• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.667-679
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• 2000

One of the major activities in scientific inquiry, as well as in the process of conceptual change, is the generation of scientific hypothesis. In this study, the definition and the characteristics of scientific hypothesis are analyzed. Especially, differences between explanatory hypothesis and scientific explanation, predictive hypothesis and scientific prediction, and scientific hypothesis and the inductive generalization are analyzed. And the process of making scientific hypothesis is suggested as 4 stages, and the role and the characteristic of the abductive thinking, which can be viewed as one of the scientific inferences needed to generate hypothesis, are discussed. In analysis, concrete examples from integrated science textbook of high school are used for application to the classroom teaching.