This project was carried out under the assumption that applying a science history program to a teaching-learning process would lead to students' increased interest in science and increase the development of their scientific process skills. The project aimed at designing an effective science history program which would help to improve students' scientific process skills, to enhance their interest in learning science, and to maintain their inquiry learning abilities. The survey for the activity objectives was produced by the authors. The test items used for testing students' scientific attitude and scientific process skills were created by Korea National University of Education. The survey about scientific perception indicated that there was a meaningful difference of p=0.005 before and after implementing this program. The survey about scientific interest shows that students became interested in science, science-learning and science-related activities after participating in the science history program. Students' scientific process sills increased by 9% after the program was implemented in the subjects' classes. This indicates that the science history program was effective in improving students' science scientific process skills. Since this project, which targeted 8th grade science education activities, has proven to be effective, developing other programs suitable for younger and older students seems promising, too.

A peer assessment method was implemented as part of an action research project where the primary goal was to create constructivist science classrooms. Student reflective writings, which had been created in the process of action research, were analyzed to examine the perceptions of the students concerning the peer assessment method employed in their earth science classrooms. Five perception categories and thirteen statements were developed from the student writings. These indicated that the students appreciated the positive nature of peer assessment and the effects of it as an alternative method for promoting learning. It was also revealed, however, that some students displayed inappropriate behaviors toward peer assessment which led to negative perceptions of the new assessment method. Implications for future use of peer assessment in science classrooms are discussed. Limitations founded in the present study as well as possible solutions are provided.

This study was designed to determine whether visitor behavior at science museums differs across various exhibit styles and between Family and Non Family groups. Eight exhibits in the natural history sections of the national science museum located in Daejeon were identified to have distinctive characteristics and styles. At each selected exhibit, visitor behavior was observed for an hour. An average of eighty people stopped by each exhibit. Descriptive analyses of visitors behaviors showed that: 1) families spent more time than non-family visitors; 2) families paid more attention to exhibits, for instance, they talked and commented about the exhibits; 3) exhibit characteristics related to holding power and attention span; 4) families more frequently visited exhibits related to school curriculum rather than ones that looked attractive, fun or novel. Visitors did not play with sensory simulation types of exhibits as much as expected. This implicates that exhibit style does not guarantee long visitors holding time and attracting power. Non-significant results are explained in terms of environmental and exhibit-related factors. Several potential factors including visitor factors, setting factors, and exhibit factors are discussed and explored with topics proposed for future study.

The purpose of this study was to explore characteristics of natural history museum exhibits from the viewpoint of science education. A total of ninety exhibits for this study were examined in national science museums of Korea and Japan. Exhibits of Tokyo national science museum were again divided into two groups: the old and traditional types, and the new and renovated ones. Even though analyzing data was not undertaken through quantitative statistical process, the interpretation of the data was valid enough to fulfill the purpose of the research. While there were clear changes and differences between the old and the new types of exhibits in Tokyo national science museum, the old part of Tokyo museum was similar to one in Korea. Based on analyzing the new types of Tokyo museum, the current movement in the field of natural history museums of Korea explicitly has toward utilizing more science education concepts and ideas.

This study examined the knowledge and practices of scientific inquiry displayed by three student teachers and two beginning teachers at secondary levels. Observations using the instrument of OTOP designed by the research team of OCEPT (Oregon Collaborative for Excellent in the Preparation of Teachers) generalized similar teaching strategies of scientific inquiry between student and beginning teachers, such as using group work for students' first hand experience, using concrete materials for experimentation or visual tools for demonstration, using questions for factual knowledge mainly without opportunities to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Those scientific inquiry activities were very confirmative ones to follow the steps without opportunities of understanding nature of science or nature of scientific inquiry. However, all participants in this study hold knowledge of scientific inquiry envisioned by the National Science Education Standards [NSES] (NRC, 1996), where students identify their hypothesis, use critical and logical thinking, and consider alternative explanations through argumentation as well as experimentation. An inconsistent relationship between participating teachers knowledge and practices about scientific inquiry resulted from their lack of pedagogy skills of implementing it in the classroom. Providing opportunities for these teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices about scientific inquiry was recommended for the future study. Furthermore, increasing college faculty interest in new teaching approaches for upgrading the content knowledge of student teachers and beginning teachers was recommended as a solution, since those teachers showed evidence of influence by college faculties at universities in their pedagogy skills.

The concept of 'the lunar and planetary phases' is very difficult to understand and students may have various misconceptions on this concept. A module drawing the lunar and planetary phases was developed with the application of the simplifying conditions method. The effects of instruction using the module drawing the lunar and planetary phases on the conceptual change and the achievement was investigated in the consideration of learners' characteristics (spatial perception ability, science inquiry ability, required pre-requested learning ability). Findings were as follows: 1) This module was effective for learners' conceptual change and achievement, 2) This module had a positive influence for development the learners' characteristics and conceptual change with the middle level of science inquiry ability, the middle and low level of required pre-requisite learning ability, and middle level of the spatial perception ability.

The purpose of this study is to explore high school students' environmental literacy and from its result, to suggest ways to reform environmental education. 1047 students from Seoul and Kyeongki province participated in the survey. The questionnaire consisted of four criteria of environmental literacy including knowledge, skill, attitude and behavior. The result was analyzed and the factors which affect high school students environmental literacy were explored. From this result, we made suggestions to improve environmental education as follows. First, environmental education in school should focus on knowledge criterion. Though school environmental education has been helpful for students to build environmental literacy in attitude and behavior criteria, its effect has not been good enough in knowledge criterion. Second, science education can enhance students' environmental literacy. Students who like science best and students who belong to science major classes were reported to possess better understanding in knowledge criterion. Also, students who like life science appeared to have a more positive attitude in environmental literacy. Third, informal education must be considered to form students' environmental literacy. In particular, the effect of mass media is inarguable. Thus, we should find a way to link formal education and informal education to improve environmental education. Fourth, high school students' interest in the environment must be encouraged since it is evident that higher interest would result in better outcome in environmental education.

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate what kinds of research have been done about scientific inquiry in terms of scientific argumentation in the classroom context from the upper elementary to the high school levels. First, science educators argued that there had not been differentiation between authentic scientific inquiry by scientists and school scientific inquiry by students in the classroom. This uncertainty of goals or definition of scientific inquiry has led to the problem or limitation of implementing scientific inquiry in the classroom. It was also pointed out that students' learning science as inquiry has been done without opportunities of argumentation to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Second, what is scientific argumentation, then? Researchers stated that scientific inquiry in the classroom cannot be guaranteed only through hands-on experimentation. Students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through their reasoning skills using opportunities of argumentation based on their procedural skills using opportunities of experimentation. Third, many researchers emphasized the social practices of small or whole group work for enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills through argumentations. Different role of leadership in groups and existence of teachers' roles are found to have potential in enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand science as inquiry. Fourth, what is scientific reasoning? Scientific reasoning is defined as an ability to differentiate evidence or data from theory and coordinate them to construct their scientific knowledge based on their collection of data (Kuhn, 1989, 1992; Dunbar & Klahr, 1988, 1989; Reif & Larkin, 1991). Those researchers found that students skills in scientific reasoning are different from scientists. Fifth, for the purpose of enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed, other researchers suggested that teachers' roles in scaffolding could help students develop those skills. Based on this literature review, it is important to find what kinds of generalizable teaching strategies teachers use for students scientific reasoning skills through scientific argumentation and investigate teachers' knowledge of scientific argumentation in the context of scientific inquiry. The relationship between teachers' knowledge and their teaching strategies and between teachers teaching strategies and students scientific reasoning skills can be found out if there is any.