• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.510-517
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• 2006

This study investigated the influences of situational interest, attention, and cognitive effort on drawing as a method to assist students to connect and integrate multiple external representations provided in learning chemical concepts. Seventh graders (N=178) at two coed middle schools were taught about the "Boyle's Law" and the "Charles's Law" for two class hours through drawing. They observed macroscopic phenomena through demonstrations. After these observations, they drew their mental model from the external verbal representation, and then compared their drawings with external visual representation. The tests assessing situational interest, attention, cognitive effort, and conceptual understanding were administered as post-tests. Correlation and path analyses supported a causal model which situational interest had a positive direct effect on attention to the drawing. Attention led to conceptual understanding directly as well as through cognitive effort. These results suggest that situational interest may be induced by drawing first of all, and attention and cognitive effort may be direct causes of conceptual understanding in drawing. Educational implications are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.9-15
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• 2006

Students have often experienced difficulties in understanding the concept of the particulate nature of matter despite its importance in chemistry. Although various instructional methods have been suggested for teaching this concept, systematic studies have been rarely conducted. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of drawing and analyzing pictures. Three classes of 7th graders at a coed middle school in Seoul were assigned to the control group, the drawing group, and the analyzing group, respectively. Students were taught about the three states of matter and the motion of molecules for 8 class periods. The instructional effects on student conception, achievement, and science learning motivation were investigated by student visual learning styles. Results revealed that the scores of a conceptions test and a science learning motivation test for both the drawing group and the analyzing group were higher than those for the control group. Additionally, the scores of the science learning motivation test were also found to be higher for students with a more visual learning style than their counterparts.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.645-654
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate students' mental models and alternative conceptions about the Earth's interior. A total of 126 10th grade students participated in this study. They were requested to draw Earth's interior tasks and were interviewed about their mental models. A coding frame was designed to classify the students' drawings and interview responses, and then a four step cognitive model was established based on the frame of coding. In addition, the relationship of mental models was compared in terms of students' gender, and the type of alternative conceptions was analysed. The research results showed a variety of alternative conceptions on the interior of the Earth. The classified mental models showed naive mental model (11%), unstable mental model (81%), conceptual model (8%), while 69% of all sampled students accounted for the static process. The gender difference in the cognitive model showed no statistical significance.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.533-540
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• 2005

This study investigated the effects of drawing and writing as methods to assist students in connecting and integrating multiple external representations provided in learning the particulate nature of matter. Seventh graders (N=224) at a coed middle school were assigned to a control group, a drawing group, and a writing group. The students were taught about "Boyle's Law" and "Charles's Law" for two class periods. Students observed macroscopic phenomena through experiments. After this observation, students in the control group learned the topic with both external visual and verbal representations simultaneously. Students in the drawing group drew their mental model from the external verbal representation provided, and then compared their drawing with external visual representation. Students in the writing group wrote their mental model from the external visual representation provided, and then compared their writing to the external verbal representation. The two-way ANCOVA results revealed that the scores of a conception test for the writing group were significantly higher than those for the control group. While the drawing group performed better than the control group, the difference is relatively smaller. There were no significant interactions between the instruction and spatial visualization ability in the scores of the conception test. Most students perceived the writing or drawing activities helpful in understanding the concepts, and a few students responded that the writing or drawing activity was interesting. Educational implications were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.367-375
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• 2006

This study investigated the effects of varying visuals in drawing and writing as methods to assist students in connecting and integrating multiple external representations provided in learning the particulate nature of matter. Seventh graders (N=233) at a coed middle school were assigned to control, static drawing (SO), dynamic drawing (DD), static writing (SW), and dynamic writing (DW) groups. The students were taught about "Boyle's Law" and "Charles's Law" for two class periods. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that the scores of a conception test for the two drawing (SD, DD) groups and the two writing (SW, DW) groups were significantly higher than those for the control group. Within the writing groups, students of lower spatial visualization ability in the DW group scored significantly higher than those in the SW group. However, no significant differences were found in the scores of the conception test for the two drawing (SD, DD) groups regardless of students' visualization ability. Researchers also found that most students in both DD and DW groups had respectively positive perceptions of dynamic visuals in drawing or writing.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.7
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• pp.721-727
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• 2005

This study investigated the effects of small group drawing in learning the concepts of particulate nature of matter. Three classes of seventh graders (N = 126) at a coed middle school were randomly assigned to a pair drawing group, an individualistic drawing group, and a control group. The students were taught the 'three states of matter' and 'motion of molecules' for eight class periods. Prior to these classes, student self-efficacy, learning motivation, and attitude toward science instruction were examined. After instruction, tests assessing achievement, conception, learning motivation, and attitude toward science instruction were administered. Two-way ANCOVA results revealed that scores of achievement and conception for the pair drawing group were significantly higher than those for the control group. However, scores of the three groups did not significantly differ in learning motivation and attitude toward science instruction. Furthermore, no significant interactions surfaced between instruction and the level of self-efficacy in all dependent variables.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.28-36
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• 2007

This study investigated the influences of small group discussion and students' visual learning style in learning chemical concepts with drawing and writing as methods to assist students in connecting and integrating multiple external representations. Seventh graders (N=449) at a coed middle school were assigned to individual drawing (ID), pair drawing (PD), individual writing (IW), and pair writing (PW) groups. All students learned "Boyle's Law" and "Charles's Law" for two class periods. Analyses of the results revealed that the students in the PD group, regardless of students' visual learning style, scored significantly higher than those in the ID group in a conception test. The scores of the students with strong visual learning preference in the PW group were significantly higher than those in the IW group in the conception test, while the scores of the students with weak visual learning preference were not significantly different between the two groups. Although the conception test scores of the PD group were higher than those of the PW group, the difference was relatively small. It was found that most students in both PD and PW groups perceived pair drawing and pair writing positively upon cognitive and motivational aspects.

• 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.26 no.2
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• pp.191-199
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• 2006

This study investigated the influence of time to draw students' mental models and students' field dependence-independence on learning the particulate nature of matter with multiple representations. Seventh graders (N=295) at two middle schools were assigned to control, after-drawing, and before-drawing groups. The students learned "Boyle's Law" and "Charles's Law" for two class periods. Results revealed that the scores of a test on conceptual understanding for the two drawing groups were significantly higher than those for the control group. However, there was no significant interaction between the instruction and students' field dependence-independence in the scores of the test on conceptual understanding. In 'novelty' on a situational interest test, field independent students in the two drawing groups scored significantly higher than those in the control group. The scores for field independent students in each group were similar, while field dependent students in the before-drawing group scored lower than those in the control and after-drawing groups in 'attention demand' on the situational interest test. It was found that most students positively perceived after-drawing or before-drawing, but field independent students in the before-drawing group were more apprehensive about the activities than those in the after-drawing group.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.762-774
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate misconceptions about plate tectonics which spread widely among freshmen at high school with drawing. For this, we chose 6 conceptions about plate tectonics by analysis of 7th curriculum and of 11 kinds of science textbooks. Questionnaire of drawing about plate tectonics were developed depending on them. Data was collected from 134 students who was freshmen at high school in Daegu. The result of this study was as follows. First, In structure of plate, 'upper mantle type' and 'crust type' misconceptions were more than half of the respondents. Second, In distribution of plate, 'cracked earthquake zone type' and 'earthquake frequency type' misconceptions were more than half of the respondents. Third, In formation of ocean ridge at oceanic crust- oceanic crust divergent plate boundary, 'divergence type' and 'collision type' misconceptions were more than half of the respondents. Fourth, In formation of mountain ridge at continental crust- continental crust convergent plate boundary, 'collision type' misconceptions were more than half of the respondents. Fifih, In formation of mountain ridge at oceanic crust- continental crust convergent plate boundary, 'subduction type' and 'fault type' misconceptions were more than half of the respondents. Sixth, In transform-fault at oceanic crust- oceanic crust transform-fault boundary, 'direction type' and 'section type' misconceptions were almost half of the respondents. In this study, students' drawings about plate tectonics showed similar misconceptions. This imply that drawing conceptions can be used by the strong evidence of misconceptions which spread widely among students. Furthermore, this study has a significance that this conclusion is useful to teachers as basic teaching-teaming materials of plate tectonics.