• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.56 no.3
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• pp.371-377
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• 2012

In this study, open inquiry reports of 165 eighth graders in Daegu were analyzed in terms of content area, the types of inquiry hypothesis, and the types of inquiry variables. Before summer vacation, students learned about inquiry process and explored their own inquiry topic for two class hours. During summer vacation, students performed open inquiry including problem selection, designing and performing experiment, data collection, data analysis, and writing report. After the vacation, students submitted their reports, and answered to additional survey regarding the source of inquiry idea, the definition of hypothesis, and the most difficult step of inquiry process. As a result, chemistry was the most dominant content area of the reports and biology and life science were the next. 130 out of 165 reports included inquiry hypotheses, and most of them were predictive hypotheses. In many reports, dependent and independent variables could not be identified because of their ambiguity. However, inquiry variables described in experimental design, which were mostly categorical variables, were clearer than those described in inquiry subject and inquiry hypothesis. The most difficult step of inquiry process for students was to generate an idea for open inquiry.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.903-927
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• 2012

The study aimed to analyze middle school students construction of physics inquiry problems for open inquiry from the viewpoint of variable isolation and clarification, and investigate students' difficulties during the processes of variable isolation and clarification to get implications for teaching and learning strategies for small group open inquiry activities which have been included in the 2007 national curriculum. The participants were 4 students who had attended an outreach program for the science gifted run by a university institution located in Seoul area. They performed an open inquiry on egg drop for 13 lessons for 30 hours. Level descriptions for variable isolation and clarification have been developed and applied to analyze students' inquiry problems and variables included by the problems. Students iterated inquiry processed 5 times and the inquiry problem showed progress gradually. Dependent variables have been isolated ahead and the levels of variable isolation and clarification showed higher than the independent variables. Many kinds of independent variables isolated extensively and the independent variables and control variables have been mingled. One of the reasons why students had some difficulties in isolation of independent variables could be the absence of theoretical models. The realities of school lab could restrict the variable isolation and clarification as well as topic selections. Some sensory or extensive variables such as broken eggs and drop height seem to be salient to be focused on as core variables. Lack of background knowledges could be one of the reasons for students' difficulties in variable clarification, such as theoretical definitions and operational definitions. As a result of lacking background knowledges, students could not construct theoretical models even though they could isolate and clarify variables as scientific lexical definitions. Some perceptions of inquiry as trial and error or reckless establishment of causal relations between variables could be accounted as one reason.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.7 no.5
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• pp.57-70
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• 2004

This study is the subsequent study that has the objectives examining the relationships among 'substantive understanding', 'scientific literacy' and 'learning intention' in computer supported intentional learning environments and inquiry ability, variables for affecting knowledge construction derived from the finding out of the former study. As a result, the current study confirmed in CSILE the close correlation between 'the learning intention for scientific inquiry' and 'substantive understanding', between 'the learning intention for scientific inquiry' and 'scientific literacy'. Another result showed that 'scientific literacy' was the most significant predictor on inquiry ability. Base on the result of this study, the present researcher is about to make suggestions to stimulate learners' scientific literacy in CSILE-based inquiry learning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.674-683
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to compare the ideas of pupils with that of the scientists about controlling and identifying of variables, in the two cases: open or guided inquiry. The subjects were the 7th grade boys and girls in a school, in Seoul, Korea. For the guided inquiry, the problems were given by the experiments of pupils' text. Pupils were asked to identify the variables in the experiments. For the open inquiry, pupils set their own inquiry problem. The pupils whose marks are within upper one-third of three classes were chosen. Pupils' ideas on variables were investigated in the design of experiment for their problems. In that, questionnaire developed by researchers was used. In the former, many of the pupils identify just only one variable despite of the fact there were two independent or dependent variables in the experiments. In the latter, the number of independent variables increased two or three. However, pupils do not control independent variables: they vary two independent variables simultaneously in the design of experiment. From these, we compared the pupils' ideas on variables with the scientists'

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.58 no.5
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• pp.478-489
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• 2014

The purposes of this study were to develop teaching strategy enhancing the activity to explore variables and to examine the instructional influences on students' creative thinking skills and critical thinking skills. In this study, a model using listing-excluding-controlling variables (DPAS model) was designed and applied to the existing 'Teaching model for the enhancement of the creative problem solving skills'. And it was implemented to preservice science teachers for the one semester. Results indicated that the experimental group presented statistically meaningful improvement in creative thinking skills, especially in recognizing problems, making hypothesis, controlling of variables and interpreting & transforming of data (p<.05). In addition, the strategy contributed to improve critical thinking skills, especially in making hypothesis and making conclusion & generalization (p<.05).

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.297-301
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• 1998

To investigate the 7th graders' ideas on inquiry, researchers analysed the titles of inquiry report, which were submitted as summer vacation homework. The subjects were four classes of 141 thirteen year old boys and girls in a school in Seoul. After analysing the titles of student's report, researchers classified the titles into 9 types according to the clarity and the nature of variables in the titles. The fact that few students represented the variables in the report title and most of the variables used were categoric was found.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.255-263
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to analyse the eighth grade students' performance of open investigations for two kinds of tasks: the qualitative one which involves the descriptive approach through observation, and the quantitative one which involves the quantitative data processing through control of variables. Researcher's observation, interview data as well as students' investigation reports, self-evaluations were analysed. The difficulties of qualitative open investigation lie in detecting and dealing with unexpected observations, of which the acceptance and interpretation were influenced by preconceptions. On the other hand, managing several variables, making reliable and valid measures, and quantitative data processing constituted main difficulties of quantitative open investigation. Some students could recognize the deficiencies of their methods and findings in qualitative one, but few in quantitative one. These results suggest the teaching point for each task of open investigations.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2002

This study was analyzing what studying factors are affecting on the development of science process skills of the 5th graders in the elementary school. For this research, 2 hundreds of elementary students were chosen and questioned on 3 factors like teacher, school environment, and learning strategy which are supposed to affect the development of science process skills. According to the result, there were differences in the categories according to the region. Especially, science process skills were significantly different in level of school category(p<.05)). Science process skills were significantly correlated with teachers and school category, and learning environment in 5th grade. Based on these results, it is expected to perform analysis about the influences that studying variables have on science achievement and attitude as well as scientific reasoning ability. Also, further study is needed about the influence that these small difference have on middle and high school students, though studying variables are not statistically significant on this research.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.547-558
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to compare inquiry activities in science textbooks' physics contents for Korean secondary schools with those of Singapore in order to provide a reference for further improvement of inquiry activities in Korean science textbooks. We analyzed inquiry activities using the framework of Millar et al.(1998) and Chinn & Malhotra (2002). The results of this study are as follows: There are differences between Korean and Singaporean inquiry activities in the area of 'learning objectives', 'students' thinking activities' and 'degree of openness'. In the area of 'learning objectives', the Korean textbooks have more activities associated with the learning of science content than those in Singaporean, whereas the Singaporean textbooks have more activities associated with the processes of scientific inquiry than in Korean textbooks. In the area of 'students' thinking activities', the Singaporean textbooks have activities like 'test a prediction', which Korean textbooks lack. The 'degree of openness' is higher in Singaporean textbooks than in Korean textbooks. And some differences in the area of 'authentic scientific inquiry' between Korean and Singaporean textbooks were also found. While the Korean textbooks do not have any activities associated with 'generating research questions', the Singaporean ones feature such activities. In the area of 'designing studies', the Singaporean textbooks have activities corresponding to 'selecting variables' and 'controlling variables', while the Korean ones never have such activities. The results of this study imply that it is necessary to balance inquiry activities in the area of 'learning objectives', 'students' thinking activities' and 'degree of openness', and to present activities close to authentic scientific inquiry in inquiry activities in textbooks.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.667-680
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to develop teaching stratege focused on Conservational reasoning, Proportional reasoning, Variable-controlling reasoning, Probabilitic reasoning, Correlational reasoning, Combinational reasoning and investigate its effects on enhancing students' logical thinking skills through the science teaching on common education. And the teaching materials was implemented to 110 students in middle school over about six months. The results indicated that the experimental group presented statistically meaningful improvement in logical thinking skills (p<05). Especially, this teaching stratege was effective on Conservational reasoning, Variable-controlling reasoning, Combinational reasoning but was not effective on Proportional reasoning, Probabilitic reasoning, Correlational reasoning (p<.05). Logical thinking according to the teaching strategy skill was not affected by gender, cognitive level, academic achievement (p<.05).