• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.686-702
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• 2012

This study investigated the impact of grouping methods on free inquiry implementation through the use of mixed research methods. Some 113 7th graders and 2 science teachers in two middle schools participated in this study. The 113 students who participated in this study were grouped by homogeneity and heterogeneity according to scientific inquiry skills and personality types respectively, and performed free inquiry activities on the same subject for three weeks. Data were collected by means of a test on science inquiry skills and from focus group interviews with 36 students and in-depth interviews with 2 teachers. The quantitative results of this study showed that homogeneous grouping was more effective than heterogeneous grouping in improvement of scientific inquiry skills. Meanwhile, the qualitative results revealed both the students and teachers perceived that it was effective to compose a small group according to their affective quality than their cognitive quality. Particularly, most of the students preferred the method of small group from the personality types. Some students and both teachers proposed that it is necessary to collect enough information on students and to use them in mixture with the method of small group according to the affective quality.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.572-581
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• 2000

Teachers' perceptions about curricular objectives are very important to achieve given educational objectives. This study examined teachers' perceptions about priority and hinderance of science objectives. The national science curriculum stated four areas of objectives: inquiry, knowledge, attitude, and STS. A total of 76 elementary and 217 secondary teachers were responded to questionnaire developed for this study. Non-parametric statistics, such as Friedman test, Kruskal-Wallis test, and chi-square test were used by using SPSS/PC program. Teachers in general ranked the inquiry first among the four areas at their perception on the national curriculum, on themselves, and on their instructions. Elementary teachers ranked inquiry higher than secondary science teachers, while secondary science teachers ranked knowledge higher than elementary teachers. As factors hindering teachers from achiving the objectives, elementary teachers pointed out overcrowded classroom and secondary science teachers pointed out college and university entrance examination respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.342-352
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate inquiry-based science instruction developed and implemented by a pre-service chemistry teacher regarding the difficulties that she encountered and the ways how she tried to solve out problems. Main data of this study were pre-service teacher reflections that were written after developing both each lesson plan and the whole 10 lesson plans, and after implementing both each lesson and the whole classes. Supplemental data were lesson plans, class audio recordings, and student written journals. The pre-service teacher learned that she was lack of science content knowledge and understanding of students’ understandings. Also she had difficulties of developing inquiry-based science lesson plans, managing classrooms, and guiding students to engage in science inquiry. In order to overcome the difficulties, she asked for advice to experienced teachers, studied science concepts using textbooks and internet resources, provided detailed and concrete guidance for student argumentation and writing.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.7
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• pp.1204-1221
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• 2012

The purpose of this research was to identify the components of scaffolding in open inquiry and to explore the functions of teachers' scaffolding, which is necessary to support students' open inquiry. In order to identify scaffolding components, at first, we conducted a survey using a questionnaire on what students think about open inquiry on 110 students who performed open inquiry in two middle schools, and then carried out factor analysis based on the survey results. It was attempted to investigate students' perception through focus group interviews corresponding to scaffolding components that were identified through factor analysis. Also, we examined teachers' empirical view of scaffolding functions in open inquiry through in-depth interviews with four teachers. The results of exploratory factor analysis revealed that there were five scaffolding components of open inquiry: motivation, planning, strategy, environment and participation. The results of focus group interviews showed that students experienced difficulties in planning, strategy, environment and participation components, except for motivation component. In particular, students asked for support to strengthen the participation component, which means recognizing their role, active participation and collaboration with peers. Meanwhile, the results of in-depth interviews with teachers showed that teachers' empirical views of scaffolding function in open inquiry were categorized as cognitive (conceptual, metacognitive), emotional (motivational, arbitrative) and strategic. Interviewed teachers preferred the strategic scaffolding and cognitive scaffolding to the emotional scaffolding. Based on the results, we also discussed the implications for performing open inquiry effectively.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.10-20
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• 2014

This study compares the perceptions of elementary gifted child and science teacher in a science class for the gifted. In order to explore the research problem, students and teachers answered a written semi-structured questionnaire and participated in interviews regarding the gifted science class. The data was collected and analyzed. Science teachers recognized the characteristics of a good science class, especially in terms of educational content and teaching methodology. First, they suggested promoting inquiry skills, presenting a challenging task in atypical topic selection, student-centered curriculum, and controlling the pace of learning to recognize individual differences. Second, in terms of the science class skills and attitudes category, teachers recommended raising mutual satisfaction through vigorous interaction within a permissible atmosphere. Finally, science teachers need to strive for continued professional growth. Gifted children, meanwhile, want to investigate a wide range of topics without time constraints. Additionally, they may have to explore challenging topics further. They prefer to act like scientists in that they enjoy group activities, communication and cooperation. In particular, they want to be evaluated by others in a totally embedded assessment. Gifted children also expect teachers to understand the life circumstances and needs of the students. In addition, they asked for teachers to respect individual experiments and to show them how to safely use new equipment or research methods. As a result, gifted children and science teachers have to recognize the differences of opinion concerning a good science class for the gifted. This study can help formulate strategies to establish quality management of materials in gifted science classes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.200-213
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• 2000

This study is to examine how common science, which was selected as a required subject in high schools with the reorganization of the 6th national science curriculum by the Ministry of Education, is taught in high schools these days. The results show that only one teacher is teaching common science in 3.2% of schools or the teachers divide and teach units according to their majors. In this situation, there are many problems because there are too many integrated contents in each unit and they are too short to solve the study subject during the unit time of 50 minutes. Another problem is that there is no special laboratory for common science. For the knowledge part of common science, lecture-learning is used as a method of teaching and for the inquiry part, inquiry-learning is used. Evaluation is conducted using subjective or objective paper-tests for the knowledge part, and reports are used for evaluation in the inquiry part. Therefore, this study shows that students' response to common science is below the general level and this subject missed the original intent introduced to raise students' interests about science.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.59 no.1
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• pp.78-87
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the argumentation of middle school students during the argument-based inquiry. A total of sixty eight 8th grade middle school students participated in this study and they performed six argument-based inquiry programs. Data were collected from two of the latest programs by audio-recording and transcription of each group engaging in argumentation. The study findings showed that; first, the most frequent element of argumentation in the all of stages of the two programs was following order: 'claim' and 'request and response' and 'simple agreement'. The most active argumentation was showed at the designing experiments stage and the most inactive was showed at the generating questions stage. Second, as a result of analyzing the argumentation level for each stage of the argument-based inquiry, a high level of argumentation was shown at the claim and evidence stage, and a low level of argumentation was shown at the generating questions stage in the argumentation structure. As a result of the validity of argumentation, the validity of argumentation was the highest level in the claim and evidence stage.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.323-337
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to analyze the scientific reasoning ability during open-inquiry activities of science-gifted 2nd middle school students. Open-inquiry activity is similar to process of scientists' science knowledge generation. Identifying and analyzing the scientific reasoning process and the scientific reasoning ability during open-inquiry activities of science-gifted students, will be able to provide implications for future research. CSRI Matrix(Dolan & Grady, 2010) was used to analyze the complexity of the scientific reasoning ability. The higher degree of complexity of the scientific reasoning is similar to process of scientists' science knowledge generation. The results showed that each process of the open-inquiry activities were distributed by various steps of complexity of the scientific reasoning. Particularly, 'The generating questions' and 'Connecting data to the research question' were 'most complex' step in all teams. On the other side, 'Posing preliminary hypotheses', 'Selecting dependent and independent variables', 'Considering the limitations or flaws of their experiments' were low steps in most teams. And 'Communicating and defending findings' was distributed by most various steps of complexity of the scientific reasoning.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.106-115
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• 2023

The purpose of this study was to investigate the errors in science inquiry research reports written by students who won the encouragement award at the National Science Fair, and analyze the frequency of error types by school levels. The framework for analysis was constructed based on the table of contents of the students' science inquiry research reports, and the reports were analyzed for errors in six stages: Research question/hypothesis, prior research, experimental procedure, results, conclusions, and references. The study identified several types of errors at each stage, such as unreasonable research questions and wrong hypotheses in the research question/hypothesis stage, and limited considerations under certain conditions and selection of inappropriate experimental instruments in the experimental procedure stage. The study found that the frequency ratio of experimental procedure error was the highest across all school levels, and the order of errors varied by school level. Frequency ratio of error types of school level was: in the elementary school students' reports, errors were analyzed in the order of experimental procedure (36.88%), prior research (17.02%), conclusions (16.31%), research question/hypothesis (13.48%); In the middle school students' reports, experimental procedure (42.86%), conclusions (20.00%), prior research (14.28%), results (11.43%), research question/hypothesis (10.01%); In the high school students' reports, experimental procedure (45.16%), research question/ hypothesis (16.13%), conclusions (16.13%), and prior research (11.83%). The findings could be used to guide teachers in helping students conduct scientific inquiry research or write reports.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.45 no.2
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• pp.143-155
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• 2021

The goal of this study is to examine the Integrated Science and Science Laboratory Experiments of the 2015 revised curriculum applied since 2018, and to explore ways to improve these two subjects in preparation for the 2022 revised curriculum. A survey was conducted by randomly sampling high schools across the country, with a total of 192 science teachers participating. In addition, 12 high school science teachers were selected as focus group, and in-depth interviews were conducted to investigate ways to restructure common science courses for the next curriculum. Main research results include that most schools were operated in 6~8 units for Integrated Science, and the teachers in charge of Integrated Science per class averaged 2~3 over the three years. For Science Laboratory Experiments, it has operated for a total of two semesters, one unit per semester, and it was found that several science teachers are in charge of Science Laboratory Experiments to fill the insufficient number of hours regardless of major. In the in-depth interview, science teachers argued that Integrated Science should be reduced and restructured by strengthening key competencies in preparation for the high school credit system. Based on the research results, ways to reorganize Integrated Science focused on big ideas, ways to construct common science courses based on fundamental science concepts that can guide elective courses, the necessity of career guidance through common science courses, and the necessity of strengthening teacher professionalism for teaching interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary subjects were suggested.