• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.647-667
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• 2009

This study intends to analyze open-ended inquiry activities of elementary science-gifted students in terms of how similar they are to authentic science inquiry and suggest desirable ways to make more effective programs for the gifted. For this study, we selected a small group with five elementary science-gifted students who had participated in the open inquiry program of summer camp held in the Institute for Science Gifted Education and collected data through recording and video-taping their discussion and performance from planning to coordinating inquiry results. The data was analyzed in terms of epistemological features and cognitive process in authentic science inquiry. The results is as follows. In terms of epistemology, students' inquiry methods were theory laden and they constructed knowledge in collaborative groups. For example, the students often discussed about performing the thought experiment and scientific concept related to inquiry task or their opinion. And in terms of cognitive process, their designing inquiry was similar to authentic science inquiry especially selecting variables, planning procedures, controlling variables, planning measures.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.289-310
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• 2013

The purpose of the study is to investigate science process skills and suggest several considerations about developing scientific inquiries for secondary science gifted students. To do this, we analyzed scientific inquiries of science gifted programs and evaluated them on the quantity of problem perception, problem finding and inquiry planning that are regarded as high level science process skills, then revised each inquiry to include those high level skills. The result was that the first, there were differences in frequencies and types of science process skills among those inquiries. The second, there were very few problem perception and problem finding and were not many inquiry planning. The third, some of the revised inquiries showed those high level skills. From this, we would like to suggest we should construct scientific inquiries of science gifted program out of many and various themes. And there should be more high level science process skills such as problem perception, problem finding, and inquiry planning. For this, scientific inquiry developers should have intentions to involve such science process skills which is appropriate for science gifted student.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.115-128
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• 2014

Students' argumentation during science inquiry should be regarded important as it could help students to make meaningful connections between theories and experiments and to make scientific claims based on evidences. In this study, elementary science-gifted students' argumentation during small group inquiry was analyzed according to inquiry process. There were three stages of argumentation during students' inquiry. The first argumentation was to predict what would happen(Prediction stage). In this stage, the scientific problem was presented by concept cartoon as a way to start and to facilitate students' argumentation. The second argumentation was to design an experiment to solve the problem(Planning stage) and the third was to interpret the result of experiment(Interpretation stage). The discourse move, level of grounds and their relationship were analyzed to find the characteristics of argumentation during science inquiry. In terms of discourse move, 'Asking for opinion' was the most frequent whereas 'Claim' or 'Rebuttal' were rare. Students tended to listen to or ask others' opinion rather than provide their own claims or critics on others' opinion. 'Rebuttal' was shown a few times only during prediction and planning stage. There was no single 'Rebuttal' during interpretation stage. Students tended to easily accept or agree other student's interpretation of data instead of arguing their own ideas. In terms of level of grounds, students mostly provided their ideas without any attempt to justify their position. Especially during planning stage, students tended to suggest or decide ways of measuring or controlling variables without any grounds. They used evidences only a few times during prediction stage. In terms of relation between discourse move and level of grounds, students provided grounds most frequently when they dispute others' claims. The level of grounds were higher when they advocate or clarify their own or others' ideas than when they claim their ideas. The result of this study showed that the quality of elementary science-gifted students' argumentation during science inquiry was undesirable in many ways. Implications for scaffolding and facilitating argumentation during science inquiry were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.262-276
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the elementary teachers' views and students' views about the difficulties in teaching and learning on open inquiry activities of elementary school science. Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with three elementary teachers who have serviced more than three years, and with twenty four elementary students attending schools located in Cheongju City. And their anecdotes were collected and analyzed. The interview questions were developed through Seidman's steps to acquire the reliability in the interview data. From the interviews and anecdotes, we found that elementary teachers' views about the difficulties of teaching open inquiry activities: the difficulties of teaching in finding inquiry problem and planning inquiry, the difficulties of managing group activities, the difficulties of managing class hours for inquiry, the lack of the students' inquiry abilities, and problems on students' affective characteristics. And the students have the views about the difficulties in doing open inquiry activities: the difficulties of finding inquiry problem and planning inquiry, being unaccustomed to write reports, the troubles with investigating, problems on affective characteristics, the difficulties of joining in a group, and the lack of inquiry abilities. The teachers give suggestions for effective application of the open inquiry activities: first, the teachers must encourage students' emotion and will in doing open inquiry activities, second, there must be the steady inquiry teaching and learning in ordinary elementary science classes. Based on the results, this study suggested that elementary teachers should concern specially about students' being unaccustomed to write reports and the troubles in doing scientific investigation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.452-458
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• 1995

Science textbooks are very important materials in order to know elementary science learning in Japan and Korea. In this research the 5th grade science textbooks in Japan and Korea are analyzed by an analyzing category. The analyzing category is consisted of knowledge and scientific inquiry. Knowledge is divided by fact, concept, and rule. Scientific inquiry is divided by problem cognition, variable control, experiment planning, observing, measuring, categorizing, inferring, data transformation, predicting, correlation, cause and effect, result, communication, which are 13 subcategories. Analyzing methods are counting the frequency of each subcategory and tabulating the data. The results of this study are: 1. The frequency of scientific inquiry appeared in Korean 5th grade science textbooks is three times more than that in Japanese textbooks. 2. In scientific inquiry category, Japanese science textbooks emphasized observing, predicting, measuring and problem cognition; Korean science textbooks emphasized experiment planning, observing and problem cognition. 3. In knowledge category, fact subcategory is mostly emphasized in both countries.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.719-731
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• 2017

The aim of this study was to analyze a group of pre-service elementary teachers experience on the cognitive terms of biology inquiry subjects, and experience on living materials related with the domain of life in the Korea elementary school science textbook. Firstly, elementary school pre-service teachers had the confidence of inquiry subjects related with the domain of life such as 'when we take breath what will happen in human body?' and 'Can we make the model of human body?' But they did have the most diffidence of 'The search for pieris rapae, a cabbage butterfly's life', 'Can we grow the little creature?' The reason why pre-service elementary teachers had diffidence of comprehending experiment procedure and planning ability was that 'they focused on understanding the scientific concepts instead of planning experiments by themselves', and 'they carried out the least amount of experiments' Secondly, elementary school pre-service teachers had never experienced biology materials related with the domain of life in the Korea elementary school biology science textbook such as 'tradescantia reflexa', 'Caddis larva', 'hydrilla verticillata', and 'Plantain lily.' According to the findings obtained from the study, the reason why they had never seen the biology materials was that they had the least opportunity of immediately observing life creatures due to memorization-intensive classes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.1204-1221
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• 2012

The purpose of this research was to identify the components of scaffolding in open inquiry and to explore the functions of teachers' scaffolding, which is necessary to support students' open inquiry. In order to identify scaffolding components, at first, we conducted a survey using a questionnaire on what students think about open inquiry on 110 students who performed open inquiry in two middle schools, and then carried out factor analysis based on the survey results. It was attempted to investigate students' perception through focus group interviews corresponding to scaffolding components that were identified through factor analysis. Also, we examined teachers' empirical view of scaffolding functions in open inquiry through in-depth interviews with four teachers. The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that there were five scaffolding components of open inquiry: motivation, planning, strategy, environment and participation. The results of focus group interviews showed that students experienced difficulties in planning, strategy, environment and participation components, except for motivation component. In particular, students asked for support to strengthen the participation component, which means recognizing their role, active participation and collaboration with peers. Meanwhile, the results of in-depth interviews with teachers showed that teachers' empirical views of scaffolding function in open inquiry were categorized as cognitive (conceptual, metacognitive), emotional (motivational, arbitrative) and strategic. Interviewed teachers preferred the strategic scaffolding and cognitive scaffolding to the emotional scaffolding. Based on the results, we also discussed the implications for performing open inquiry effectively.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.285-297
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• 2013

The purpose of this research is to find the effect of the lesson using open-inquiry report Lubric on open-inquiry standard and science process skill; to find the change of cognition on open-inquiry for elementary school 5th grade students. Two classes (elementary school 5th grade) were selected which located in a small and medium-sized city for this research and they were separated as an experimental group and a comparative group. Open-inquiry lesson was done by referring teaching method which introduced through the curriculum. The procedure was understanding about open-inquiry, making open-inquiry subject, planning, and performing inquiry, mid-term, performing inquiry, making a report, presentation, and evaluation. Open-inquiry report Lubric which developed by Sook-Kyung Kim et al. (2010) was provided to the experimental group. Comparative group was instructed by using open-inquiry report which introduced to the elementary school 5th grade science text book. Interview paper was developed in order to check out the effect of the research by using a test paper of science process skill. The following could be found out through the research. After open-inquiry lesson, 10 open-inquiry reports(5 reports from experimental group, 5 reports from comparative group) have been drawn at random as samples from the total 62 sets (30 reports from experimental group, 32 reports from comparative group) and evaluated by a researcher and two elementary school teachers who have master degree. The reliability of the 3 scorers was 0.923 of mean correlation coefficient. And then the researcher evaluated all open-inquiry reports. The average score of open-inquiry report was 66.78 for experimental group, 54.27 for comparative group, respectively. And there was a significant difference at p<0.05 level as a result of the t-test. The experimental group rated high at p<0.05 level according to the analysis of post-science process skill test. According to the result of survey, both experimental group and comparative group had understood open-inquiry activity. It was especially rated high for experimental group on understanding scientific inquiry process, interest and satisfaction in open-inquiry and re-participation rate. By interviewing experimental group, it is recognized that the students utilized Lubric very well through the overall process. Finally, self-evaluation was done during open-inquiry activity and it was reported that the students gained more knowledge about science and changed to positive about science. As a result, the lesson using open-inquiry report Lubric was effective for students to improve writing skill of an open-inquiry report and science process skill and finally changed the cognition to positive about open-inquiry lesson.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.304-316
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to analyze high school students' critical opinions on others' inquiries in small group open inquiry. Forty-one high school students participated in these activities at the inquiry planning stage and the intermediate stage of inquiry. In the two activities, 595 and 233 opinions were presented respectively, and analyzed into categories based on the inquiry process. The main research results are as follows: first, many opinions were presented in the areas of 'problem recognition and hypothesis setting' and 'design of inquiry' in the feedback on the inquiry plan, especially related to 'revision and addition of research problems,' 'research targets and conditions,' and 'control of variables.' Second, in the feedback on the results of the inquiry, there were many opinions related to 'report preparation' and 'design of inquiry' area. Based on the research results, implications related to the application of critical opinion activity were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.387-394
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• 2005

We have analyzed the science-gifted educational program (year 2002) at the Seoul National University in terms of its educational objectives, scientific models, and cognitive processes in scientific inquiry in order to provide insights into developing and improving science-gifted educational program. We assumed the following items as important factors for teaching scientifically gifted students: higher-order thinking skills involving synthesis domain in the educational objectives, highly abstract nature and complexity in the scientific models, cognitive processes of planning experiments in the cognitive processes in scientific inquiry. According to the analyzed results, the program has the following characteristics: (1) the rates of both higher and lower-order thinking skill domain in the educational objectives are similarly high, but the rate of synthesis domain is relatively low; (2) in the case of the scientific models, the rate of the multiple concepts and/or processes model is relatively low, while the level of the abstractness is relatively on average (3) cognitive processes of authentic scientific inquiry is not thoroughly reflected in the scientific inquiry activities, and very few cognitive processes of planning experiments factor is reflected. Therefore, we conclude in the synthesis domain in the educational objectives, multiple concepts and/or processes model, and cognitive processes of planning experiments should be especially reflected more on the science-gifted educational program in order to serve the needs of scientifically gifted students.