• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.642-649
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• 2005

Argumentative discussion is one of the important components of an educational program, which allows students not only to learn the process of social negotiation through discussions, but also to improve students' overall research abilities. The purpose of this study was to examine a) the changes between inquiry of before-argumentative discussion and inquiry of after-argumentative discussion, and b) the connections between the inquiry changes and online argumentative discussion. This study analysed 726 messages in an online argumentative discussion, as well as in first research reports and second research reports. The results of the study indicate that science-gifted students' research abilities were improved through on-line argumentative discussion that provided them with feedback based on interactive discussions, and encouraged them to re-examine hypotheses and experiment processes. The science-gifted students showed knowledge and abilities for identifying simple errors in research processes and arguing problems in the flow of the whole logic of research.

• 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 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 Chemical Society
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.106-115
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the errors in science inquiry research reports written by students who won the encouragement award at the National Science Fair, and analyze the frequency of error types by school levels. The framework for analysis was constructed based on the table of contents of the students' science inquiry research reports, and the reports were analyzed for errors in six stages: Research question/hypothesis, prior research, experimental procedure, results, conclusions, and references. The study identified several types of errors at each stage, such as unreasonable research questions and wrong hypotheses in the research question/hypothesis stage, and limited considerations under certain conditions and selection of inappropriate experimental instruments in the experimental procedure stage. The study found that the frequency ratio of experimental procedure error was the highest across all school levels, and the order of errors varied by school level. Frequency ratio of error types of school level was: in the elementary school students' reports, errors were analyzed in the order of experimental procedure (36.88%), prior research (17.02%), conclusions (16.31%), research question/hypothesis (13.48%); In the middle school students' reports, experimental procedure (42.86%), conclusions (20.00%), prior research (14.28%), results (11.43%), research question/hypothesis (10.01%); In the high school students' reports, experimental procedure (45.16%), research question/ hypothesis (16.13%), conclusions (16.13%), and prior research (11.83%). The findings could be used to guide teachers in helping students conduct scientific inquiry research or write reports.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.303-312
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• 2012

This study was to find science high school students' perception about composing laboratory reports by grade. The instrument to survey the perception of them consisted of the perception about making a lab report, and the effect of compositing laboratory reports on the scientific concept understanding and the scientific inquiry ability. Subjects were 260 students of four science high schools in Seoul metropolitan city and Kyounggi province. Most of science high school students had a little positive perception about compositing lab reports, but they had very positive perception about the effects of it on the scientific concept understanding and scientific inquiry ability. There was the significant difference between grades, because the 10th grade students showed more positive perception toward compositing lab reports than the 11th graders(p<.05). The results suggested that different educational approaches and teaching strategies be needed for science high school students considering grades.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.459-466
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• 2012

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry in terms of designing exploration and reasoning that is used to formulate explanations based on evidence. The research context was an open inquiry with using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) template in which participant students were not provided with inquiry questions. As data, lab. 39 pre-service elementary teachers participated in this study while taking their science methods course. Analyses of the reports were framed by the cognitive processes of inquiry (Chinn and Malhotra, 2002) and each report was coded and analyzed by the framework of inquiry (Tytler and Peterson, 2004). Results showed that groups' works that utilized the SWH template encouraged the participants to interact each other about scientific inquiry. They came up with more relevant and testable questions for their scientific inquiry. It implicates that children will be able to have chances of testing their own questions more properly by using the SWH template in science classes just as the participants did in this study. The use of the SWH template would help pre-service teachers to teach appropriately how to test inquiry questions to their students in the future. Discussion was made to figure out the characteristics or Korean pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.407-417
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• 2007

The purpose of this research is to develop standards with which we can design an instrument to assess classifying inquiry skills by observing students' behavior and reported outcome which is not the paper and pencil test. This research is focused on developing a standard for analysis of classifying ability among research functions. To identify classifying inquiry skills, standards from classifying behaviors were comparing ways with other cards and using information included in the cards; Standards selected from the final reports were the appropriateness, inconsistency and hierarchy of the classification outcome. The standards were initially selected during the class with picture cards printed various birds appearances on the front side and their traits on the back which was specially designed among sixth graders. The picture cards prepared with plant leaves and stems had designed to identify whether standards was effective to assess student's classifying ability. The standards was an effective tool to assess student's classifying inquiry skills.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.379-393
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to analyze the complexity of scientific reasoning during open inquiry activities of pre-service elementary school teachers. In this study, 6 pre-service elementary teachers who participated in open-inquiry activities were selected. The data of scientific reasoning during their inquiry process was collected from the video recording of reporting about inquiry process and results, their reports and researcher's notetaking. CSRI Matrix (Dolan & Grady, 2010) was used to analyze the complexity of participants' scientific reasoning. The result showed that the degree of the complexity of their scientific reasoning varied in participants. Particularly the low degree of the complexity of scientific reasoning presented in posing preliminary hypotheses, providing suggestions for future research, communicating and defending finding. Also, The more pre-service teachers' epistemology of inquiry are similar to that of scientists, the more complex scientific reasoning represents. This results suggest that teachers should impress on students the importance of doing the precedent study and providing suggestions for future research, and provide a place for communicating and defending findings.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.620-636
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyze one science teacher's understanding of student argumentation and his explicit teaching strategies for implementing it in the classroom. One middle school science teacher, Mr. Field, and his students of 54 participated in this study. Data were collected through three semi-structured interviews, 60 hours of classroom observations, and two times of students' lab reports for eight weeks. Coding categories were developed describing the teacher's understanding of scientific argumentation and a description of the main teaching strategy, the Claim-Evidence Approach, was introduced. Toulmin's approach was employed to analyze student discourse as responses to see how much of this discourse was argumentative. The results indicated that Mr. Field defined scientific inquiry as the abilities of procedural skills through experimentation and of reasoning skills through argumentation. The Claim-Evidence Approach provided students with opportunities to develop their own claims based on their readings, design the investigation for evidence, and differentiate pieces of evidence from data to support their claims and refute others. During this approach, the teacher's role of scaffolding was critical to shift students' less extensive argumentation to more extensive argumentation through his prompts and questions. The different level of teacher's involvement, his explicit teaching strategy, and the students' scientific knowledge influenced the students' ability to develop and improve argumentation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.239-252
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• 2022

This study aims to develop performance criteria based on characteristics observed in science inquiry tasks for elementary school students. First, the performance characteristics by observing 70 fifth-grade elementary school students' science inquiry activity report are listed. Second, the checklist-type scoring criteria in connection with the theoretical framework of scientific inquiry process and relevant competencies are developed. Third, with the developed scoring criteria, 11 raters participate in scoring 350 students' reports. The main findings are as follow: first, the scoring data are well-fitted for the many-faceted Rasch model, and 22 scoring criteria are reasonably-well differentiated for various levels of proficiency. Second, at low performance level, observable characteristics are to answer questions explicitly required by the task or to observe objects or phenomena using pre-learned scientific concepts, while at high performance level, to explore additional data other than given data or to reflect on one's experimental process. Based on the results, the usefulness of analyzing students' performance characteristics for developing the scoring criteria, and further research directions are discussed.