• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.452-471
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• 2010

As the Korean College scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) has been implemented for 17 years since 1994, it is becoming more and more difficult to make new items that haven't been previously used to measure students' thinking ability. Therefore, it is necessary to keep conducting research on making new test items that can measure students' scholastic ability reliably. For this reason, multiple choice items on the Japanese university entrance exam, which is a Japanese National Center Test for University Admissions (NCTUA) equivalent of CSAT, were analyzed in order to draw implications for CSAT item development. In this study, we analyzed the Japanese NCTUA administered in January 2009 to investigate the structure of its science test. We also analyzed the NCTUA items by the domains of contents and behaviors, and tried to predict item difficulty from the perspective of Korean applicants. Major findings are as follows: Most NCTUA items measure understanding knowledge or low level thinking ability. Also the alloted time for each item is longer than CSAT. The number of test items, and the number of choice and alloted points for each item are diverse, unlike CSAT. The number of items using real-life materials are much more, but the items are not rigorous in sentence expression compared to CSAT. And the difference of difficulty level among science tests were larger with reference to CSAT. Also science score is required for most applicants regardless whether they are taking liberal arts or going onto the science track.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.469-479
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• 2001

This study investigated the trends in the number of applicants and mean score and applicants’ responses on the test items of Earth Science in the College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) implemented for 3 years (1999-2001). The percentage of applicants of science track were 43.14% in 1995, but reduced through 29.5% in 2001 to 26.92% in 2002 CSAT For elective subject, about 22% of science track students applied to Earth Science II which ranked third to Biology II and Chemistry II. In 1999, test items were developed to have the expected difficulty 40 ${\sim}$ 59% (6 items) to 60 ${\sim}$ 79% (10 items). But in 2001 every 16 items were developed to have difficulty 60 ${\sim}$ 79%, which was caused by the policy of so called ‘easy CSAT’. Thus the mean score of ‘Earth Science II’ was increased from 50.26 in 1999 through 64.47 in 2000, to 67.58 in 2001. Applicants were generally very good at solving test items focusing on process skills only and familar items but poor at solving test items related to the motion of the earth and planets and sea wave, especially items calling two or more concepts. Thus special measures to cope with the decrease in applicants of science track should be provided. And it is recommended to develop test items with wider range of difficulty and to reduce test items calling process skills only. And special consideration should be given to teaching the content area with poor achievement and high actual difficulty compared to the expected.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-22
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to develop and apply activity-centered STEM education program of electricity and electronics technology are in middle schools. The program was developed on the emphasis of problem solving in real world in relation to knowledge, attitude, and skill of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Basically the activity-centered STEM education program was developed through three steps of preparation, development and improvement. In the preparation stage the fellowing was included: (1) need analysis of student, educator, society (2) selection of integration type (3) analyzing subject matter of electricity, electronics area (4) establishing criteria for selecting activity tasks. In the development stage the fellowing was conducted: (1) selection of activity tasks (2) setting up educational goals (3) analyzing activity and clarifing the detailed activity (4) selecting program content, (5) organization of instructional content (6) statement of instructional objectives (7) structuring STEM education program In the improvement stage the fellowing was consisted of: (1) verification of validity by experts (2) execution of pilot test and field test by students and correction of program. The results of the applied the Activity-Based STEM Education Program to 'Afterschool' activities of S middle school were as follow: First, student' satisfaction level was high. Second, student' achievement in the cognitive domain, and affective domain was positive change. Third, student' problem solving ability was positive effect.