• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2000

This study investigated both elementary and middle school students' abilities of reading scales and students' conceptions of measuring instruments and units. Seventy two students with 5th grade, sixty nine students with 7th grade, and eighty students with 9th grade were participated. Performance tests and written questionnaires were used. To assess their scale reading abilities, individual performance test was used. Every student should measure length of an envelope, temperature of water, volume of water, etc. And to find out students' conceptions related with measuring instruments and units, written questionnaires with pictures and photographs were used. Some of the students' abilities of reading scales were considerably poor. The results of a two-plate-balance and measuring-cylinder were worse than those of a ruler, a spring-balance, and a thermometer. Many of the students had misconceptions related with measuring instruments. Some of them did not know exactly the meaning of volume, or mass, or force. So they did not know what to measure with the measuring instruments. Also students were confused with several units of volume, force, weight and mass.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.923-943
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between the levels of cognitive conflict and students' conceptual change. In this study, 30 Korean high school students were selected from 450 10th graders by examining the pretest results. Two different strategies were used to induce cognitive conflicts in students, an anomalous or conflict situations; demonstrations and logical arguments against students' preconception. After arousing the students' cognitive conflict, the level of cognitive conflict was rated. Pretest, post-test and delayed post-test were administered to check the conceptual change. The tests consisted of 5 items in mechanics and electricity, respectively. Therefore, the demonstration method showed effective conceptual change, more than the logical argument method did. Students changed their conceptions more easily and frequently in the area of mechanics than in electricity. Students who showed higher levels of cognitive conflict indicated more positive conceptual change than those who showed lower conflict levels. 59 cases (56%) out of 105 who experienced high levels of cognitive conflict were changed into scientific conceptions one month later; however only 16 cases (35%) out of 46 who experienced low levels of cognitive conflict changed into scientific conceptions. Students who experienced higher levels of cognitive conflict showed higher rates of conceptual change. It could be concluded that designing instruction to induce cognitive conflict is a useful strategy to promote conceptual change.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.104-115
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• 1995

Teachers' conception about the nature of science is considered to be an important factor to improve the students' conceptions of that. It is assumed that teachers' conception of the nature of science may be influenced by their views of learning. The first purpose of this study was to investigate the exploratory relationships between teachers' conceptions about the nature of science and their views of learning. The second one was to compare the their conceptions and views of learning before and after science education lectures during 1 semester. We administered the questionnaires for the nature of science and for constructivist's learning, respectively, consisted of 5 dimensions (relativism-positivism; inductivism- deductivism; decontextualism-contextualism; content-process; instrumentalism-realism) and of 6 aspects (student; learning; instruction; teacher; curriculum; evaluations) were administered to 57 pre-service elementary teachers (female=44; male=13) before and after lectures. In pre-test it was revealed that respondents had not the consistent conceptions about the nature of science. The conception of relativism was more dominant than those of positivism, deductivism than inductivism, decontextualism than contextualism, process than content and instrumentalism than realism. They had more constructivist views in the respect of process of learning than in other respects, that is, students, instruction, teacher, curriculum and evaluation. But no significant correlations between the dimensions of the nature of science and the aspects of the views of learning suggest that constructivst views of learning was not deeply related with their conceptions of the nature of science. In post-test we had similar results with those of the pre-test, but the process-content dimensions of the nature of science was correlated with the constuctivist views of learning. Therefore we concluded that elementary pre-service teachers had the constructivist views of learning which was isolated with their conceptions of the nature of science although they had science educations course. We need to develop the course to make the conceptions of the nature of science relate view of learning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.61-76
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• 1992

The purpose of this study was to develop the instructional model and teaching material to change the middle school students'conceptions of electric current into the scientific ones and to investigate the effects of the model in actual classrooms. We identified the students' ideas and their misunderstanding about the concept of eIectic current through reviewing the literatures and our in this study. Based on the above results, we developed the instructional model and designed the teaching sequence and prepare the learning materials about the unit of the electric current in middle school Our instructional model was based on 'learning cycle' developed by Lawson, but the new stage called "exploration through qualitative questions" to elicit the students' own conceptions was inserted to it. To investigate the effects or the new teaching model, the pre- and post-test using the POE type were administered to experimental group(52 students) taught with learning cycles and control group(52 students) taught with traditional styles. The results are as follows; 1) The rates of correct. predictions was varying according to the kinds of problems. And the rates of the correct. reasons of their predictions were lower than those of the predictions. 2) The mean scores of the post-test of both groups were significantly higher than those of the pre-test. We could not find statistically significant difference in theme an score between experimental group and control group after implementation of the model. But the experimental group gained higher scores than those of the control group on two problem. Therefore, although we cannot show the prominent effects of our teaching model based on learning cycles, there are some effects of our model on changing the middle school students' conceptions of electric current.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.364-370
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• 2000

In this study, 10th-grade students' conceptions concerning acid rain, ozone layer, and greenhouse effect were investigated. A conception test that asked to explain about the three concepts and the relationships among them was administered to 137 students. Analysis of their responses indicated that students had lack of understanding about the definition of acid rain, the difference between greenhouse effect and global warming, and how to prevent the increase in greenhouse effect. They also confused ozone layer with greenhouse effect. Many students thought that there were causal relationships among the increase of acid rain, the destruction of ozone layer, and the increase in greenhouse effect.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.484-497
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• 2014

This study aimed to investigate high school students' conceptions of plate tectonics. Seventy students (N=70) in their 2 year of high schools in the province of Chungcheong-do participated in this study, and they took a conception test of visual representation. We conducted a semi-structured interview with 10 volunteering participants out of seventy. After learning about the concept of plate tectonics, this study found that participants ended up having alternative conceptions relating to terminology, meaning of colors, plates' movement, plates' boundaries, position and cause of melting, mantle's physical conditions, and driving forces of plate motion. The conceptions that the participants held after class were organically related, which included the meaning of colors, mantle's physical characteristic, and driving forces of plate movement. In addition, the visual representation used for teaching plate tectonics influenced the students' understanding about terminologies, plates' boundaries, position of melting, and the physical characteristic of mantle. The study found that there were the factors of visual representation that caused the learners to create alternative conceptions in learning about plate tectonics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.29 no.8
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• pp.963-977
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• 2009

The purpose of this paper is to identify college students' conceptions of the earth system cycles as learners of earth science education (ESE) and draw educational implications. An eight-week creative story writing project was held with 62 non-science students taking a general course on earth science. Their creative stories were categorized by analyzing the conceptions and types of cycle with a story mapping technique. The cycle conceptions of earth systems were expressed diversely into 32; most of the cycle types were circular and complex, while the others were branch-shaped and linear types that fail to complete the cycles. College students' conceptions of the earth system cycles is biased toward natural-abiotic systems; less than 30% of them are shown to be aware of all three categories: natural-abiotic, natural-biotic, and human systems. It is essential to diversify the content of education on earth system cycles and help learners develop systematic methods of thinking so that they will be able to recognize the impacts of feedback from human activities through ESE.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.64-81
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed pre-service teachers' levels of pedagogical reasoning while watching video clips of elementary school students' discussions of their conceptions of solution and dissolution. 81 pre-service teachers participated in the study. It was found that many pre-service teachers had scientific conceptions, and pre-service teachers who had non-scientific conceptions showed misconceptions similar to those of elementary school students. In both conceptions, pre-service teachers partially or comprehensively interpreted the students' misconceptions with reference to the evidence. However, the rates of pre-service teachers who misinterpreted or simply restated the students' utterances were quite high. Many pre-service teachers suggested only one factor related to levels of reasoning about causes of misconceptions, and most suggested factors were related to the student factor. The level of reasoning about instructional decisions differed according to dissolution and solution conceptions. Actions linked to students' thinking were more closely related to students' specific thinking than to their generic thinking, and among these, student-centered action was seen. From the above results, we sought ways of improving pre-service teachers' pedagogical reasoning.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.253-268
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate the elementary pre-service teachers' conceptions of 'color of gases' focusing on the survey from freshmen at a National University of Education. For the study, the views about 'color of gases' were surveyed from the pre-service teachers. And the responses were analyzed based on the patterns. The results from the study are as follows: First, the conceptions about 'color of gases' were divided into 2 top-level, 5 mid-level and 7 sub-level categories. Second, the number of students who answered 'certain gas has color' was significantly greater than those who answered 'every gas has no color'. However, only a small number of students who answered former understand the scientific meaning of color and the color of gases correctly. Third, out of 5 misconception categories, greater number of students answered with 'inaccurate scientific knowledge (Ma1)', so the category was classified again into five detailed sub-categories. Fourth, most of the students, who answered 'every gas has no color', stated "they have not seen any color gases through their lives" based on their own experience. Fifth, the distribution percentage for scientific conceptions vs misconceptions was not related with the students' gender but highly related with students' academic area and their science courses taken at high school. Sixth, the pre-service teachers have various types of misconceptions regarding the 'color of gases' and when they have to explain visibility of gases to other people they tend to pass on their misconceptions. Based on the results from the study, some educational guidelines were suggested.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.57-65
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• 2011

The purposes of this study investigated the effects of placement of analogy on the conceptual changes of air of elementary students, while learning the air conceptions. The subjects consisted of 108 students who are in the sixth grade classes in an elementary school in Busan city. For this study, comparative group(37 members), experimental group I(37 members), and experimental group II(34 memgers) were selected. A pre-test and a post-test on the air conception were done both for the comparative group and the experimental groups. The results are as follows. First, the averages of experiment group I and II are statistically higher than comparative group's. By the way, it just has a small gap between the comparative group and the experimental II. In other words, activity of analogy does not keep always constant to change of air conceptions of elementary students. Therefore, it has a different reason that only before or after during the analogy. Second, it shows that experimental group I has effected on a more change of air conceptions as compared with experimental group II. Then, the first group's result shows better than the other group's result. From this result, six grade students showed a change of air conceptions very well by analogy. It means if the analogy is given to students at the beginning state of chapter, they can understand scientific concepts easily.