초ㆍ중학생의 과학에 대한 이해

The Primary and middle school students understanding on science.

The purpose of this study was to seek desirable direction of science teaching and to present meaningful ideas for implementing the science curriculum and teaching materials by measuring the degree of the students' understandings on science and comparing it with those of American students. The researcher comprised 790 primary and middle school students for the study and administered them questionnaires developed by Trowbridge, Bybee, and Sund. The questionnaires were analyzed along with three categories such as science method, science theory, and the achievement of scientists. The researcher used t-test and ANOVA in order to compare the difference of their understandings in accordance with grades and gender, and later compared Korean students' understandings with those of similar aged American students administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) The research loathed to the overall conclusions as follows; Both primary and middle school students' understandings on science revealed positive and appeared no significant difference in gender. And it is thought that science education was being carried out hopefully to enhancing Korean students' scientific literacy, therefore, science teaching like what is implemented to the classrooms currently should be kept on in future. On the other hand, it is necessary to change primary school children's understandings on attitude and value of scientists while to change middle school students' understandings on scientific processes by experiment. Also primary school children need to understand that scientists are willing to change their ideas when new information becomes known.