• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.511-523
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• 2019

In this age of the $4^{th}$ industrial revolution, we, science educators, are giving more light on students' agentic behavior in the process of educating future scientist. This study, with the analytic lens of epistemic agency, explores the key stages of a student-driven R&E program rather than the scientist-led R&E program. It also examines to understand the emergence of students' epistemic agency in each stage of R&E. Data from participant observation for 18 months and in-depth interviews were collected and analyzed with the constant comparative method of grounded theory. This study identifies and describes five key stages of student-driven R&E: The stage of exploring research theme, designing research, performing lab activity, interpreting results, and communicating research. It also finds that (a) students' epistemic agency emerged with the constant interactions with the R&E structure; (b) students' epistemic agency has deep relations with the epistemic beliefs of the students; (c) students positioned themselves as decision-makers in the R&E practice; (d) the redistributed power and authority of the R&E contributed to the emergence of students' epistemic agency.