• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.265-278
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• 2002

A concept test was administered to college students and teachers to identify their understanding of chemical equilibrium and equilibrium shift. The subjects were 53 freshmen in the General Chemistry class, 28 juniors in the Physical Chemistry class and 26 seniors from a university and 10 high school teachers in Seoul. Test items include the calculations of partial pressure and concentration of the gas in the mixture, the equilibrium constant cal-culation and the prediction of equilibrium shift when an inert gas is added to the gaseous reaction system, and the equilibrium concentration calculation and the prediction of equilibrium shift when water or common ion is added to the weak acid solution. The test was focused to identify whether the subjects can predict equilibrium shift using the reaction quotient change for the situations in which Le Chatelier principle is difficult to apply. The results showed that the achievements of teachers and juniors were significantly higher than those of freshmen and seniors. Many stu-dents had difficulties in predicting equilibrium shift using the reaction quotient while they could calculate partial pres-sure and concentration for the same situation. It means they are lack of conceptual understanding of chemical equilibrium shift.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.5
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• pp.734-744
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to identify middle school students' mental models on plate tectonics and to compare the mental models of verbal-learning-style students with those of visual-learning-style students. 94 student participants in 9th grade were requested to draw and explain three topics; generation of magma, the formation of the mountain range and the interior of the Earth. The criterions for analyzing the mental models are derived from the data of the drawing task. The research results were as follows: The mental models on the generation of magma were classified as 'unstable model,' 'partial casual model,' 'causal model,' and 'conceptual model.' On the other hand, the mental models on the interior of the Earth were classified as 'static unstable model,' 'dynamic unstable model,' and 'conceptual model.' Students holding 'unstable model' were unable to relate the plate collision and the magma generation. They showed a variety of alternative conceptions of study areas, such as 'magma is generated from the core' and 'the mountain is formed by rising of the plates themselves.' Also, visual-learning-style students showed higher proportion of conceptual models and lower proportion of unstable mental models than verbal-learning-style students on three topics. The findings revealed that the students tend to have different concepts on the plate tectonics depending on their learning style.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.739-753
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to explore characteristics and limitations of a novice teachers's responsive teaching practice, who framed argumentation productively. One novice teacher and two eighth-grade classes participated in this study. Two of the small student groups with active teacher intervention were selected as focus groups. Students engaged in argumentation activity where they built an argument for hearing if the eardrum was torn. We recorded the class and interviews with the teacher and the students, which were transcribed for use in the analysis of the teacher's responsive teaching practices and epistemological, positional framing. We discovered that teacher thought that he should position himself as a facilitator to encourage students to present ideas clearly and to reach consensus. His framing was consistent in responsive teaching practices. Positioning himself as a facilitator, after he framed the discussion as idea sharing discussion by eliciting and probing students' idea, he framed the discussion as argumentative discussion by taking up students' idea and pointing out disagreement between them. As a result, members of small group 1 engaged in argumentative discussion and reached consensus. However, the teacher's productive framing did not guarantee students' productive argumentation practice. In small group 2, he did not elicit and probe students' ideas successfully. As a result, members of small group 2 did not engaged in argumentative discussions. He responded limitedly to the lack of students' conceptions because of lack of understanding about learners. Also, he mainly attended to students' reasoning, and not to students' framing about argumentation because he considered argumentation only as a tool for conceptual learning. The result of this study will contribute to the establishment of responsive teaching in science classrooms.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.60-77
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• 2008

We investigated the textbook model explaining a phase of the Moon and compared it with student models at the secondary levels in Korea. 20 high school students and 36 middle school students from suburb area participated in this study. Participants were interviewed to explain understandings about the cause of the Moon's phase with drawing their models. The results of this study showed that the textbooks now in use explain the phase of the Moon with one unique scientific model, while students displayed 6 different kinds of models including the scientific model. Furthermore the students tend to have comparatively scientific model modes as their grades increase and their scholastic ability levels become higher. Although the students have learned the Moon's phase in school, they still have alternative models because the textbook does not explain enough for the students to overcome their alternative conceptions. In the textbook, the model presented without explanation of the limitation of the model, so there can be a gap between the model in the textbooks and the models in the mind of students. With these findings, we propose complementary models for helping secondary school students to develop their understanding of moon phases.

• Child Health Nursing Research
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.211-234
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• 1999

The purpose of this article was to get hold of adolescent's needs for sex knowledge and to reveal their understanding of sex. These results may be applied to the sex education and counselling for adolescent. The participants of study were 267 students (females, 144 ; males, 123) who were the first and second grade form 1 middle and 2 high schools. They were asked to describe 3 questions that they wanted to know or to learn about sex. Their questions about sex were total 779(girls, subtotal 456, mean 3.2, boys, subtotal 323, mean, 2.6). These questions categorized to 9 items by content analysis. The items were ‘sexual drive, behavior and tendency(229, 29.4%)’ , ‘anatomy and physiology of reproductive system(140, 18.0%)’, ‘reproduction(131, 16.8%)’, ‘concept of sex(31, 4.0%)’, ‘acquaintance between the other sexes(17, 2.2%)’, and ‘the others(9, 1.2%)’ in order of frequency. The most frequent item that the student want to know or team about sex was ‘sexual drive, behavior and tendency’ except girls of sophomore in middle school. There were several features in participants' needs for sex knowledge as respects of the understanding of sex- biological sex, gender, and sexuality. The prominent feature in knowledge need of bio logical sex was that the participants had the interests according to their biological sex. They had the negative attitude to the phenomenons (ex, menstruation and pregnancy, phimosiectomy, etc) that they experienced or would experience due to their biological sex. A part of them asked the questions based the misconceptions and used the slangs or ‘××’, ect. to name the male or female genitalia. The male students wanted to know the female genitalia. The participants' understanding of gender reflected the sexism of our society, but they didn't accept and had doubts about the dual, hierarchical structure of that. The students, especially female seemed to be powerless to the harms of the sexual violence. Girls had much interest in their appearances and complained to our sexual culture that women comforted and served men. The participants had the dual perspective that the sexuality as respects of physiologic phenomenon was considered as natural but that as related to heterosexuals was as negative. And they deemed that men's sexual drive was stronger than women's and was difficult or was not able to be inhibited. They had much interests in homosexuality but reflected the negative attitude to that in our society. Adolescent felt wonder why the expressions of sexuality of adult were permitted but theirs were not. Lastly, a part of boys substituted querying the sexuality of animals for asking that of human. Maybe it was because of the embarrassment to talk about human's sexuality directly. The teenaged participants understood that the sex had not only the biological meanings but also the sociocultural meanings. They regarded the sex as natural and wanted to know it, but they had conceptions that it was difficult and embarrass to talk about it openly and directly.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.697-709
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• 2001

Researchers on conceptual change have been proposed that confronting a cognitive conflict situation would be important for a student to change his/her preexisting conception. There have been reported that there are three different methods of producing a cognitive conflict situation; the first is logical argument(LC), the second is demonstration of an actual phenomenon(DC), and the third is kinesthetic conflict which is a kind of physical experience(EC). In this study, the researcher tried to find out the differences in the conceptual changes by the three different conflict situations. Seventy two high school students were chosen in a high school in Kyungkido, Korea. The students were tested four times; pretest, posttest, one week delayed posttest, and one month delayed posttest. Six different test situations on mechanics were developed for this study. Test item for each situation was developed. Each item consisted of a multiple choice question and explanation of the choice. The result showed a clear differences among the three conflict groups. In general, kinesthetic conflict which is a kind of physical experience(EC) was proved to be the most efficient strategy for the conceptual change; however, logical argument(LC) seemed to be the least efficient. However, the effectiveness was not uniform from situation to situation. Results of some items showed that even the LC was quite good for the conceptual change. Therefore, it seems to be important to develope appropriate method for the target concept.