• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.541-553
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between epistemic goals, epistemic considerations and complexity of reasoning of science high school students in an open inquiry and to explore the context on how open inquiry compares with the characteristics of an authentic scientific inquiry. Two teams were selected as focus groups and a case study was conducted. The findings are as follows: First, the contexts, such as 'sharing the value for the phenomenon understanding, reflection on the value of the research, task characteristics that require collaboration and consensus, and sufficient communication opportunities,' promote epistemic goals and considerations. On the other hand, contexts such as 'lack of opportunity for critical review of related literature and environmental constraints' lowered epistemic sides. Second, epistemic goals and considerations influenced the reasoning complexity. The goal of 'scientific sense making' led to reasoning that pose testable hypotheses based on students' own questions. The high justification considerations led to purposely focusing attention to the control designs and developing creative experimental know-how. The high audience considerations led to defending their findings through argumentation and suggesting future research. On the other hand, the goal of 'doing the lesson' and the low justification considerations led to reasoning that did not interpret the meaning of the data and did not control the limit of experiment. The low audience considerations led to reasoning that did not actively defend their findings and not suggest future research. The results of this study suggest that guidance should provide communication and critical review opportunities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.783-790
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• 2016

The 'Integrated Inquiry' unit is a new addition in the 5th~6th grade science textbooks, and was developed for the 2009 revised national curriculum. The unit deals with six integrated inquiry process skills: problem cognition, formulating hypotheses, controlling variables, transforming and interpreting data, drawing results, and generalization. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions and the teaching practices of elementary school teachers on this unit in their school curriculum and where improvements can be made. Data was collected from questionnaires filled out by 92 elementary school teachers. The results are as follows: First, teachers do have a positive perception on the importance of teaching integrated process skills. Second, with that being true, this unit ended up receiving both positive and negative reviews by teachers. This research found that there were good and bad responses on the educational aspects of this unit in three particular areas: dealing with the development of integrated inquiry process skills, facilitating science learning in other units, and implementing open inquiry. Third, teachers have difficulties particularly in problem cognition, formulating hypotheses, controlling variables, transforming and interpreting data, generalization, and drawing results. There is a lack of student understanding as well as a lack of professionalism for teachers on this unit, and many issues related to the composition of the textbook. This study may have important implications for making improvements in this unit and teaching integrated process skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.609-618
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perspectives of science educators on the learning situations of visually impaired students through scientific inquiry in a darkroom. Twenty-four science educators who came to the annual conference of the Korean Association for Science Education volunteered to participate in 'the scientific inquiry in the darkroom' activities. They were encouraged to touch models of 'the molecular structure of ice' and 'the structure of eyes' and to discuss with participants during the activities. Surveys were done before and after darkroom activities, and the discussions during and after the activities were recorded and analyzed. As a result, participants recognized that science education for visually impaired students is both very feasible and necessary. Also, some of them, who have had an experience of teaching blind students and thought that they fully understood the learning situation of the visually impaired, were especially surprised by the fact that they did not actually understand how it was like to be a visually impaired and responded that they were able to more deeply comprehend the learning situation of visually impaired students through these activities. Through this experience, participants also became resolute to try more deeply to understand not only the visually impaired students, but also sighted students with learning disabilities. Based on these results, educational implications of scientific inquiry in the darkroom were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.61 no.5
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• pp.277-285
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate the perspective of pre-service chemistry teachers on the learning situations of visually impaired students through scientific inquiry in a darkroom and to propose a teaching and learning method for students with visual impairments. Twenty-one pre-service chemistry teachers from college of education in Gyeongbuk were encouraged to explore individually hands-on model for the molecular structure of ice freely, and had a discussion with a one of the researchers during the activity. All the conversation and discussion were audio-taped and transcribed for analysis. As a result, pre-service chemistry teachers realized that learning situation of the visually impaired students was quite different with their perception while exploring and figuring out hands-on model of the molecular structure of ice in the darkroom. They already learned and could see this model by themselves but also recognized that visually impaired students had inconvenience and difficulty in learning science concepts. Based on these reflections, some pre-service chemistry teachers suggested directions for modification to fit visually impaired students' needs more.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.242-254
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to understand the teaching effects according to the cognitive levels after conducting inquiry activities using science notebooks in the open inquiry activities of the elementary science class. The results of this study were as follow. first, students having the open inquiry activities using science notebooks showed improvement in scientific inquiry abilities in both groups with the low and high cognitive level. Second, regarding the changes of scientific attitudes, both groups with the low and high cognitive level exhibited improvement. According to the result of analyzing interaction between the cognitive level and class treatment on the effects for scientific inquiry abilities and scientific attitudes, there was no difference by the cognitive level. And the use of science notebooks in open inquiry activities had effects on improving scientific inquiry abilities and scientific attitudes regardless of the cognitive level.

• Journal of the Korean BIBLIA Society for library and Information Science
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.51-81
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• 2015

The Presidential Archives is a research institute that manages presidents' historical records and archives. It provides various education programs based on the presidential records and archives for teachers and students. The Ministry of Education introduced free-learning semester and has conducted test trials in 42 schools since 2013. All of the middle schools will conduct the free-learning semester from 2016. The $7^{th}$ educational curriculum includes creative experience activities. The Ministry of Education recommended that schools should cooperate with local public organizations for experience activities. But, It is difficult to cooperate with each other. This study proposed the experience education programs using the presidential records and archives for social studies education curriculum in order to do the meaningful education in the class of the creative experience activities. To do it, this study analyzes current situation, deducts the problems caused in domestic and foreign Archives experience education program, and adopts the cooperative learning models and components suited to experience activities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2014

This study compares the perceptions of elementary gifted child and science teacher in a science class for the gifted. In order to explore the research problem, students and teachers answered a written semi-structured questionnaire and participated in interviews regarding the gifted science class. The data was collected and analyzed. Science teachers recognized the characteristics of a good science class, especially in terms of educational content and teaching methodology. First, they suggested promoting inquiry skills, presenting a challenging task in atypical topic selection, student-centered curriculum, and controlling the pace of learning to recognize individual differences. Second, in terms of the science class skills and attitudes category, teachers recommended raising mutual satisfaction through vigorous interaction within a permissible atmosphere. Finally, science teachers need to strive for continued professional growth. Gifted children, meanwhile, want to investigate a wide range of topics without time constraints. Additionally, they may have to explore challenging topics further. They prefer to act like scientists in that they enjoy group activities, communication and cooperation. In particular, they want to be evaluated by others in a totally embedded assessment. Gifted children also expect teachers to understand the life circumstances and needs of the students. In addition, they asked for teachers to respect individual experiments and to show them how to safely use new equipment or research methods. As a result, gifted children and science teachers have to recognize the differences of opinion concerning a good science class for the gifted. This study can help formulate strategies to establish quality management of materials in gifted science classes.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.271-280
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to investigate how free inquiry activities affects the scientific process skills and scientific attitudes of 5th and 6th of elementary school students. For this study, 265 elementary students from 5th and 6th grade in Seoul were selected. In comparison group 130 students were implemented and to the experimental group 135 students who did not the free inquiry activities were implemented. The result of this study is as follows: First, curiosity was the most affective factor that motivate free inquiry activities and made them select their topics. Most of the students invested for the inquiry activity in less than 3 weeks. They had some help in every stages. Students became interested in free inquiry activities because they learned new facts and enjoyed doing experiments and they wanted to continue for the same reasons. Second, free inquiry activities had little effect on the basic science process skills of the experimental group, compared to the control group at the significant difference of p=0.05. Third, free inquiry activities had considerable effect on the integrative inquiry process skills of the experimental group, compared to the control group at the significant difference of p=0.05. Fourth, the result of the post-test of the experimental group showed that free inquiry activities had no effect on scientific attitudes at the significant difference of p=0.05. In conclusion, free inquiry activities will be much more effective in developing integrative inquiry process skills than in developing basic scientific process skills and scientific attitudes.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.173-185
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to present a reflective review of the earth and universe units from the revised elementary curriculum of 2007-2015 and suggest changes in the 2022 revised curriculum. For this purpose, we conducted an FGI with earth science educators and elementary school teachers regarding the content elements and system, the achievement standards and inquiry activity composition, and the vertical and horizontal curriculum connectivity. Free response and weighted hierarchical analysis items were incorporated into the FGI to ensure logical consistency of the inductively derived improvement. This analysis revealed that the composition of units by grade group had been unevenly distributed among each of the "earth systems" until the 2015 revised curriculum was finalized. Furthermore, the basic concept was still insufficient. We suggest that achievement standards centered on the learning content and skills must state specific scientific core competencies, and inquiry activities should include rigorous critical thinking, student written responses, and student inquiry and analysis. In the hierarchical analysis items, FGI emphasized the inclusion of essential content elements rather than reduction of content elements, understanding-oriented concept learning rather than interest-centered phenomenon learning, basic concept division learning before integration between subjects, and expanding vertical-horizontal connectivity rather than repeating and advancing learning. There is a limit to the generalizing the suggestions proposed in this study to the common opinion of elementary earth science experts. However, since the main vision of the 2022 revised curriculum is to gather opinions through educational entities' participation in a variety of educational subjects, it is suggested that our results should be incorporated as one of the opinions proposed for the 2022 curriculum revision.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.305-327
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the tendencies and general distributive features of creativity elements on activities in the Nuri curriculum teachers' guidebooks for the ages of 3-5. This was done by analysis of 1,883 activities related to creativity in the teachers' guidebooks. In order to analyze the data, the frequency and percentage of creativity elements were calculated. The results can be summarized as follows: First, the ratio of activities related to creativity was 95.1% for the age of three, 93.1% for the age of four, and 78.6% for the age of five. Second, the most common creativity element was cognitive element and the next was motivational element, and the least was dispositional element. Third, regarding themes, the frequency of creativity elements was highest in 'tools for living', and lowest in 'countries of the world'. Fourth, the creativity elements were more frequently found in group activities rather than free choice activities. Last, the frequency of creativity elements was highest in nature exploration, and was followed by social relations. The results of this study could be used as basic data for practicing activities related to creativity in the field of early childhood education.