• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.160-175
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• 2004

This study examined the knowledge and practices of scientific inquiry displayed by three student teachers and two beginning teachers at secondary levels. Observations using the instrument of OTOP designed by the research team of OCEPT (Oregon Collaborative for Excellent in the Preparation of Teachers) generalized similar teaching strategies of scientific inquiry between student and beginning teachers, such as using group work for students' first hand experience, using concrete materials for experimentation or visual tools for demonstration, using questions for factual knowledge mainly without opportunities to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Those scientific inquiry activities were very confirmative ones to follow the steps without opportunities of understanding nature of science or nature of scientific inquiry. However, all participants in this study hold knowledge of scientific inquiry envisioned by the National Science Education Standards [NSES] (NRC, 1996), where students identify their hypothesis, use critical and logical thinking, and consider alternative explanations through argumentation as well as experimentation. An inconsistent relationship between participating teachers knowledge and practices about scientific inquiry resulted from their lack of pedagogy skills of implementing it in the classroom. Providing opportunities for these teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices about scientific inquiry was recommended for the future study. Furthermore, increasing college faculty interest in new teaching approaches for upgrading the content knowledge of student teachers and beginning teachers was recommended as a solution, since those teachers showed evidence of influence by college faculties at universities in their pedagogy skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.349-357
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to consider the implications of science experiment in class and to seek a direction for its improvement. For this purpose, Science textbooks, teachers' cognitions, and classroom activities have been analyzed to find out how many and what kind of levels of inquiry elements are included in those. In this study, 22 teachers have participated in the questionnaire to investigate their perception about experiment class, and the two instruction cases in two classes of 9th grade have also been analyzed. Results show that most of the textbooks have included questioning, evidence collecting, explanation of phenomena, and connection with existing scientific knowledge. But the elements of communication and justification have been few. Most levels of the inquiry are teacher-led. Although the teachers thought communication and justification are important, their classroom activities does not coalesce with their thoughts. The students mostly spend their time with connecting evidence, they hardly explain the phenomenon based on the proofs as the results of experiment, and the activities of connection with the existing scientific knowledge, and communication and justification.

• Journal of Korean Society of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.396-416
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• 2021

Objectives: This study was conducted to analyze the trends of government R&D (R&D) projects related to laboratory safety over the past 20 years. Methods: We collected publications from various databases(DBs) with words such as laboratory(ies), lab(s), researcher(s), laboratory worker(s), safety, environment, hazard(s), risk(s), and so on. Selected publications were analyzed by the research funds and the number of projects according to the investment subject and research characteristics. Results: About 93% of the total R&D budget went to government policy projects, not scientific research. Second, from the perspective of 'safety management activities', most of the research is related to management and inspection at the organizational level. Issues that need to be discussed at the national level like policy governance are not included. Third, focusing on the 'safety management cycle', there were few studies related to 'prediction' or 'post-response'. Fourth, when an analysis framework combining the perspectives of 'safety management activities' and 'safety management cycle' is applied, most of the budget is spent on infrastructure such as digital management systems, whereas basic knowledge for prevention and production of evidence was very few. Conclusions: In order to prevent policy planning without policy evaluation, implementation without strategy, and evaluation without evidence, it is necessary to expand investment in empirical research on risks, research on the effectiveness of current application methods, and research on theory development. The government budget for laboratory safety-related projects should be managed separately from the R&D budget for scientific research. Although less than 5% of the budget allocated to scientific research is the total budget, an optical illusion occurs because both the project budget and the scientific research budget are counted as R&D budgets.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.443-451
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• 2005

This study was designed to investigate children's response types, which are always consistent when they meet with different evidence materials. The participants in this study were 119 students of 6th grade in elementary school, who were acquainted with evidence materials presented and able to state logically. Evidence materials were constructed on the main subjects of a cause of the dinosaur extermination and a purpose of the astronomical observatory establishment. The criteria, 'whether or not believe evidence materials presented', 'whether or not believe evidence materials newly presented', 'where or not decrease their belief in the preinstructional evidence materials', and 'whether or not change their belief' were used to classify the type of their responses. So the students' responses to the evidence materials were classified into low types: rejection, reinterpretation, belief decrease, and valuation by evidences. Only about a third of them was also consistent with response types, but the others showed individually different responses to new evidence materials. The types of belief decrease and valuation by evidences were relatively below, while those of the rejection and reinterpretation were likely to represent them again, and these results did not reflect a meaningful difference between male and female. These results show that children's response type are not always coherent, and that they respond variously according to the evidence materials except for an individual cognitive view and a background in estimating evidence materials, and most of them are contents dependent in evaluating evidences. Therefore we are expected to apply it to studies on a thought process of the student as data on the basis of them and develop more various evidence materials responded by basis on evidence.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.421-433
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• 2023

This study examined the reasoning of gifted elementary science students in a socioscientific issues (SSI) classroom discussion on COVID-19-related trash disposal challenges. This study aimed to understand the characteristics of evidence use and decision-making difficulties in each type of SSI-related reasoning. To this end, the transcripts of 17 gifted students of elementary science discussing SSIs in a classroom were analyzed within the framework of informal reasoning. The analysis framework was categorized into three types according to the primary influence involved in reasoning: rational, emotional, and intuitive. The analysis showed that students exhibited four categories of evidence use in SSI reasoning. First, in the rational reasoning category, students deemed and recorded scientific knowledge, numbers, and statistics as objective evidence. However, students who experienced difficulty in investigating such scientific data were less likely to have factored them in subsequent decisions. Second, in the emotional reasoning category, students' solutions varied considerably depending on the perspective they empathized with and reasoned from. Differences in their views led to conflicting perspectives on SSIs and consequent disagreement. Third, in the intuitive reasoning category, students disagreed with the opinions of their peers but did not explain their positions precisely. Intuitive reasoning also created challenges as students avoided problem-solving in the discussion and did not critically examine their opinions. Fourth, a mixed category of reasoning emerged: intuition combined with rationality or emotion. When combined with emotion, intuitive reasoning was characterized by deep empathy arising from personal experience, and when combined with rationality, the result was only an impulsive reaction. These findings indicate that research on student understanding and faculty knowledge of SSIs discussed in classrooms should consider the difficulties in informal reasoning and decision-making.

• Hwankyungkyoyuk
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.150-164
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• 2006

This study reviewed a recently developed environmental education model 'ENVISION' and analyzed the value of the ENVISION program with environmental education(EE) perspective. Also this study proposed a prototype model of a inquiry-based water environmental education model with watershed concepts as a result of discussion of tills research. In the review of ENVISION, this research followed the theoretical framework of 'Inquiry-Based EE' that was previously proposed by the author. The ENVISION was characterized in tills research as two directions: watershed and scientific inquiry. Tills research argued that the watershed concept has a potentially very good meaning in EE because watershed enables 'holistic' view in EE area, and that the scientific inquiry in ENVISION seeks evidence-based explanation about local watershed environmental problems. That belongs to the scientific inquiry, which is also 'Inquiry-Based EE' and has internal value under EE perspective. Finally, this research proposed a prototype EE model that is about watershed concept, and is based on inquiry as general sense (scientific and insightful inquiries) and 'Environmental Studies for EE, (ESEE)' as the inquiry directions. The proposed model can be said a combination of the watershed concept and inquiry-based EE, and it seems that the model materializes better the EE nature than the ENVISION model.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.91-97
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to explore high school students' understanding of the distinction between scientific theories and scientific laws. Understanding of the distinction between these two concepts, which belong to the nature of science, has been receiving little attention. We surveyed thirty-two students from a local high school with three-part, open-ended questionnaire. The result revealed that these students shared common misconceptions such as 'scientific theories are unproven, scientific laws are proven and absolute', and 'if a theory is proven with enough evidence, it becomes a law'. Moreover, students tend to regard earth science less sophisticated than physical science, because they recognize a lot of its theories to be unproven in their view. It is indicated further that teaching the difference between scientific theories and laws explicitly could help students possess more appropriate view toward earth science.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.353-366
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• 2011

An alternative vision for science inquiry that appears to be important and challenging is model-based inquiry in which students generate, evaluate and revise their explanatory model. Pre-service teachers should be given opportunities to develop and use their mechanistic explanatory models in order to participate in the practice of science and to have a sound understanding of science. With this view, this study described a case of pre-service elementary teachers' scientific modeling in magnetism. The aims of this study were to explore difficulties preservice elementary teachers encountered while they engaged in a model-based inquiry, and to examine how their understandings of the nature of scientific models changed after the model-based inquiry. The data analysis revealed that the pre-service teachers had difficulties in drawing and writing their own thinking because they had little experience of expressing their own science ideas. When asked to predict what would happen, they could not understand what it meant to make a prediction "based on their model". They did not know how to use or consider their model in making a prediction. At the end of the model-based inquiry they reached a final consensus of a best model. However, they were very anxious about whether the model was the "correct" answer. With respect to the nature of scientific models, almost all of the pre-service teachers initially viewed models only as a communication tool among scientists or students and teachers to help understand others' ideas. After the model-based inquiry, however, many of them understood that they could create, test, and revise their "own" models "by themselves". They also realized the key aspects of scientific models that a model can be changed as evidence is accumulated and a model is a knowledge production tool as well as a communication tool. The results indicated that pre-service elementary teachers' understandings of the nature of scientific models and their previous school science experiences could affect their performance on a model-based inquiry, and their experience of scientific modeling could help them enhance their understandings of the nature of scientific models.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.937-954
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• 2008

Although the development of scientific thinking is one of the significant goals in science education in schools, there is a lack of empirical research on how science teachers conceptualize scientific thinking. This study explored how four pre-service secondary-level science teachers conceptualized scientific thinking and elaborated their conceptions through peer discussions. Results involved each pre-service teacher's conceptual spectrum of scientific thinking and showed the process of elaboration in their conceptions about three crucial issues in small-group or larger discussions. Three issues related to scientific thinking included everyday vs. scientific thinking, the relationship between science knowledge and scientific thinking, and the relationship between logical systems and evidence. Implications for pre-service science teacher education were discussed, and further research was suggested based on the results of this study.

• 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.