• Journal of Science Education
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.143-155
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• 2021

The goal of this study is to examine the Integrated Science and Science Laboratory Experiments of the 2015 revised curriculum applied since 2018, and to explore ways to improve these two subjects in preparation for the 2022 revised curriculum. A survey was conducted by randomly sampling high schools across the country, with a total of 192 science teachers participating. In addition, 12 high school science teachers were selected as focus group, and in-depth interviews were conducted to investigate ways to restructure common science courses for the next curriculum. Main research results include that most schools were operated in 6~8 units for Integrated Science, and the teachers in charge of Integrated Science per class averaged 2~3 over the three years. For Science Laboratory Experiments, it has operated for a total of two semesters, one unit per semester, and it was found that several science teachers are in charge of Science Laboratory Experiments to fill the insufficient number of hours regardless of major. In the in-depth interview, science teachers argued that Integrated Science should be reduced and restructured by strengthening key competencies in preparation for the high school credit system. Based on the research results, ways to reorganize Integrated Science focused on big ideas, ways to construct common science courses based on fundamental science concepts that can guide elective courses, the necessity of career guidance through common science courses, and the necessity of strengthening teacher professionalism for teaching interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subjects were suggested.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.573-584
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• 2015

Inquiry has been consistently emphasized in science education as a crucial element for learning. Although many researchers came to agree on the importance of scientific inquiry, authentic inquiry activities are hard to be actualized in an educational context. Therefore it is required to critically examine what teachers have difficulty in teaching inquiry. In this article, we looked into inquiry-based science activities in a small group setting where pre-service science teachers faced dilemmas between cognition and practice of inquiry. A case study was conducted on eight undergraduate students who are majoring in science education. The participants attended a weekly science program for middle school students in low SES as teaching assistants and mentors, and took full care of his/her mentees during open-inquiry activities. The results were drawn by analyzing participants' personal and group interviews, participant observations, self-reports, and others. The pre-service teachers viewed the knowledge and procedure of science as an essential factor in inquiry activities along with student's spontaneous attitude. However, in the process of performing inquiry, they faced several dilemmas between ideal cognition and real activities. The aspects of dilemmas could be summarized in three pairs of opposing concepts: 'diverging inquiry or converging science', 'interest-centered inquiry or learning-centered inquiry', and 'student as the subject or student with the insufficient expertise.' We discussed ways of resolving dilemmas and alternative perspectives on scientific inquiry.

• Korean Educational Research Journal
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.167-188
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to suggest safety education on life science inquiry activity, which subjects on the exploration and autonomous research to the relevant topics, mainly done by the science high school students. Investigation was made on subjects of research activity proposed from Life science and autonomous research from science high school students by examine thoroughly 2009 revised education curriculum. To prevent school laboratory accidents, education of basic safety regulations and general precautions should be repeatedly notified by clear statements and expression to each topic. Expressing the safety factors considering the themes of autonomous inquiry and activities presented in the course of education should be done, so that students should not experience laboratory accidents by reason of ignorance. From the beginning of organization to performing research, safety rules about disposing chemicals and tools wastes occurring during research should be noticed and expressed in precautions following waste disposal system should be adopted. It is necessary to level up the accessibility of information about the laboratory safety rules to confirm to the every student, and also ensure the takeover of the clean-up and use of utilities at the time of search end in order to prevent the incidence of laboratory accidents during the thorough stages of biological inquiry activities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.986-997
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• 2011

In this study, we developed analogical experimental activities to foster scientific creativity in inquiry learning and applied them to 7th grade science-gifted students. The influences of inquiry learning-based analogical experiments were investigated with respect to the experimental design processes. We classified the patterns of experimental design processes by creative thinking processes and analyzed performance levels by the elements of experimental design processes. The students' experimental design processes were categorized into three kinds of patterns such as reinitiated motion, backward-divergent motion and stationary motion. Those belonging to the reinitiated motion performed precise experimental design from new perspectives by identifying the mapping in depth and considering the elements of experimental design processes. In the case of the backward-divergent motion, they shifted their positions to new directions, but the concreteness of experimental design was insufficient due to the lack of mapping or considering the elements. In the type of stationary motion, maintaining their previous positions, they showed less performance of experimental design without considering the elements sufficiently. Educational implication of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.171-182
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• 2006

Science education in elementary school is mostly based on solving investigative tasks conducted by small groups on the basis of the inquiry activities such as experiments, observations, etc. Students should be able to draw conclusions from experiments and observations through their collaborative interactions by exchanging ideas. If learners use the advantages of Blended-Learning as a new pedagogical method comprehending merits of both off-line and on-line learning to complement off-line activities throughout the entire process, the interactions among them may be reinforced, and they would take part in the inquiry learning more actively. Accordingly, the proposed system can help children foster science inquiry learning effectively by using on-line communication facilities to arrange learners' diverse opinions and thoughts coming from off-line inquiry activity process. The result shows that the system enhanced learners' interest about science inquiry learning and improved their learning achievements by exchanging diverse opinions via the Web communication facilities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.818-831
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• 2007

Recognizing the importance of abductive inquiry in Earth science, some theoretical approaches that deploy abduction have been researched. And, it is necessary that the abductive inquiry in a geological field excursion as a vivid locale of Earth science inquiry should be researched. We developed a geological field trip based on the abductive learning model, and investigated students' abductive inference, thinking strategies used in those inferences, and the impact of a teacher's pedagogical intervention on students' abductive inference. Results showed that students, during the field excursion, could accomplish abductive inference about rock identification, process of different rock generation, joints generation in metamorpa?ic rocks, and terrains at the field trip area. They also used various thinking strategies in finding appropriate rules to construe the facts observed at outcrops. This means that it is significant for the enhancement of abductive reasoning skills that students experience such inquiries as scientists do. In addition, a teacher's pedagogical interventions didn't ensure the content of students' inference while they helped students perform abductive reasoning and guided their use of specific thinking strategies. Students had found reasoning rules to explain the 01: served facts from their wrong prior knowledge. Therefore, during a geological field excursion, teachers need to provide students with proper background knowledge and information in order that students can reason rues for persuasive abductive inference, and construe the geological features of the field trip area by the establishment of appropriate hypotheses.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.83-92
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary school students' understandings about scientific inquiry. Data were collected from 119 elementary students who are in the 4^th grade using the Views About Scientific Inquiry questionnaire for elementary students (VASI-E). We also conducted semi-structured interviews of 21 students from 119 students who responded to VASI-E. Students' responses were analyzed as naive, mixed, or informed views on each aspect of scientific inquiry that VASI-E includes. We found that, first, 53.8% of students have mixed views, and 30.3% of students have informed views, and 16% of students have naive views on the knowledge 'investigation begin with a question'. Second, 54.6% of students have naive views, 37.8% of students have mixed views, and 7.6% of students have informed views on the knowledge 'scientists use many methods to answer their questions.' Third, 47.9% of students have informed views, 34.5% of students have naive views, and 17.6% of students have mixed views on 'procedures guided by question asked.' Fourth, 55.5% of students have mixed views, 42% of students have informed views, and only 2.5% of students have naive views on 'conclusions must be consistent with data and explanations come from data and prior knowledge.' Based on the results, implications for teaching and learning scientific inquiry at elementary level in Korea were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.50 no.5
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• pp.385-393
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• 2006

In this study, we analyzed the effects of science inquiry learning that applies open-ended hypothesis-testing learning model in a high school chemistry class of grade 11 in respect of science process skills, science-related attitude, and appreciation towards science class by cognitive level. Open-ended science inquiry learning activities on Metals and their applications unit in Chemistry I were developed and applied to the treatment groups while the conventional science activities were applied to the control groups. Four classes of 92 students in a high school located in Seoul were assigned into the treatment and control groups, respectively. According to the results in the test of science process skills, the students treated with the alternative experiments emphasizing open-ended hypothesis-testing obtained higher scores in experimental design, data conversion and description, and hypothesis test than those with conventional experiments but not in problem cognition and definition and hypothesis fixing'. There was negative effect on science-related attitude due to increased roles and tasks in the open-ended science inquiry learning activities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.545-555
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• 1998

The improvement of process skills has been one of the most important goals in secondary science education. To achieve this goal, it is essential to develop an instrument for evaluating inquiry skills in addition to improving science curricula, inquiry teaching methods, and other educational environment. There are a lot of instruments in testing science process skills in Korea as well as America and Europe. However, it has been difficult to find the instruments that have a characteristic in content and form. The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating science process skills using line graph. This study examined the whole body of scientific process and identified 6 component skills. Three or four items for each component process skills were developed and revised by pilot test and field test. The instrument is considered valid and reliable, for the content validity is 78% and the reliability(KR-20) is 0.82. The discrimination index is 0.57 and difficulty index is 0.47, which also suffice the criteria of good test.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-21
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to develop problem-solving inquiries for the science gifted and to analyze the effects of problem-solving inquiries. The problem-solving inquiries were composed of scientific knowledge, scientific inquiry skills and creative thinking. The problem-solving inquiries were applied to the science gifted attending the institute of the gifted education. The test of science-creative problem solving (TSCPS) was used to know effects of improvement of science-creativity and the result of TSCPS showed the improvement of science creativity. The analysis of student-student dialogues during experiments showed that the type of dialogue was different on the type of problem-solving inquiry. The dialogue of convergent thinking was frequently showed up on the problem-solving inquiry needed logical thinking whereas that of divergent thinking on the problem-solving inquiry needed idea generation. The problem-solving inquiries had a positive effects on the improvement of the science-creativity.