• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.283-296
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• 1998

This study was to identify middle school and college of education students' preconceptions about dielectric polarization and explore the students' reponses on the supporting or conflictual evidences on their preconceptions by letting them observe the demonstrations using electroscope, charged material, six conductor rods and six insulator rods. Letting students select the demonstrations to be observed by themselves, students' evidence selection types were classified as two : to select the evidences to testify their uncertain preconceptions, and to obtain the confirmation evidences about their preconceptions. And each evidence selection types, again, could be subclassified as three and two respectively. When students observed the conflictual observations, all accepted the observation itself. For supporting observational evidences, almost of all students showed the error of 'acceptance of antecedent' in the syllogism, that is, they did not required the succeeding supporting observations. Students' reponses on the conflictual observational evidences were classified as two: to reject the hard core of preconceptions, and to modify the students' auxiliary ideas related to the hard core with preserving the hard core. The first type reponses were, again, could be classified as three subtypes but, in all cases, students introduced new concept to explain the conflictual evidences. This responses indicated that Lakatosian rather than Popperian view is more acceptable to understand the students' reponses on the conflictual evidences. The second type reponses also were classified as three subtypes, and it was found that more middle school students than college education students were involved in this second type. That is, students who did not have perfect understanding of auxiliary ideas related with the hard core of preconceptions were more apt to change or modify theses auxiliary ideas rather than reject the hard core, this means that the quality of understanding of auxiliary ideas also take an important role in the change of hard core concept.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.200-213
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• 2003

This study is one of the successive studies for investigating students' processes of generating and evaluating scientific hypothesis. In this study, I analyzed the characteristics of students' experimental design to test whether the given hypotheses were correct or not. As results, it was found that (1) 3 components (experimental method, prediction of the result of experiment, evaluation of hypothesis) were needed to complete description of the experimental design, (2) students tried to test hypothesis considered as being correct as well as hypothesis considered as being false by students, (3) student tried to confirm hypothesis, which was considered as being correct, based on theoretical approach rather than experimental approach, (4) students' experimental design could be classified as two types, that is, direct experimental testing and comparative experimental design, and the latter could be classified as two subtypes; positive comparative one and negative comparative one, (5) students showed tendency to design positive comparative experiment when they considered hypothesis as being correct, and vise versa, (6) students preferred the prediction which could confirm the hypothesis when they considered the hypothesis as being correct, and vise versa, (7) many students rejected contradicting prediction even though they did not actually conduct experiment yet.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.133-145
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to identify the relation between preservice teachers' philosophical views on science and types of responses to alternative hypotheses. To identify preservice teachers' philosophical views on science, the extraterrestrial impact theory and the volcano-greenhouse theory, alternative hypotheses related to dinosaur extinction were administered to 37 elementary preservice teachers and 52 secondary preservice teachers. Subjects were required to write down their ideas before and after reading the alternative hypotheses, and then the dimensions of responses to initial ideas were analyzed. To analyze, Soh's Philosophical Perspectives Prove(PPP) was used. The results of this study were as follows: (a) elementary and secondary preservice teachers' philosophical views on science corresponds to eclecticism, (b) the main types of responses were partial theory change in elementary preservice teachers and rejection in secondary preservice teachers, (c) preservice teachers' philosophical views on science and types of responses were eclecticism-partial theory change in elementary preservice teachers and eclecticism-rejection in secondary preservice teachers.