• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.76-92
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• 2002

OECD/PISA(Programme for International Student Assessment) is significant in that it is the first international comparative study assessing 15-year-old students' scientific literacy. Based on Korean students' results of percent correct in 35 science items, several characteristics such as followings were revealed. First, from the perspectives of science application area, Korean students showed the highest achievement in the area of 'science in technology' followed by in the areas of 'science in life and health' and 'science in earth and environment'. Male students achieved significantly better than female counterparts in all three areas. Second, the achievement in items of science knowledge was significantly higher than in items of scientific processes. Whereas the achievement difference between science knowledge- and scientific process items was larger for male students. Third, from the perspectives of application contexts, Korean students showed the highest achievement in the historical context and the lowest achievement in the personal context. Fourth, from the perspectives of item format, Korean students performed significantly better in open-constructed items rather than in multiple-choice items. Fifth, Korean students showed low performance in items of biotechnology and environment-related issue, which was more prominent for female students. Sixth, whereas male students performed significantly better than female students in most aspects, it is noteworthy that there was no significant gender differences in items of scientific processes and females performed significantly better than male students in open-constructed items which require long sentence.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.99-113
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• 2006

In this study, Korean middle school student science achievement results in the "Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study" (TIMSS 2003) were analyzed according to international benchmarks, content area, gender and student attitudes toward science. Overall Korea ranked the third internationally and had a mean score of 558. Korean students achieved top ranking in physics, but fell to the ninth place in chemistry. Unliked their counter parts in similar countries such as Singapore and Chinese Taipei, Korean students did not reach the highest benchmark. Compared to previous assessment, Korean girls showed improved performance; however, significant gender differences still exist in Korea; apparent from the better performance of boys than girls in the study. It is also noteworthy that Korean students were found to have the lowest self-confidence in learning science, a lower valuing science, and less enjoying learning science even though they produced high achievement scores.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.232-238
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• 2006

This study examined how motivational climate, achievement goals, and learning strategies jointly contributed to science achievement through path analysis of 260 middle school students. The results showed that only deep learning strategy had a significant direct effect on science achievement. The promotion of learning by science teachers and the pursuit of progress by peers had the mediational pathways linking task goal and deep learning strategy on science achievement. The pursuit of progress and the promotion of the comparison by peers influenced science achievement via deep learning strategy. The promotion of the comparison by peers also influenced deep learning strategy via performance-goal, which in turn influenced science achievement. These results indicated that the learning strategies had a direct effect and motivational climate or achievement goals had an indirect effect on science achievement. Our findings lead us to expect that the effective instructional method to improve students' science achievement is the one that impact both cognitive and motivational functioning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.299-307
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• 2003

본 연구의 목적은 1999년에 38개국이 참가하여 시행된, 제3차 수학 과학 성취도 국제비교 반복연구(TIMSS-R)중 화학 영역 성취도를 분석하는 것이다. 우리 나라 중학교 2학년 학생의 화학 성취도를 외국 및 다른 과학 영역과 비교하고, 소영역(물질의 분류, 물질의 구조, 화학반응과 변환, 에너지와 화학 변화)별로 각 문항의 정답율을 분석하였다. 우리 나라 학생들의 화학 점수는 국제 평균보다 높았으나, 다른 과학 영역과 비교하면 그 성취 수준이 상대적으로 낮았다. 특히, 에너지와 화학 변화 영역에서 중학교 2학년까지의 교육과정상 다루지 않는 주제가 많았다. 화학 성취도에 영향을 미치는 주된 요인은 교육과정에 따른 학생들의 학습 경험이었다. 이에 대한 교육학적 함의를 논의하였다.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.473-483
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to analyze the characteristics of students' academic achievement of middle school science curriculum achievement standards in the 2009 revised national curriculum and to generate implications for curriculum improvement. Based on the results of the 2015-2018 National Assessment of Educational Achievement (NAEA), we analyzed middle school students' mastery of 84 curriculum achievement standards. In the analysis, we used representative item information by achievement level and correct answer rate and checked the validity of the determination of mastery. According to the results of the analysis, 15 of the 84 achievement standards could not determine the degree of achievement. In science, many achievement standards could be mastered only by above-average group students. By achievement level, there were six achievement standards that advanced achievement-level students did not achieve, 38 achievement standards judged to represent mastery by advanced achievement-level students, 23 achievement standards judged to represent mastery by proficient achievement-level students, and two achievement standards judged to represent mastery by basic achievement-level students. By content area, the number of achievement standards corresponding to advanced and proficient levels was similar in the areas of motion and energy and earth and space domains. In the material and life domains, there were more achievement standards corresponding to advanced levels. Accordingly, it is necessary to reinforce customized teaching and learning activities in relation to achievement standards that were under-achieved.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.8
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• pp.745-754
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• 2014

Students experience a variety of achievement-related emotions during the process of learning the science curriculum. The purpose of this study is to develop an achievement emotions questionnaire for Korean middle school science curriculum to measure the achievement emotions that middle school students experience during study of this curriculum, and verified its validity. The Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Korean Middle School Science is based on the English version of the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, developed with reference to Korean middle school science curriculum and the characteristics of science study, from the perspective of the control-value theory of achievement. It has 232 questions, configured to measure nine achievement emotions across three types of academic settings. The questionnaire results can be treated with a high degree of confidence according to the result of our validation, which also verified that the achievement emotions of these students are configured with four internal criteria (learning strategy, achievement motivation and course grade), as suggested by the control-value theory; this in turn verifies that the nine achievement emotions are sufficiently distinctive across study situations. Last, it was verified that the questionnaire has sufficient external validity based on a comprehensive examination of the relation between science achievement emotions and the four criterion variables for each student. This suggests that through the development and implementation of this quantitative questionnaire, basic ground was provided to understand the achievement emotions experienced by middle school students learning the science curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.1235-1244
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• 2004

The purpose of the study was to produce resources to help develop instructional methods and programs for school science to reduce gender differences in science achievement by analyzing TIMSS-R results according to item type, benchmark, and content category. Korean male students performed higher than Korean female students and gender differences of Korean students were higher than international means in all item types including multiple-choice, short answer, and extended response type. GDI(Gender Difference Index) of Korean students was lower than international mean in top 10% benchmark but higher than international means in other benchmarks. Korean male students also exhibited higher performance than Korean female students in all content categories except scientific inquiry and the nature of science category. Regarding items that GDIs were higher than 10, the number of items belonged to life science and earth science category was relatively larger and a high percentage of them was not included in school science curriculum. In addition, the items were equally distributed in each performance category. In sum, the study showed various gender differences according to item type, benchmark, and content category. The results could be used to find appropriate instructional methods to reduce gender differences in science achievement.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.5
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• pp.503-514
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• 2020

In a sense that achievement emotion is directly associated with achievement activity of students and its result, drastic changes in educational environment such as expansion of e-learning due to COVID-19 may have a large impact on the achievement emotion of students inevitably. However, studies on the foregoing still remain insufficient, and development of a questionnaire capable of making a quantitative measurement on the achievement emotion of students under the environment of e-learning may become the basis of relevant studies, so this study developed the e-learning Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Korean Middle school Science(e-AEQ-KMS) and verified its validity. e-AEQ-KMS in this study was developed based on the Achievement Emotions Questionnaire-Korean Middle school Science (AEQ-KMS) and by reflecting characteristics of e-learning science class. With 226 questions in total, the questionnaire is composed to measure 9 kinds of achievement emotion such as enjoyment, hope, pride, relief, anger, anxiety, hopelessness, shame, and boredom under 3 academic situations of class situation, learning situation and testing situation. The result of this study has a great significance in the way that it set out a framework for making a comparative analysis quantitatively on the achievement emotion of Korean middle school students in science for e-learning classes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.399-407
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• 2004

The purposes of the study were to examine students' attitudes toward science and to investigate the relationship between attitudes toward and achievement in science. In order to achieve the purposes, the data collected from the National Assessment of Educational Achievement in 2001 were analyzed in this study. Approximately 1% of students within the entire population of the Grades 6, 9, 10 were randomly selected for the National Assessment of Educational Achievement in 2001. Students at all grade levels had slightly positive attitudes toward science. Positive attitudes toward science were higher at elementary level. Male students had more positive attitudes than female students and the difference in attitudes between male and female students was statistically significant. Also, there were significant differences in students' attitudes toward science among regions including Seoul, metropolitan city, small city and town. In addition, achievement in science was significantly and positively related to attitudes toward science, that is, the higher the students achieved, the more positive their attitudes toward science.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.65 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2021

This study aimed to analyze achievement characteristics of Korean students in the results of PISA 2018 science domain. To this end, the characteristics of PISA 2009 to PISA 2018 science were analyzed in terms of the percentage of each performance level and the ratio of male and female by achievement level; in addition, the percentage of correct answers by framework subscale was compared with PISA 2015. The results showed that Korea has a higher percentage of students at the lower level of achievement as compared to the high-ranking countries of PISA, and the ratio of students at the higher level of achievement was lower. On average, the difference in achievement between boys and girls was negligible; however, but at the higher achievement level, the ratio of boys continued to be higher than that of girls. In addition, in the PISA science framework, the percentage of correct answers of the questions corresponding to 'personal' of 'contexts', 'evaluate and design scientific enquiry' of 'competencies', 'epistemic' of 'knowledge', and 'high' of 'cognitive demand' increased; similarly, and achievement improved as compared to PISA 2015. Based on these results of the study, we propose a method for improving teaching and evaluation to foster Korean students' scientific competence.