledge. Also high order thinking abilities and high levels of convergent thinking skills, instead of divergent, are needed to solve these problems. Thus, the problems presented are set a high difficulty. Through this analysis, we can understand main purpose of the International Astronomy Olympiad and explore the future direction of the Korea Astronomy Olympiad.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.997-1006
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• 2015

Perception of the experiment is one of the most important factors of students' understanding of scientific inquiry and the nature of science. This study examined the perception of middle and high school students of the meaning of 'experiment' in the biological sciences. Semantic network analysis (SNA) was especially used to visualize students' perception structure in this study. One hundred and ninety middle school students and 200 high school students participated in this study. Students responded to two questions on the meaning of 'experiment' in science and biology. This study constructed four semantic networks based on the collected response. As a result, middle school students about the 'experiment' in science are 'we', 'direct', 'principle' of such words was aware of the experiments from the center to the active side. The high school students' 'theory', 'true', 'information' were recognized as an experiment that explores the process of creating a knowledge center including the word. In addition, middle school students relative to 'experiment' of the creature around the 'dissection', 'body', high school students were recognized as 'life', 'observation' observation activities dealing with the living organisms and recognized as a core. The results of this study will be used as important evidence in the future to map out an experiment in biological science curriculum.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.294-309
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• 2013

This study addressed the awareness of social issues related to science of future elementary school teachers. Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident was used by concrete issue connected with SSI for this study. Twelve second-year students attending a university of education participated in the study, who were taking a class of science teacher preparation at that time that consists of the content of the elementary science education courses. The study revealed that all the pre-service elementary teachers recognized Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant Accident and received such information through various medias. In particular, they were receiving more information about the Nuclear Power Plant Accident through the internet than any other media by using the internet a lot, and also gained additional information through the internet. However, despite the fact that they recognized Nuclear Power Plant Accident, they neither had much information about it nor had been interested in SSI such as the Nuclear Power Plant Accident. Moreover, they had been basically uneducated about SSI. Despite of having no interest in SSI such as Nuclear Power Plant Accident, the study revealed that the pre-service elementary teachers recognized that scientific problems such as Nuclear Power Plant Accident may affect a society closely. In addition, they together sympathized with the point that SSI education should be applied on the current education courses by identifying the problem in application. As the study revealed above, the application of SSI education to the formal education courses as well as more lively research on that subject is very important and urgent for boosting interest in science subjects and enlightening the nature of science that is one of the objectives of science education.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.8
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• pp.751-758
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to develop an inquiry analysis framework based on the features of earth science inquiry methodology and to analyze inquiry activities in the 8th grade 'Earth History and Diastrophism' unit by using this framework. The framework classified earth science methods as logical inference, hermeneutic, and historical methods, each of which was subdivided in consideration of its subordinate methods and characteristics. The analysis revealed that the logical inference method reflected in the unit as the 'abductive method' (70%) was used more frequently than the 'inductive' (23%) and 'deductive' (22%) methods. The hermeneutic method was found in terms of the 'forestructures of understanding' (92%), 'circular reasoning' (9%). and 'historical nature of human understanding' (17%). The historical method also used as the 'constructing proper taxonomy' (53%), 'adhering to the modem principle of uniformitarianism' (47%), and 'relic interpretation' (41%) were identified with ratios more fester than those for the 'place substituting for time in stage theorizing' (3%) and 'evaluating independent lines of inquiry for convergence' (3%).

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.238-252
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• 2020

In this study, we analyzed the types of rebuttals in the argument structure of learning contents in lesson plans constructed by Earth science preservice teachers, and then we explored examples of how they responded to resolving the rebuttal. As a result of analyzing preservice teachers' assignments, discussions, and interviews collected during a total of 20 hours of classes and group discussions for 5 weeks, all 5 types of rebuttals suggested by Verheij (2005) were identified. Through the data analysis, a total of 18 rebuttal cases derived, and these cases were classified into 3 types according to how preservice teachers solve the rebuttals in class. The conclusions and implications based on the results are as follows: First, this study provided empirical data that the thinking process of validating core elements of argumentation and processes of argumentation is actively taking place in preservice teachers' lesson planning using the argument structure, and expanded the scope of application of argumentation in science education research. Second, the argument structure of learning contents should be used to help teachers to come up with strategies to induce students' curiosity and devotion to learn science contents. Third, preservice teachers should have the opportunity to think about the nature of science, including the variability and uncertainty of scientific knowledge when they discover rebuttals and develop solutions to them. Based on these conclusions, implications and suggestions for science education and further research were suggested.