• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.565-578
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to search for the factors that influence students' understanding of the nature of science through the experience of the cognitive processes of authentic open inquiries. The freshmen of a science high school practiced authentic open inquiries reflecting epistemological characteristics of authentic science. The case study was conducted with four focus students who were successful or unsuccessful at learning the nature of science during the authentic open inquiry activity. Questions that the focus students asked during the inquiries as well as students' answers to pre- and post-VNOS (C type) were analysed, and then elaborated in the semi-structured interview. The findings suggest that open inquiry activities provide the inquiry contexts that help science high school students to understand the nature of science, and that the characteristics of students' cognition influence the understanding of the nature of science. For instance, designing experiments with their own research questions had an influence on the students' understanding about the scientific methods and the diversity of research types, and drawing conclusions from their own data made students experience scientific reasoning. In addition, the experience of collecting anomalous data helped students to understand the role of inferences in generating scientific knowledge and the creative nature of scientific knowledge. In this inquiry context, the reflective thinking that came from proactive discussion among students, made students think about the validity of the designing experiments and interpreting data, and helped them to understand the uncertain nature of reasoning and the diverse nature of scientific methods. Moreover, divergent thinking linked to analogical thinking helped students to understand the creative nature of science.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to explore high school students' understanding of the distinction between scientific theories and scientific laws. Understanding of the distinction between these two concepts, which belong to the nature of science, has been receiving little attention. We surveyed thirty-two students from a local high school with three-part, open-ended questionnaire. The result revealed that these students shared common misconceptions such as 'scientific theories are unproven, scientific laws are proven and absolute', and 'if a theory is proven with enough evidence, it becomes a law'. Moreover, students tend to regard earth science less sophisticated than physical science, because they recognize a lot of its theories to be unproven in their view. It is indicated further that teaching the difference between scientific theories and laws explicitly could help students possess more appropriate view toward earth science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.541-551
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• 2009

This study aimed to investigate the effect of pre-service science teachers' experiences in nuclear physics research on their understanding of scientific inquiry process and career planning. The thirty-week URP (Undergraduate Research Participation) program was designed with the participation of six pre-service science teachers. Data sources included in-depth interviews with the individual teachers, group discussions, participant observations with field notes over the weeks, journals and lab logs, etc. Results indicated that the teachers perceived the complex and repetitive nature of the science research process, the importance of scientists' creativity and collaboration, etc. Their typical impressions of scientists has also more or less changed. In addition, the teachers had opportunities to confirm their aptitude in physics and to explore their career options in physics-related fields.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.206-217
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• 2010

This study aims to explore preservice teachers' overall views of nature of science and compare their views by gender and certificate area (biology vs. non-biology teachers). In addition, a comparison with American preservice teachers' views was also implemented. The Views of Nature of Science (Abd-El-Khalick, 1998), an openended questionnaire, is utilized to explore participants' views of nature of science. Along with 'definition of science', six aspects of the nature of science, (1) theories and laws, (2) tentativeness, (3) social and cultural embeddedness, (4) creativity, (5) theory-laden, and (6) inference, were investigated. The qualitative result indicates that the participants' first image of science was about the method of science such as observations and experiments. Furthermore, these preservice science teachers particularly have a difficulty in differentiating between scientific theories and laws, and understanding the importance of creation and imagination in developing scientific knowledge. In addition, compared to American preservice teachers' view of the nature of science, Korean preservice teachers possess naive views in creative and imaginative aspect. Interestingly, biology teachers demonstrated lower understanding in theories and laws as well as tentativeness of scientific knowledge. However, there is no difference by gender.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.65 no.5
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• pp.333-346
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• 2021

In this study, we developed education materials using history of science related to the experiment of 'Boyle's air pump' and the Boyle and Hobbs' debate of vacuum to find out the perceptions of NOS by pre-service chemistry teachers. For the study, 29 pre-service chemistry teachers at a college of education in Chungcheongbuk-do were selected. As RFN items that were related to the contextual situation developed in this study, items in the categories of 'Aims and Values', 'Scientific practices', 'Scientific Methods among Educational Applications' and 'Social-Institutional Aspects among Educational Applications' were selected. Through the items of RFN, the perceptions of pre-service teachers in non-contextual situations were investigated. Then we presented the pre-service teachers with the situation related to Boyle's experiment on air pump and Boyle and Hobbes' debate over vacuum. In addition, their perception of NOS was examined in contextual situations related to RFN items. Responses to the items, experimental results related to Boyle's Law, group discussion, and interview data were collected as data. As a result of the study, it was found that pre-service teachers had informed perceptions in most of the items, but cases with naive views or mixed views were found in context experimental situations. This study can contribute to the NOS education for pre-service chemistry teachers by development of context situation education materials related to NOS and by finding out their perceptions in the non-contextual and contextual situation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.955-963
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• 2008

This study was conducted to assess any change in students' views on the nature of science (NOS) after lessons through the activities of model construction and pattern identification. The instrument used to examine NOS views was the Views of Nature of Science questionnaire (VNOS). Four students' responses on VNOS before and after instruction were analyzed. The two levels of their views, novice and expert, were judged by the authors based on criteria set by several science educators. The instruction consisted of six hours of the so-called black box and cube activities developed for model construction and pattern identification, respectively. Students' views were at the novice level in definition of scientific theory, tentativeness of scientific knowledge, difference of hypotheses, theories and laws, model construction, and creativity and imagination in experiments and investigations. Students' views on NOS knowledge such as model and theory have improved for two students after instruction. The improvement seemed to be due to an explicit approach using the activities of model construction and pattern identification. The factors of changes and no-changes of views on NOS were identified and discussed in terms of improvement of the views.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.157-169
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• 2010

Scientific observation has been recognized as one of the fundamental aspects in scientific inquiry. However, more detailed discussions and practical guides for teachers' and students' understanding about the nature of scientific observation have not been conducted. Therefore, based on literature reviews, we described the nature of theory-laden scientific observation as 11 detailed statements. Using theses statements, we investigated science teachers' and students' recognition of each statement. According to results, certain aspects of theory-laden scientific observation were determined as important aspects to be considered for science teachers' in-service programs or for students' learning activities in understanding the nature of science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.127-136
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• 1998

The purpose of this study was to develop, field test an instrument to assess secondary school students' conceptions of the nature of science. The instrument named Philosophical Perspectives Probe(PPP) is a pool of 24 multiple-choice items that address a wide range of philosophical topics of science. The statements and the choices of this instrument were derived from an analysis of various philosophical positions. The main philosophical systems of the instrument are inductivism, falsificationism, and relativism, respectively. Major distinctions depend on the issues of the criteria of demarcation, patterns of scienctific change, epistemological status of scientific knowledge, and the scientific methods. The researchers also offer teachers a new way of assessing and interpreting their students' conceptions on a wide variety of topics related to the nature of science.

• Annual Conference on Human and Language Technology
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• 1994.11a
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• pp.82-95
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• 1994

인지의 주체로서 마음을 연구하는 인지과학은 인간 마음이 가지고 있는 본성을 탐구하고 인간이 가지고 있는 정보전달체계(information processing system)를 밝힘으로써 미를 컴퓨터에 응용하려는 것이 그 목적 중의 하나이다. 이러한 맥락에서 인식론도 어떤 명제를 믿는 것이 정당성을 갖느냐, 다시 말해서, 어떤 명제를 믿어야 하느냐는 규범적 문제보다는 실제로 우리가 어떻게 믿음을 형성하고 있느냐는 서술적인 문제에 중점을 두는 자연주의적 인식론이 큰 세력을 얻게 되었다. 자연주의적 인식론의 대두와 함께, 그것이 규범적인 문제를 다루는 전통적인 인식론과 이떠한 관계가 있는가에 많은 철학자들이 관심을 표명하였다. 그 중 콰인(W. V. O. Quine)은 자연주의적 인식론이 전통적인 인식론을 대체해야 한다는 급진적인 주장을 하였으며, 콘블리쓰(Hilary Kornblith)는 전통적인 인식론과 자연주의적 인식론이 같은 목표를 향한 다른 방법론을 쓰는 것이므로 적어도 전통적인 인식론자들은 자연주의적 인식론의 영향을 받아야만 한다고 단언하였다. 본고에서는 이 두 사람의 논증을 살펴보고 전통적인 인식론과 자연주의적 인식론이 얼마나 밀접하게 연결되어 있는가를 검토해 보기로 하겠다.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.823-840
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• 2012

The importance of teaching the nature of science (NOS) has been emphasized in the science curriculum, especially in the science curriculum for science-gifted students. Nevertheless, few studies concerning the structure and formation of students' mental model on NOS have been carried out. This study aimed to explore science-gifted students' understanding of 'fact', 'hypothesis', 'theory', 'law', and 'scientificness' by utilizing semantic network analysis. One hundred ten science-gifted middle school students who were selected by a national university participated in this study. We collected students' written responses of five items and analyzed them by the semantic network analysis(SNA) method. As a result, the core ideas of students' understanding of 'fact' were proof and reality, of 'hypothesis' were tentativeness and uncertainty, of 'theory' was proven hypothesis by experimentation, of 'law' were absoluteness and authority, and of 'scientificness' were factual evidence, verifiability, accurate and logical theoretical framework. The result of integrated semantic network illustrated that the viewpoint of science-gifted students were similar to absolutism and logical positivism (empiricism). Methodologically, this study showed that the semantic network analysis method was an useful tool for visualization of students' mental model of scientific conceptions including NOS.