• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.364-373
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• 2006

The purpose of this study is to investigate inquiry levels in the laboratory practices of beginning middle school science teachers. For this research eight teachers were chosen among a pool of beginning teachers. Then four finalists were chosen individually by interviews. Topics associated with hands-on activity experiments were provided by the author. In order to analyze teaching-skill development, classroom observations were made under the same topic after one year. The inquiry levels of four novice teachers were confirmation or structured inquiry but the inquiry levels were not out of confirmation or structured inquiry levels when those compared to last year's one. This study contributes to the professional development of teachers and provides various informations for instructional development of beginning teachers.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.208-227
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to analyze secondary science teachers' planning process for an integrated science lesson. For this study, relevant references were collected from various sources, including literatures, previous studies regarding integrated science education, and individual studies. Two teachers (one from middle school and the other from high school) participated and 'the five-step instructional design' was adopted from former studies in this subject. The teachers were asked to develop an instructional plan based on 'the design' provided. While the consultation provided a framework for an instructional plan, the teachers were asked to take a leading role in terms of selecting the chapter to be taught; analyzing the course structure; and making detailed teaching plans. In the course of consultations, discussions, records, and analysis were organized into a journal. Based on the journal, the aspects of the planning process, including difficulties and problems faced by teachers, were analyzed in-depth. From the study, it could be observed that both high school and middle school teachers face various difficulties in preparing for the integrated science lesson. Among other things, the teachers emphasized the difficulties in the stages of selecting the topic, collecting the relevant information, and restructuring and organizing the lecture contents.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.455-467
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• 2000

The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of formative assessments practiced in middle school science teaching from a constructivist perspective. In order to examine the practices of formative assessments in science teaching, 7 science classes were observed and video-taped for each of 2 instructions. We also interviewed the teachers and 3 students per each class with semi-structured questions. The findings indicated that 3 types of formative assessments were generally used in science teaching; planned, interactive, and transitional from planned to interactive. Teachers tended to assess students' personal, social, and scientific developments through formative assessments. The assessment of scientific development was the most frequent pattern and was classified into the assessments of content, process, and context. However, formative assessments concerning content covered in class were dominant. The processes of formative assessments consisted of three interdependent stages; getting informations from students, judging their responses, and giving feedbacks to them. The types of questions and feedbacks used were also influenced by the extent of interactions between the teachers and the students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2009

The purposes of this study are to investigate the effects of the Science Conceptual Model Completion Activity and Science Conceptual Model Modifying Activity on middle-school students' achievement in science conceptual learning, and to analyze if there are any correlations among their achievements by purposed activities, their cognitive level and school science achievement. For the study, 112 middle school students were sampled for three groups, which are two experimental groups (Model Completion activity group, Model Modifying Activity group) and one control group. Pre- and post-tests were taken to measure the students' achievement in science concepts, and the logical thinking ability test was administered after the implementation period. In addition, their school science achievements were analyzed. The research findings are as follows: First, the Science Conceptual Model Completion activity is more effective for middle school students' science conceptual learning than the Science Conceptual Model Modifying activity or conventional activity. Second, higher school science achievement also results in higher achievement of science concepts through the Conceptual Model Modifying activity or the Conceptual Model Completion activity. Lastly, the Conceptual Model Completion activity is more effective for the concrete operational level students to attain science concepts than formal operational level ones. Meanwhile, on the contrary, the Conceptual Model Modifying activity is more effective for formal operational level students than the concrete operational level ones.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.379-392
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• 2018

This study aims to explore science inquiry teaching efficacy that middle school science teachers implementing science practice-based teaching for one year recognized as necessary for teaching science through science practice. Examining interview data in this study, science inquiry teaching efficacy was identified in both planning and implementing in the areas of managing efficacy, instructional strategy efficacy, and content knowledge efficacy. In planning science inquiry instruction, there is science curriculum management efficacy under managing efficacy. There are the efficacy of outlining science inquiry lesson, efficacy of organizing science practice, efficacy of questioning for science practice, and efficacy of understanding student science practice under instructional strategy efficacy. Under the content knowledge efficacy are contents and science practice understanding efficacy and core ideas efficacy. In implementing science inquiry instruction, managing efficacy includes science practice time management efficacy and science practice classroom culture efficacy. Instructional strategy efficacy includes efficacy of motivating student science practice, efficacy of responding to student science practice, efficacy of stimulating student active thinking, efficacy of student active engagement in argumentation, efficacy of evaluating student participation. No content knowledge efficacy have been identified in implementing science inquiry instruction.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.591-608
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to analyze system thinking revealed in science teachers' teaching practices of middle school astronomy classes. Astronomy lessons were video-taped from four eighth grade science teachers. The video recordings were all transcribed and analyzed by employing a framework for systems thinking analysis after modifying an existing frame of hierarchial structure used in relevant previous studies. In addition, four participants were interviewed in order to uncover their orientation toward teaching using video stimulated recall method. Findings are as follows: All participating teachers were not able to employ the four levels of system thinking appropriately and only utilized the low level of systems thinking. They also demonstrated teacher-centered practices for employing system thinking despite their student-centered orientation toward teaching. The main reason for these results may be that teachers focused more on spatial thinking, than on system thinking as well as the lack of teacher's knowledge about the content and formative assessment of non-earth science teachers. Implications on how to effectively employ the system thinking in astronomy class are discussed in this paper.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.431-442
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• 2015

SSI instruction can be an effective tool to promote key competencies for future citizens. Our assumption of the study is that applying the concept of collective intelligence in the context of SSI learning would facilitate the learning. Thus, we designed and implemented Collective Intelligence-based SSI instruction over almost a year and observed the effects of the instruction on enhancing students' collaboration, information management, critical thinking, and communication skills. Twenty 9th grade students enrolled in a science-gifted program voluntarily participated. Data was collected by administering a questionnaire to examine the skills before, in the middle of, and after the instruction, and by conducting classroom observations and focus student group interviews. The results indicated some degree of improvement in their targeted skills. First, they experienced the expansion of their thoughts by actively sharing information and ideas using the web platform. Second, they became more flexible and open to different points of views in order to accomplish a common goal. Third, they appreciated having independent time and space to explore their own positions on the issues and to search necessary information, and believed that the process encouraged them to more pro-actively participate and communicate in the group debates. Lastly, they positively perceived the values that collaboration with diverse group members could produce.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.50 no.4
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• pp.338-345
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• 2006

study investigated the effect of an instruction using generating analogy on scientific conceptual understanding, science learning motivation, attitude toward science instruction, and perception of instruction. Two classes of seventh graders at a middle school in Seoul were randomly assigned to the treatment group and the control group, and they were taught about the motion of molecules for 5 class hours. The instruction for treatment group was developed based on the Glynns Teaching-With-Analogy model. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that the scores of the treatment group were significantly higher than those of the control group in the conception test. However, there was no significant difference between two groups in the science learning motivation test and the test on the attitude toward science instruction. Survey results on the students perception of instruction showed that generating analogy was hard for the greater part of students, and finding appropriate analog was the most difficult work. Educational implications are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.239-245
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• 2006

The purposes of this study were to develop and implement a teaching strategy that reinforced teacher-student interaction for middle school first grade science and investigate the impact of the teaching strategy on student comprehension of scientific concepts, logical thinking ability, and science-related attitudes. 200 students attending a co-ed middle school located in Gyeonggi province were selected for the study and divided into an experiment and control group each consisting of 100 pupils. The teaching strategy reinforcing teacher-student interaction was applied to the experiment group, while conventional teaching, teacher-led lecturing, was carried out on the control group. To accomplish reinforced teacher-student interaction teacher asked students diversified questions and gave delayed feedbacks that deliberately focused on thought provocation. Results showed that the developed teaching strategy was effective in improving the students' logical thinking ability(p<.01). However, no significant differences were found in student comprehension of scientific concepts and science-related attitudes between the experimental and control group(p<.05). It was determined that more sound research is needed to develop and apply a lesson plan based on the teaching strategy used in this study.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.790-797
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of the level-differentiated laboratory activities suggested by the 7th national curricula compared to the in-depth level activities only and supplementary level activities only. Two hundred 7th grade students attending a coed middle school were selected for this study and divided into three groups; level-differentiated, in-depth, and supplementary group. In each group, the students were subdivided into the in-depth level and the supplementary level by the formative test after completing the basic learning course. The in-depth and the supplementary laboratory activities were developed and engaged to the respective students in the level-differentiated group for one semester, while only the in-depth activities were engaged to the in-depth group and only the supplementary activities were engaged to the supplementary group. To examine the effects of treatments, the science knowledge test and the inquiry process skill test were administered before and after treatments and the students' opinions about the level-differentiated instruction were surveyed. The results showed that there were significant differences in the science knowledge achievements between the groups while no significant difference was found in the inquiry process skills. Post hoc analysis showed these differences were found between the level-differentiated group and the supplementary group. After the activities, most students in the level-differentiated group responded positively on doing level-differentiated activities except a few students in the supplementary level, These results justify the effectiveness of the level-differentiated laboratory activities compared to the supplementary only laboratory activities in middle school science classes.