• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.509-520
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• 2023

Scientific explanation is the main goal of scientists' scientific practice, and the science curriculum also includes developing students' abilities to construct scientific explanations as a major goal. Thus, clarifying its meaning is an important issue in the science education community. In this paper, the researchers identified three perspectives on 'scientific explanation' based on the scoping review method (Deductive-Nomological, Probabilistic, and Pragmatic explanation models). We argued that it is important to clarify and distinguish the meanings of 'scientific explanation' from other concepts used in science education, such as 'description', 'prediction', 'hypothesis', and 'argument' based on a review of the literature. It is also pointed out that there is a difference between 'scientific explanation' as a product and 'explaining scientifically' as communication, and several ways to revise achievement standard statements in the science curriculum are suggested, to guide students to construct scientific explanations and to help students to explain scientifically. By adopting the three scientific explanation models, the important factors to be considered were classified and organized, and examples of science learning activities for scientific explanation considering such factors were suggested. It is hoped that the discussion in this study will help establish clearer learning goals in science learning related to scientific explanation and aid the design of more appropriate learning activities accordingly.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.497-512
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• 2023

While scientific explanation is a fundamental component of science, teachers often lack familiarity with the formal structure of scientific explanations and the criteria for assessing their quality. Consequently, this study aims to clarify the concept of scientific explanation and proposes a tool for constructing scientific explanations. The primary objective is to explore the tool's impact on enhancing the explanatory skills of pre-service teachers when it comes to the phenomenon of condensation. The research findings indicate that many pre-service teachers initially operated at a description level during the pre-test. However, the implementation of the tool enabled them to advance their explanatory skills beyond the associative level. Notably, the tool was analyzed for its ability to provide pre-service teachers with a conceptual framework for explaining phenomena and guiding logical explanations and micro-level interpretations. This study holds significance in demonstrating that pre-service teachers can comprehend the formalities and criteria of scientific explanations and apply them to enhance their own explanatory abilities. Moving forward, efforts should be made to enhance the scientific explanation level among pre-service teachers across various topics and subject areas. Furthermore, pre-service teachers need classroom experiences that foster the construction of scientific explanations in authentic contexts.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.1
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• pp.37-49
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to classify the logical forms of scientific explanations provided by teachers in secondary earth science classrooms, to examine the characteristics of the scientific explanations in different forms, and to identify the roles of the teacher and students in discursive practices for scientific explanations. Data came from the earth science teachers who participated in overseas teacher in-service programs in the years 2003 and 2004. A total of 18 video-taped lessons and their verbatim transcriptions were analyzed. The result showed that deductive-nomological explanations occurred most frequently in earth science classrooms and that the deductive-nomological model was well-suited to those problems for which there existed firmly established scientific laws or principles to construct scientific explanations. However, abductive explanations were presented when the classes dealt with retrodictive tasks of earth science. The statistical-probabilistic and statistical-relevance models were also employed in explaining weather proverbs and unusual changes of weather, respectively. Most of the scientific explanations were completed through the teachers' monologic utterances, and students assumed passive roles in discursive practices for developing scientific explanations. Implications for science lessons and science education research were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.109-126
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• 2023

In this study, I took the evidence-explanation (E-E) continuum perspective to examine the epistemological implications of scientific reasoning cases designed by preservice elementary teachers during their simulation teaching. The participants were four preservice teachers who conducted simulation instruction on the seasons and high/low air pressure and wind. The selected discourse episodes, which included cases of inductive, deductive, or abductive reasoning, were analyzed for their epistemological implications-specifically, the role played by the reasoning cases in the E-E continuum. The two preservice teachers conducting seasons classes used hypothetical-deductive reasoning when they identified evidence by comparing student-group data and tested a hypothesis by comparing the evidence with the hypothetical statement. However, they did not adopt explicit reasoning for creating the hypothesis or constructing a model from the evidence. The two preservice teachers conducting air pressure and wind classes applied inductive reasoning to find evidence by summarizing the student-group data and adopted linear logic-structured deductive reasoning to construct the final explanation. In teaching similar topics, the preservice teachers showed similar epistemic processes in their scientific reasoning cases. However, the epistemological implications of the instruction were not similar in terms of the E-E continuum. In addition, except in one case, the teachers were neither good at abductive reasoning for creating a hypothesis or an explanatory model, nor good at using reasoning to construct a model from the evidence. The E-E continuum helps in examining the epistemological implications of scientific reasoning and can be an alternative way of transmitting scientific reasoning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.458-469
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• 2003

Hypothesis is defined as a proposition intended as a possible explanation for an observed phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to generate a grounded theory on the process of undergraduate students' generating hypothesis-knowledge about scientific episodes. Three hypothesis-generating tasks were administered to four college students majored in science education. The present study showed that college students represented five types of intermediate knowledge in the process of hypothesis generation, such as question situation, hypothetical explicans, experienced situation, causal explicans, and final hypothetical knowledge. Furthermore, students used six types of thinking methods, such as searching knowledges, comparing a question situation and an experienced situation, borrowing explicans, combining explicans, selecting an explican, and confirming explicans. In addition, hypothesis-generating process involves inductive and deductive reasoning as well as abductive reasoning. This study also discusses the implications of these findings for teaching and evaluating in science education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.667-679
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• 2000

One of the major activities in scientific inquiry, as well as in the process of conceptual change, is the generation of scientific hypothesis. In this study, the definition and the characteristics of scientific hypothesis are analyzed. Especially, differences between explanatory hypothesis and scientific explanation, predictive hypothesis and scientific prediction, and scientific hypothesis and the inductive generalization are analyzed. And the process of making scientific hypothesis is suggested as 4 stages, and the role and the characteristic of the abductive thinking, which can be viewed as one of the scientific inferences needed to generate hypothesis, are discussed. In analysis, concrete examples from integrated science textbook of high school are used for application to the classroom teaching.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.141-155
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to analyse characteristics of explanatory writing of scientifically gifted students who participated in gifted educational programs. Considering aspect of content of their explanations about cell, many of them explained the common characteristics of animal and plant cells, but a few of them did cellular characteristics of one kind of animal and plant. Some gifted students regarded cell membrane function as that of cell wall, and had a misconception that the cell was the smallest unit to consist human body. In terms of the structure of explanation, most of them didn't know the structural characteristics of explanatory writing. Finally, more than 50% of them had written using various ways to explain cell such as classifying, comparing, contrasting and exemplifying. Especially, all biologically gifted students had creatively explained drawing a picture. It was findings that the explanatory writing could be used as the instrument to evaluate knowledges of gifted students and suggested the elements of writing to teach scientific explanatory writing.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.759-772
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to understand characteristics of eighth graders' conclusions presented in their self-directed scientific inquiry reports. We developed a framework, Analysis of Conclusions of Self-Directed Scientific Inquiry, to analyze students' conclusions. We then compared the conclusions with the inquiry questions students generated to find out whether the questions affected students' conclusions. In addition, we analyzed students' responses from the survey about their perceptions of drawing conclusions. According to the results, the conclusions were characterized into two categories, i.e., scientific basic assumption and scientific explanation. Almost half of the students' conclusions fall under the scientific basic assumptions. Most of the scientific explanations were deductive explanations and inductive explanations. Then, the kinds of conclusions were affected by the inquiry questions because the scientific explanations were made more than the scientific basic assumptions in answering the inquiry questions. Some students couldn't recognize differences between conclusions and experiment results.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.1-17
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• 1998

What does mean the statement that scientific reasoning is logical? In this study, we clarify the logical structure of the scientific explanation, prediction and the process of hypothesis testing. To simplify and identify the structure of scientific explanations and prediction more clearly, we used syllogism and presented various concrete examples. Especially, we showed that the logical structure of scientific explanation was well reflected in dynamics. Based on this analysis, it can be said that the deficit of students' understanding of dynamics is because that many scientific activities are focused on prediction rather than explanation. To explain the process of hypothesis testing, we reinterpreted the Wason's selection task as two stages: the process of prediction of experimental phenomena based on the presented hypothesis, and the process of the hypothesis testing based on the predicted experimental phenomena. And we suggested the reason of the logical fallacy of 'affirming the consequent' in science was because that many scientific relationships between the variables is one-to-one relationship, and compared this suggestion with the Lawon's multiple hypothesis theory. To check out the effect of content on the deductive reasoning, we reviewed some researches about psychology and psychology of science. And to understand the role of deductive reasoning in student's scientific activities, we reviewed researches about the analysis of students' responses in the task of conceptual change or evaluation of evidence and so on.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 1999

The purpose of the present study was to test hypothesis that, because it uses tri-dimensional sensory pathway which have been showed a higher rate of neural activities than uni- or bi-dimensional's, lab-activity-based instruction is more effective teaching strategy in learning science than verbal-based instruction. In the present study, manipulative teaching strategy that uses visual, somatosensory and auditory information pathway was regarded as a mode of tri-dimensional sensory inputs. In addition, verbal teaching strategy that uses mainly auditory and a little visual information pathway was used as a mode of bi-dimensional sensory inputs. Fifty-six students who failed to successfully solve two proportional reasoning tasks (i.e., pouring water tasks) were sampled for this research from a junior high school. The subjects were randomly divided into a manipulative or a verbal teaching group, and given manipulative or verbal tutoring on the use of proportional reasoning strategies and a test of proportional reasoning during instruction. The results showed that manipulative group's performance on the test of proportional reasoning during instruction showed significantly higher performance than verbal group's (t=2.45, p<0.02). The present study also discussed some educational implications of the results.