• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.135-145
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• 2018

In this study, we investigated the argumentations of group and classroom discussions in socioscientific issues (SSI) discussion classes. Twenty-seven high school students participated in the SSI discussion classes on nuclear power generation. We observed and recorded the classes and also conducted semi-structured interviews. For the analyses, we revised a previous framework that was developed to analyze dialogic argumentations in the context of SSI. The analyses of the results indicated that there were more discourse schemes in the classroom discussions than the group discussions which are related to awareness and openness to multiple perspectives, evidence based reasoning, and on-going inquiry and skepticism. And there were few discourse schemes related to moral and ethical sensitivity in the group and classroom discussions. Various grounds, data, and information were presented in the classroom discussions. Students concentrated on carrying their claims and were not able to sympathize with and accept other opinions. Therefore, there were few discourse schemes to reach consensus. In addition, they perceived classroom discussions as competitive and actively rebutted other claims or grounds. The levels of argumentation were also high in the classroom discussions. The group discussions were held in relaxed atmosphere, and they asked the opponents more for clarification or additional information and evidences. However, classroom discussions were held in serious atmosphere, and they actively queried the validity of the claims or grounds. Based on the results, some suggestions to implement SSI discussion classes were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.160-181
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to understand raters' errors in rating performance assessments of science inquiry. For this, 60 middle school students performed scientific inquiry about sound propagation and 4 trained raters rated their activity sheets. Variance components estimation for the result of the generalizability analysis for the person, task, rater design, the variance components for rater, rater by person and rater by task are about 25%. Among 4 raters, 2 raters' severity is higher than the other two raters and their severities were stabilized. Four raters' rating agreed with each other in 51 cases among the 240 cases. Through the raters' conferences, the rater error types for 189 disagreed cases were identified as one of three types; different salience, severity, and overlooking. The error type 1, different salience, showed 38% of the disagreed cases. Salient task and salient assessment components are different among the raters. The error type 2, severity, showed 25% and the error type 3, overlooking showed 31%. The error type 2 seemed to have happened when the students responses were on the borders of two levels. Error type 3 seemed to have happened when raters overlooked some important part of students' responses because she or he immersed her or himself in one's own salience. To reduce the above rater errors, raters' conference in salience of task and assesment components are needed before performing the holistic scoring of complex tasks. Also raters need to recognize her/his severity and efforts to keep one's own severity. Multiple raters are needed to prevent the errors from being overlooked. The further studies in raters' tendencies and sources of different interpretations on the rubric are suggested.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the development and application of strategies using fairy tales in elementary school science. For this study, many fairy tales were searched in terms of various characteristics and educational value of the tales. Five fairy tales were selected and reconstructed to suit the 'mirrors and lenses' unit of 5th graders' school science, and teaching strategies using the fairy tales were developed to be used in six lessons. To investigate the effects of instruction using fairy tales, pre/post tests for scientific attitude were administered. To analyze students' perception of their classes, a simple survey was administered through questionnaires. We found from this study that the students related the fairy tales with their own experiences and took an active part in the class that used them. Also, instruction using fairy tales had positive effects on their scientific attitude. Many students said that the science classes were interesting, and the method using fairy tales encouraged students to study hard as well as helped them to understand the context. It was concluded that instruction using fairy tales was an effective method in terms of enhancing learning motivation, encouraging more inquiries, more opportunities to apply the scientific concept, and more positive scientific attitude. We discussed the strategies using fairy tales for implementation in elementary science classes as well.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.107-122
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to investigate trends in research studies on scientific argument and writing in Korea. 118 research studies published from 2004 to 2013 have been collected and analyzed. Many of the research studies focused on developing teaching strategies, analyzing contents of scientific argument and writing, and effects on student learning. More than half of the studies were conducted with elementary and middle school students while studies with pre-service, in-service teachers or high school students were relatively rare. Most research studies were conducted within regular school hour context and participants were given relevant information/education prior to argument and writing activities. Many research have analyzed student growth in scientific attitudes and we would suggest that further studies should investigate student growth in scientific concepts, scientific inquiry, and critical thinking. The structure and process of argument or the content and form of writing have been analyzed. The quality of argument and scientific concepts embedded in argument and writing should be investigated more in future researches.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.649-656
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• 2020

In this study, we analyzed the learning elements and achievement standards, and explored the appropriateness and hierarchy of content were analyzed related to the nine types of traditional astronomical instruments presented in the traditional science unit of the History of Science course to improve the problematic situation in which students show low selection rates for the History of Science, one of the elective courses in high school science. Based on the results of this analysis, we suggested ways to utilize each astronomical instrument for teaching and learning in science curriculum with different grade bands. Using the results of this study as a starting point, if a follow-up study that develops specific achievement standards or inquiry activities related to traditional astronomical instruments can be conducted, students' awareness of Korean traditional science culture can be improved, and furthermore it is expected to increase the student's selection rate for the History of Science course.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.357-374
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• 2004

This paper described the types and characteristics of educational programs in major natural history museums of the world. Data were collected from the websites, annual reports, and written materials of the Natural History Museum at London, Australian Museum at Sydney, Field Museum of Natural History at Chicago, Smithsonian Museum at Washington D.C, Royal Tyrrell Museum at Canada and American Museum of Natural History at New York. As the result of this study, we presented ten types of educational programs, which were moveable museums, workshops, lecture/courses, festival/events, discovery activities, scientific exploration/research projects, field trips, youth curators/internship, loan materials and camp/tours. We also described the examples equivalent to each program type. The characteristics of educational programs provided by museums as informal learning settings were analyzed in terms of their themes, participation levels, connection with exhibition, relation to curriculum, and learning activity levels. Information in this paper will assist science teachers, museum educators and curators: (1) to design and implement various types and contents of educational programs; (2) to use characteristics of educational programs to assess and develop them; (3) to make important contributions to science education that involves the introduction of various scientific aspects and collections to the public, and the use of programs for science learning and teaching coherent to existing curricula.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.43-60
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• 2006

This study mainly intended to investigate the relation between scientific inquiry and several entrance exam results of the gifted in earth science gifted program. The scientific inquiry was tested with their experiment designs. Entrance exams included achievement scores, creativity scores, problem solving, and oral test of high ability students. Student entrance scores were used to judge the level of students' competency in science. Recently students' ability of 'doing science' as measured by their designing experiments has been highly appreciated as a criteria of scientifically gifted students. One of the well known tests was Diet Cola Test developed by Fowler(1990). We used it as a test to figure out students' experiment design ability. We selected 22 gifted students in earth science. We compared their entrance test scores and Diet Cola Test results. Based on the comparison results we proposed several guideline of science education program for high ability students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.6
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• pp.595-609
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to analyze the experiences of teachers who participated in the development of online science class videos in the context of covid-19, their perception of online science class, and the characteristics of the online science class content developed by teachers. A survey and interviews were conducted with ten elementary school teachers who made online science class videos themselves. Also the characteristics of the online science class were investigated by analyzing the online science class video produced by the participants. As a result, participants in the study recognized the lack of production time, difficulty in filming and editing, concerns over misconceptions, the problem of solving copyrights for existing materials, and the burden of external disclosure. Although it was a teacher who had experience producing online science class video contents, no research participants actively answered the merits of online science class. On the other hand, the study participants cited that the shortcomings of online science classes were that students had fewer opportunities for inquiry and lack of communication or interaction. In particular, these shortcomings were thought to have a great influence on the quality of online science classes, especially in making inquiry classes difficult. Some teachers took a negative view that online science classes could not completely replace face-to-face classes. However, if multiple teachers are presented with supplementary teaching activities that complement the content-based online teaching method, the method of combining online science classes and face-to-face classes is not. Through the analysis of the contents of the online science class, the introduction and arrangement steps of the online science class were similar to the process of the face-to-face science class, but the inquiry step and the conceptual explanation step showed a big difference from the face-to-face science class.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.486-500
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• 2013

This study is conducted to examine how epistemic reasoning and argument structures of students vary according to data sources used in the process of argumentation implemented in the context of inquiry. To this end, three argument tasks using first-hand data and three argument tasks using second-hand data were developed and applied to the unit on 'Nutrition of Plants' for first year middle school students. According to the results of this study, epistemic reasoning of students manifested during the process of argumentation and varied according to data sources. While most students composed explanations with phenomenon-based or relation-based reasoning in argumentation using first-hand data, all the small groups composed explanations that included model-based reasoning in argumentation using second-hand data. In the case of arguments including phenomenon-based or relation-based reasoning, students described only observable characteristics, with warrants omitted from arguments in many cases. On the other hand, in the case of arguments that included model-based reasoning, explanations were composed by combining the results of observations with theoretical knowledge, with warrants more apparent in their arguments.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.881-901
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• 2011

The science museum in the past satisfied visitors only by interacting them with simple objects and exhibition, while one in modern times was requested to meet the need of visitors in their engagement in educational programs. To meet the visitors' need, the science museum made efforts to train, educate, and assign docents so that they can interact with visitors and serve the educational purpose of visitation. In this study, we analyzed the strengths and weakness of docent training programs from science museums/science centers nationally and internationally, to make implication on how to design a docent training and professional program. Programs from four national and four international science centers/museums were selected as a sample for analysis. Their docent training programs were compared with the data of surveys and interviews and emails from docents and docent managers/evaluators. Artifacts and documents of the docent training programs were also collected and used to construct the validity in analyzing the data, resulting in the well-developed docent training program as the critical one for enriching science museum education. The results included; First, we need to recruit and train docents who interact visitors directly but they need to be differentiated from regular volunteers for promoting science museum education for the purpose of popularization of science. Additionally, Second, we need to develop and run docent training program where docents can experience 'informal learning' exhibition interpreting strategies through the real field from mentoring from the experienced/senior docents beyond 'formal learning' exhibition content. Third, we need to equip docents with skills to make scientific literacy possible at science museum-such as experiencing scientific ethics through scientific inquiry-which happens limited at school education.