• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.383-404
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• 1999

This study began with an epistemological question about the nature of mathematical cognition in relation to the learner's activity. Therefore, by examining Piaget's 'reflective abstraction' theory which can be an answer to the question, we tried to get suggestions which can be given to the mathematical education in practice. 'Reflective abstraction' is formed through the coordination of the epistmmic subject's action while 'empirical abstraction' is formed by the characters of observable concrete object. The reason Piaget distinguished these two kinds of abstraction is that the foundation for the peculiar objectivity and inevitability can be taken from the coordination of the action which is shared by all the epistemic subjects. Moreover, because the mechanism of reflective abstraction, unlike empirical abstraction, does not construct a new operation by simply changing the result of the previous construction, but is forming re-construction which includes the structure previously constructed as a special case, the system which is developed by this mechanism is able to have reasonability constantly. The mechanism of the re-construction of the intellectual system through the reflective abstraction can be explained as continuous spiral alternance between the two complementary processes, 'reflechissement' and 'reflexion'; reflechissement is that the action moves to the higher level through the process of 'int riorisation' and 'thematisation'; reflexion is a process of 'equilibration'between the assimilation and the accomodation of the unbalance caused by the movement of the level. The operational learning principle of the theorists like Aebli who intended to embody Piaget's operational constructivism, attempts to explain the construction of the operation through 'internalization' of the action, but does not sufficiently emphasize the integration of the structure through the 'coordination' of the action and the ensuing discontinuous evolvement of learning level. Thus, based on the examination on the essential characteristic of the reflective abstraction and the mechanism, this study presents the principles of teaching and learning as following; $\circled1$ the principle of the operational interpretation of knowledge, $\circled2$ the principle of the structural interpretation of the operation, $\circled3$ the principle of int riorisation, $\circled4$ the principle of th matisation, $\circled5$ the principle of coordination, reflexion, and integration, $\circled6$ the principle of the discontinuous evolvement of learning level.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.78 no.3
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• pp.351-368
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• 2021

This paper, by applying a reliability-based framework, develops seismic vulnerability macrozonation maps for Tehran, the capital and one of the most earthquake-vulnerable city of Iran. Seismic performance assessment of 3-, 4- and 5-story steel moment resisting frames (SMRFs), designed according to ASCE/SEI 41-17 and Iranian Code of Practice for Seismic Resistant Design of Buildings (2800 Standard), is investigated in terms of overall maximum inter-story drift ratio (MIDR) and unit repair cost ratio which is hereafter known as "damage ratio". To this end, Tehran city is first meshed into a network of 66 points to numerically locate low- to mid-rise SMRFs. Active faults around Tehran are next modeled explicitly. Two different combination of faults, based on available seismological data, are then developed to explore the impact of choosing a proper seismic scenario. In addition, soil effect is exclusively addressed. After building analytical models, reliability methods in combination with structure-specific probabilistic models are applied to predict demand and damage ratio of structures in a cost-effective paradigm. Due to capability of proposed methodology incorporating both aleatory and epistemic uncertainties explicitly, this framework which is centered on the regional demand and damage ratio estimation via structure-specific characteristics can efficiently pave the way for decision makers to find the most vulnerable area in a regional scale. This technical basis can also be adapted to any other structures which the demand and/or damage ratio prediction models are developed.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.717-754
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• 2015

As a design research, this study aims to identify students' collaborative problems solving patterns using the Wiki and design factors triggering MKB(mathematical knowledge building) in virtual environment. For 70 days, 14 Korean secondary gifted students, who enrolled in calculus II courses in one of gifted institutions in Korea, solved 10 math problems together using the Wiki. In this study, I considered five design factors; motivation, practice of LaTeX, norms of participation, epistemic agency, and two types of educational settings. The primary pattern emergent in students' collaborative problem solving process is identified as 'solutions and refutations' along the double helix consisting of the constructive line and the critical line, which is very similar to the pattern of 'Conjectures and Refutations'(Lakatos, 1976). Despite that most participants had difficulty in using LaTeX for mathematical expressions, this study shows that Wikis are valuable tools for providing Korean secondary students opportunities to learn social virtue such as humility and courage (Lampert, 1990), which is considered to be have been neglected in Korean educational environment but is emphasized as precious for doing mathematics in the field of mathematics education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.249-257
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to analyze the knowledge and ability levels of middle school students in four areas: conceptual understanding, argument construction, justification schemes, and use of scientific knowledge in a causal explanation for a genetic phenomenon. A group of 162 middle school students who have taken a class titled Genetics and Evolution participated in the study. Each student answered-and justified the answer to-one question pertaining to genetics. Ability levels were rated from level 0 to level 4, with 4 being the top rating. Students were required to choose one of two competing arguments to explain whether green seed pimps and red seed pimps of the same size and shape were the same species or not. Analyzing conceptual understanding: 47% of the respondents provided the correct answer. Analyzing their abilities for constructing an argument: 75% of the students with the correct answer and 42% of the students with the incorrect answer were evaluated to be at ability level 3 or 4 for argument construction. Analyzing the students' justification schemes: "Scientific idea" and "Analogy" were the most frequently used schemes. Analyzing their use of scientific knowledge: of the students who selected the scientific idea justification scheme, 36% used the correct scientific knowledge, but the remainder used inaccurate or nonspecific scientific knowledge. These findings provide implication for encouraging argumentative writing explaining scientific phenomena regarding epistemic practice.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to explore how a high school science teacher (Teacher E) shifted her understanding and facilitation of scientific modeling through participation in a professional learning community (PLC) for over a year. Based on socially situated theory of learning, I focused on examining Teacher E's frames about scientific modeling from her social interactions. Teacher E participated in her school-based PLC over a year and collaborated with other science teachers, coaches, and researchers to improve science instruction. I qualitatively explored her participation in 6 full-day professional learning opportunities-studios-where the PLC members collectively planned, implemented, and debriefed modeling-based lessons. Especially, I focused on two Studios (Studio 2, 6) where Teacher E became the host teacher and implemented the lessons. I also examined her classroom teaching in those Studios. To understand how the PLC inquiry affected the shifts observed in Teacher E's understanding and practice, I explored how the inquiry evolved over the 6 Studios. Findings suggest that in Studio 2, Teacher E viewed students' role in scientific modeling as to fill out the worksheet with "correct" answers. Meanwhile, in Studio 6, she focused on helping students collaborate to construct explanatory models of phenomena using evidence. The PLC inquiry, focused on supporting students' construction of evidence-based explanations and collaboration in scientific modeling, seemed to promote the shifts observed in Teacher E's understanding and facilitation of scientific modeling. These findings can inform educational researchers and practitioners who aim to promote teachers' professional learning to support students' epistemic practices.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2020

In scientific argumentation, students can use rebuttals to escape uncertainty, which, in this case, can be defined as a vague and fuzzy feeling about other students' explanations. As rebuttals can play a critical role in the sophistication of arguments and the alleviation of uncertainty, this study aims to understand the dynamics of uncertainty and rebuttals by exploring the context of the uncertainty experienced by elementary school students in the argumentation of "Why did the kidney beans not germinate?" and to get insights based on the research results. Twenty fourth-grade students and their homeroom teacher in Kyong-Ki province, South Korea, took part in the research. Students engaged in argumentation in five small groups of four students. The researcher collected qualitative data through video transcriptions, student interviews, and field notes. In the data analysis, the researcher employed the constant comparative method to explore in what context students experienced uncertainty and how they used rebuttals. The results of this study were as follows: First, students tried to reduce their uncertainty through argumentation on why the kidney beans did not germinate. Second, students used elaboration-oriented rebuttals, personal opinion-oriented rebuttals, and blame-oriented rebuttals to reduce this uncertainty. However, when they used blame-oriented rebuttals, their uncertainty and negative emotions increased. Third, intervention by the teacher led students to stop using blame-oriented rebuttals. Instead, they employed elaboration-oriented rebuttals to explore why the kidney beans would not sprout, and finally, they escaped uncertainty by discovering an appropriate explanation. Based on the findings of this study, the researcher discussed how the interaction between uncertainty and elaboration-oriented rebuttals could shape and facilitate argument development in elementary school students.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.5 no.1 s.9
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• pp.55-92
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• 2005

The factors contributing to the formation of an important scientific concept in South Korea and its circulation in the society are the scientific knowledge that had been already formed, matured, and established in the U.S.A, Europe and Japan and has been introduced into Korea, and the institutions that have been formed during the recent modernization in South Korea. The concept of 'genetic information' cannot be an exception in this context. The concept of genetic information is the one that has been extended and intensified by the genomics and bioinformatics formed and matured through the Human Genome Projects from the former concept of inheritance or heredity within the framework of classical and molecular genetics. The purpose of this study was to find out 'how the production structure of genetic information in South Korea has been formed', under the perspective of the conceptual, epistemic, and institutional holisticity or integratedness in the concept and knowledge production structure idealized in Western advanced nations. The discourse of genetic engineering popular in the mid 1980's in South Korea has catalyzed the development of molecular biology. However, the institutional balance that had been established for the biochemistry departments in Natural Science College and Medical College was not formed between the genetic engineering and genetics departments in South Korea. Therefore, they were unable to achieve the more integrative and macro-level disciplinary impact on life sciences, largely due to institutional lack of the capable (human) genetics departments in some leading Korean colleges of Medicine. In genomics, the cutting-edge reprogramming and restructuring of the traditional genetics in the West, South Korea has not invested, even meagerly, in the infrastructure, fund, and research and development (R & D) for the Basic or First Phase of the research trajectory in the Human Genome Project. Without a minimal Basic Phase, the genomics research and development in Korea has been running more or less for the Advanced or Second Phase. Bioinformatics has started developing in Korea under a narrow perspective which regards it as a mere sub-discipline of information technology (IT). Having developed itself in parallel with genomics, bioinformatics contains its own unique logics and contents that can be both directly and indirectly connected to the information science and technology. As a result, bioinformatics reveals a defect in respect of being synergistically integrated into genetics and life sciences in Korea. Owing to the structural problem in the production, genetic information appears to be produced in a fragmented pattern in the Korean society since its fundamental base is weak and thin. A good example of the conceptual and institutional fragmentedness is that 'the genetics of individual identification' is not a normal integrated part of the Korean genetics, but a scientific practice exercised in the departments of legal medicine in a few Medical Colleges. And the environment contributing to the production structure of genetic information in South Korea today comprises 'sangmyung gonghak'(or life engineering) discourse and non-governmental organization movement.

• Journal of Korean Philosophical Society
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• v.116
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• pp.155-180
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• 2010

The three means of listening, reflection and meditation (${\acute{s}}raava{\d{n}}a$, manana and $nididhy{\bar{a}}sana$) which are central devices of practice in $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ philosophy should be understood not as a continuative step but as a methodological extension on condition of having one and the same purpose. In other words, the three means should be interpreted in a listening-oriented manner, in which the process has to be methodologically extended to reflection and meditation only when the direct knowledge on the reality is not gained in listening. This kind of interpretation can be more justified by displaying significant characteristics of Indian philosophy implied in the three means. It can be easily said that $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ belonging to the liberation-centric tradition is a project of 'regaining essential self' through which the self becomes essential self by knowing that self. In this case the listening-oriented interpretation coincides with the basic teachings of $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$, since listening alone can be a sufficient means for obtaining knowledge of the original self. Further, as the project of 'regaining essential self' is carried out by the three means, these can be called a sort of 'event' that is carried out according to the scenario of $Ved{\bar{a}}ntic$ metaphysics. In this case listening is a course of comprehending the scenario of event participated by oneself, and that participant can accomplish the project by way of listening the scenario alone judged as somewhat more effective for liberation. However, in the later $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ there arises a meditation-oriented interpretation of which three means are regarded not as a methodological extension but as a continuative step, because of the emphasis on meditation under the lasting influence of other philosophical systems. This is a result of epistemic desire that tries to convert what is heard to what is specially perceived or what is given to what is accepted. It may be said that this interpretation emphasizing the phased transition from the indirect to the direct of knowledge is an attempt to rationalize the repetitive delay of event as the actual failure of project. Furthermore, an assertion of the later $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ which refers the fourth means called $sam{\bar{a}}dhi$ is based on the logic that the self-realization is possible apart from and outside the text, and accordingly it is incompatible with an assertion of the early $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ that the self-realization is a reproduction as it is of the scenario guided by the absolute text. After all, the standard interpretation on the three means in $Ved{\bar{a}}nta$ have to be the listening-oriented, but not be the meditation-oriented or the $sam{\bar{a}}dhi$-oriented.