• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.541-553
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between epistemic goals, epistemic considerations and complexity of reasoning of science high school students in an open inquiry and to explore the context on how open inquiry compares with the characteristics of an authentic scientific inquiry. Two teams were selected as focus groups and a case study was conducted. The findings are as follows: First, the contexts, such as 'sharing the value for the phenomenon understanding, reflection on the value of the research, task characteristics that require collaboration and consensus, and sufficient communication opportunities,' promote epistemic goals and considerations. On the other hand, contexts such as 'lack of opportunity for critical review of related literature and environmental constraints' lowered epistemic sides. Second, epistemic goals and considerations influenced the reasoning complexity. The goal of 'scientific sense making' led to reasoning that pose testable hypotheses based on students' own questions. The high justification considerations led to purposely focusing attention to the control designs and developing creative experimental know-how. The high audience considerations led to defending their findings through argumentation and suggesting future research. On the other hand, the goal of 'doing the lesson' and the low justification considerations led to reasoning that did not interpret the meaning of the data and did not control the limit of experiment. The low audience considerations led to reasoning that did not actively defend their findings and not suggest future research. The results of this study suggest that guidance should provide communication and critical review opportunities.

• Proceedings of the KSPS conference
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• 2000.07a
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• pp.235-240
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• 2000

In the age of global communication, more human exchange is extended at the grass-roots level. In the old days, language policy and language planning was based on one nation-state with one language. But high waves of globalizaiton have allowed extended human flow of exchange beyond one's national border on a daily basis. Under such circumstances, homogeneity in Japan may not allow Japanese to speak and communicate only in Japanese and only with Japanese people. In Japan, an advisory report was made to the Ministry of Education in June 1996 about what education should be like in the 21st century. In this report, an introduction of English at public elementary schools was for the first time made. A basic policy of English instruction at the elementary school level was revealed. With this concept, English instruction is not required at the elementary school level but each school has their own choice of introducing English as their curriculum starting April 2002. As Baker, Colin (1996) indicates the age of three as being the threshold diving a child becoming bilingual naturally or by formal instruction. Threre is a movement towards making second language acquisition more naturalistic in an educational setting, developing communicative competence in a more or less formal way. From the lesson of the Canadian immersion success, Genesee (1987) stresses the importance of early language instruction. It is clear that from a psycho-linguistic perspective, most children acquire basic communication skills in their first language apparently effortlessly and without systematic and formal instruction during the first six or seven years of life. This innate capacity diminishes with age, thereby making language learning increasingly difficult. The author, being a returnee, experienced considerable difficulty acquiring L2, and especially achieving native-like competence. There will be many hurdles to conquer until Japanese students are able to reach at least a communicative level in English. It has been mentioned that English is not taught to clear the college entrance examination, but to communicate. However, Japanese college entrance examination still makes students focus more on the grammar-translation method. This is expected to shift to a more communication stressed approach. Japan does not have to aim at becoming an official bilingual country, but at least communicative English should be taught at every level in school Mito College is a small two-year co-ed college in Japan. Students at Mito College are basically notgood at English. It has only one department for business and economics, and English is required for all freshmen. It is necessary for me to make my classes enjoyable and attractive so that students can at least get motivated to learn English. My major target is communicative English so that students may be prepared to use English in various business settings. As an experiment to introduce more communicative English, the author has made the following syllabus design. This program aims at training students speak and enjoy English. 90-minute class (only 190-minute session per week is most common in Japanese colleges) is divided into two: The first half is to train students orally using Graded Direct Method. The latter half uses different materials each time so that students can learn and enjoy English culture and language simultaneously. There are no quizes or examinations in my one-academic year program. However, all students are required to make an original English poem by the end of the spring semester. 2-6 students work together in a group on one poem. Students coming to Mito College, Japan have one of the lowest English levels in all of Japan. However, an attached example of one poem made by a group shows that students can improve their creativity as long as they are kept encouraged. At the end of the fall semester, all students are then required individually to make a 3-minute original English speech. An example of that speech contest will be presented at the Convention in Seoul.

• Journal of the Korean Home Economics Association
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• v.41 no.12
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• pp.53-68
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to develop lesson plans and teaching materials applying practical reasoning instruction for the 7th home economics curriculum content, and to test the effect of practical reasoning instruction on morality of middle school students. This study is a quasi-experimental research with a pretest-posttest design. Practical reasoning instruction for experimental group and traditionally lecture oriented instruction for comparison group were input, and tested the statistical differences between two groups before and after the treatment. The subjects for this study were 8th grade students of a middle school located in Kwangju city. Two classes of 76 students homogeneous in characteristics and academic record for each experimental and comparison group were assigned. Instrument used for this study was a revised moral indicator, that was developed by KEDI(2001). Spss/win for 10.0 statistics program was used for analysis of data. ANCOVA was done for testing statistical difference between pretest and posttest of experiment group and comparison group. Result of study which showed statistically significant difference between groups were：1. Virtue of "responsibility for words and deeds"(from 3.22 to 3.61 for experimental group and from 3.27 to 3.26 for comparison group) in domain of responsibility and cooperation, and virtue of "punctuality"(from 3.59 to 3.76 for experimental group and from 3.41 to 3.28 for comparison group) in domain of trustworthiness, 2. Virtue of "conversation etiquette"(from 3.47 to 3.67 for experimental group and from 3.28 to 3.31 for comparison group) in domain of caring for others, 3. Virtue of "forgiveness other′s mistakes"(from 3.32 to 3.65 for experimental group and from 3.33 to 3.25 for comparison group) in domain of kindness, concession, forgiveness, and virtue of "volunteering activity"(from 2.89 to 3.71 for experimental group and from 3.36 to 3.45 for comparison group) in domain of compassion and service, 4. Virtue of "equip the convenient facility for handicapped"(from 4.19 to 4.29 for experimental group and from 4.17 to 3.91 for comparison group) in domain of equality and human rights, virtue of "recovering selfness for own community"(from 2.34 to 2.79 for experimental group and from 2.14 to 2.29 for comparison group), virtue of "opposing way of accomplishing purpose by an means"(from 3.27 to 3.31 for experimental group and from 3.47 to 3.05 for comparison group), virtue of "opposing election of considering acquaintance"(from 3.35 to 3.56 for experimental group and from 3.12 to 3.14 for comparison group) in domain of fairness, and virtue of "eradication of military force or violence among countries"(from 3.49 to 3.57 for experimental group and from 3.38 to 3.05 for comparison group) in domain of love for humanity. The morality of experimental group was improved more than that of comparison group in all of above items. From the results of this study, following conclusion was drawn. Practical reasoning instruction in home economics is effective in raising students′ virtue and value of responsibility in words and deeds, trustworthiness in punctuality, courtesy of not interrupting conversation, forgiveness of other′s mistakes, volunteering activity, equity for handicapped, fairness opposing selfness for own community, fairness opposing way of accomplishing purpose by all means, fairness opposing election of considering acquaintance, and love for humanity opposing war.