• 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 Science Education
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.1-14
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• 2015

This study aims to find out the effect of pre-service elementary teachers' experiences of inquiry performance in the life on their images about a scientist and science teaching anxiety. Thus, this study selected 162 college juniors who completed 'Science Teaching Material Research & Teaching Methods' for one semester at a university of education. Groups of 3 to 4 pre-service teachers were made to select one of the 10 experimental topics and inquired it for themselves, and make a presentation about the results before the other pre-service teachers. The results of this study can be summarized as below. Firstly, as a result of investigating pre-service elementary teachers' opinions about the characteristics of scientists, it was found that they thought of scientists prudent, intellectually superior, creative, and hard-working, but did not consider them artistic or religious, no matter if they had inquiry performance experiences. Especially, to such characteristics as intellectually-superior, creative, open-minded, outgoing and responsible, they showed more positive responses after inquiry performances. Besides, in scientists' activity types shown in pre-service elementary teachers' drawing pictures of a scientist, 'Experimental Activity' increased most after their inquiry performances, and in the place of activity, 'Laboratory' was most since it was related to activity types. Secondly, as a result of examining per-service elementary teachers' science teaching anxiety before and after inquiry performances, it was found that they showed statistically significant differences in all the domains, scientific knowledge, inquiry class preparation and inquiry class management. This finding could be interpreted as their inquiry experiences had positive effect on their having confidence in teaching science.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.1-23
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• 2009

Science field trip is a comprehensive learning activity in which students can solve problems by themselves, whose importance is emphasized in learning for the gifted. But because not much study has been done yet on this, and convergent activities such as solving too many problems or requesting given answers have generally been done, it has been criticized for not being enough to develop the abilities of gifted Students. Therefore, this study attempted to analyze the activity process of the gifted through field trip to which open inquiry is adapted so that the demands of the gifted can be met, and the abilities of the gifted can be brought out. The study focused on 18 gifted elementary science students at Institute of Science Gifted Education, Cheongju National University of Education, and in the field trip process of the students, analyzed the types of establishment of inquiry problems and inquiry process, and the behavioral characteristics of gifted science students shown during field trip activity through field trip proceedings, transcript contents, poster materials, questionnaires, etc. As a result, more inquiry problems were established after than before inquiry, and the level of inquiry problems was also higher after inquiry. The solution process for inquiry problems of the gifted science students were done in the following order: planning, inquiring, follow-up inquiring and consolidating. But it proceeded to open inquiry process, the next stage being decided according to circumstances. Also, in the inquiry that the students did, diverse factors were revealed such as basic and integrative inquiries, and especially, the students were competent in analyzing the results after transforming and interpreting them. And the analysis of the interaction among the students showed many behavioral traits of talented science students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.82-94
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• 2012

In this study, epistemological views of middle school students on scientific inquiry were investigated. The Views of Scientific Inquiry Questionnaire was administered to 141 9th graders. The questionnaire consists of five open-ended items concerning the contexts of scientific investigation, the methods of scientific investigation, the interpretation of data, and the data and evidence. Analyses of the results indicated that their epistemological understanding of scientific inquiry were not adequate on the whole. Although the students suggested a variety of factors influencing scientists' decisions on the questions and the methods of investigation, many of the factors were minor. Only a few students specifically described the activities of scientists and the constituents of "scientific" activity, and students did not demonstrate adequate understanding of experimentation in science and multiple scientific methods. Moreover, the percentage of students who possessed the informed view that data can be variously interpreted was found to be low. The students also did not understand the distinctions between data and evidence. Educational implications are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.634-649
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• 2003

The aim of this paper was to diagnose Korean sixth graders' understanding for scientific evidence and explanation. The instrument constructed by Jeong, Songer, and Lee (2002) was used to assess students' understanding for priority of scientific evidence, objectivity of data, relevance of evidence, data interpretation, coordination of theory and evidence, and repeated observation. Results showed that although many students recognized certain features of scientific inquiry such as objectivity of data, few of them understood why such features are valued and how to collect and use such data. In particular, students experienced difficulty in formulating explanation from evidence, not knowing, for example, that repeated observations are needed before making a general statement. The results of this study suggest that efforts to foster students' inquiry abilities need to be based on careful analyses of students existing inquiry skills and understanding.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.318-333
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• 2017

In this study, we analyzed activities in life science chapters of middle school 'science' textbooks for the 2009 revised Korea national curriculum and examined the difference between the analysis based on scientific practices and the analysis based on inquiry skills. As a results, there was a lot of inquiry skills in the order of 'reasoning', 'observing', 'classification' in the all of grade. In scientific practices, 'data analysis and interpretation' and 'constructing explanations and devising problem solving' were biased. This shows that life science inquiry activities in middle school 'science' textbooks are lacking in diversity in scientific practice elements as well as inquiry skills, and that the goals of the activities are limited. In addition, through the interrelationships between scientific inquiry skills and scientific practice elements, we examined contents relevance in the transition from inquiry function center to scientific practice, and compared with the results of inquiry activities in textbook, The results of this study were matched monotonously due to the tendency to basic inquiry-data interpretation / basic inquiry-explanation. This comes from results of the lack of diversity in activities presented in middle school 'science' textbooks. In this study, it is suggested that efforts should be made to include diverse scientific practice elements in the process of realizing 2015 revised Korea national curriculum from the simple and diversity-less inquiry activity through analyzing the textbooks of the 2009 revised Korea national curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.531-543
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• 2003

This study aims to investigate that scientifically gifted students have distinctive science related attitudes in comparison with general students. In addition, this study examines the relationship among science related attitudes, intelligence, and science process skills. Two hundred sixty-six middle school students (169 boys, 97 girls) who enrolled at the Incheon Science Elite Program and 220(133 boys, 87 girls) students in a regular middle school participated in the present study. Research findings support that gifted students have more positive science related attitudes than general students as well as higher intelligence and science process skills. At last, low and non-significant correlation coefficients with attitudes and cognitive factors were found in gifted groups, whereas some significant correlations were found in general students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.533-543
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• 2010

This paper analyzed the improvement of cognitive level of the students and interactions which occurred in each step of free-topic scientific inquiry to help science teachers understand free-topic scientific inquiry better. Free-topic scientific inquiry is helpful to students with a deep strategic learning goal orientation type or a deep strategic ability goal orientation type in their transition (2B/3A) of cognitive levels. Most students have difficulties in the phase of establishing topics and hypotheses. The result says that the discussion techniques are improved through free-topic scientific inquiry, but the quality of interaction is not easily improved. The deep strategic learning goal orientation type concretizes opinion through interaction in free-topic scientific inquiry. The deep strategic ability goal orientation type are actively involve in the interaction, but they pay no attention to the process because they stick to the result. The surface strategic ability goal orientation type can not deepen a discussion due to high frequency of low level inquiry. However, the frequency of high level inquiry increases through free topic scientific inquiry operation. As a result, the characteristics of free-topic scientific inquiry were discussed and the educational implications of the progress of free-topic scientific inquiry and the organization of grouping were drawn.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.860-869
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to suggest an instructional direction for improving scientific inquiry problem-finding ability of the scientifically-gifted. For this purpose, this study has made an in-depth analysis of the scientific inquiry problems generated by the scientifically-gifted in Problem-Finding Activity in Ill-structured Inquiry Situation (PFAIIS) and Problem-Finding Activity in Well-structured Inquiry Situation (PFAWIS). The results of this study turned out to be as follows: First, most of the problems generated in PFAIIS and PFAWIS could be categorized into seven types (measurement, method, cause, possibility, what, comparison, relationship) according to the inquiry objectives, while the frequency of each type shown in each inquiry objective was a little different. Second, the frequency of scientific concepts stated in inquiry problem was more in PFAWIS than in PFAIIS. But the scientific concepts were shown more diversely in PFAIIS than in PFAWIS. Therefore, results of this study have the following educational implications. First, it is necessary to offer various opportunities of problem-finding activity under ill-structured scientific Inquiry situation. Second, it is needed to emphasize that a new inquiry problem can be found out even during general scientific experiment and frequently to discuss inquiry problems generated during an experiment. Third, it is needed to encourage the scientifically-gifted to generate a scientific inquiry problem based on at least more than seven types.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.669-677
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to estimate the direct and indirect effects of relevant variables on students' science achievements. Path analysis was conducted with data from middle school to examine the effects of perceived positive parenting attitudes, attitudes toward science, science inquiry skills on the science achievements of middle school students. A total of 502 middle school students from the metropolitan area participated in this study. Results suggest that students' perceptions of positive parenting attitudes had no direct influence on their science inquiry skills. However, the students' attitudes toward science and science inquiry skills were found to have meaningful direct effects on their achievements. Students' perception of positive parenting attitudes also presented a significant direct effect on their attitude toward science. In addition, the students' perceived positive parenting attitude revealed an indirect effect on science achievement, through their own attitudes toward science and science inquiry skills. Research findings called for more educational programs and teaching methods considering students' attitudes toward science and science inquiry skills to improve their science achievements. At home, parents need to have positive parenting attitudes to influence their children's attitudes regarding science.