• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.210-224
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze students' recognition of the free inquiry activity and to investigate what effect the free inquiry activity of the 2007 Revised Educational curriculum revision has on the science inquiry ability of middle school students. To conduct the research we worked with 262 female students, 8 classes of first graders in a middle school. Among them, 4 classes were taught in free inquiry activity and the remaining 4 classes were taught in the traditional way. The results of Likert-questionnaire indicate that students were learning about cooperative spirit through group investigation activities and discussions and did not take the free inquiry activity as a hard activity. Also they showed positive reaction agreeing that this activity is both a helpful method in learning science and interesting. However, it seemed that the investigation tends to flow between the leading 1~2 members of the group and showed difficulty in carrying out the investigation as a group after school hours. It showed there are few problems and obstacles in operating the free inquiry activity. The free inquiry activity did not give any meaningful influence on the improvement of science inquiry ability of students. Integrative inquiry process skills did not give a relevant influence, however, it showed a meaningful influence on the improvement of basic inquiry process skills. Especially, among the low-ranking element of basic inquiry process skills, it enhanced the capacity for prediction.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.147-158
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to explore changes of elementary science class in student oriented group inquiry activities using a Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) template that enhance scaffolding of inquiry. The changes focused on students' written reports and perceptions of their learning environment as well as discourse patterns. One fourth-grade class of 29 students participated in this study, and a developed work sheet of science writing was utilized to scaffold student's inquiry activities. Four units in the first-semester text book for fourth grade of the-, 2007 Educational Curriculum Revision were chosen for scaffolding inquiry, and sixteen lessons of instruction were all videotaped. For investigating students' written reports, a framework based on the aspects of science inquiry by Millar (2010) was used to evaluate the coherence between student inquiry activities and their claims. Secondly, a regular fourth-grade class was selected as the control group and was compared with the experiment group using the pre- and post-test of the survey on the perception of science class and science. Lastly, students' discourse patterns of the beginning science lesson were compared with those of the closing lesson. We found that the coherence in the last class increased significantly in students' written reports compared to the first one. Findings also indicated that students' perceptions on their learning environment moved toward student-centered. Based on our discourse patterns analysis, the last class was more student-centered from being teacher-centered than the first one.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.1-16
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to analyze about STS contents in the next generation science textbook for 10th grade according to curriculum revision 2007 and high school science textbooks focused on the Earth Science which were published according to the 7th curriculum. The contents of STS were analyzed by the STS topics of Yager(1989), Piel's standard(1981), and student activities by SATIS. The results of this study are the same as follows: 'The next generation science textbook' was shown that 20.9% is STS material amount in average by Yager's standard. 'High school science textbooks' were shown that 11.3% is STS material amount in average. Based on the STS topics by Yager's standard, most of STS content is focused on 'Relativity with local community', 'Application of science' and 'Cooperative work on real problems'. However, there is rare contents such as 'Multiple dimensions of science', 'Practice with decision-making strategies' and 'Evaluation concerned for getting and using information' in the next generation science textbook. In high school science textbooks were shown that 'Applicability of science' is the highest and 'Relativity with local community' is the next high contents. Based on the STS topics by Piel's standard, most of STS contents are focused on 'Environmental quality', 'Space research' and 'National defence' in the next generation science textbook. But high school science textbooks are focused on 'Natural resources' and 'Technology development'. The activities were analyzed by SATIS student activities. The major categories of activities included in the next generation science textbook were 'Investigation', 'Simulation' and 'Data analysis'. But, there were rare activities like 'Roleplaying', 'Research design' and 'Simulation' in high school science textbooks.