• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.29-43
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• 2016

There have been much efforts to reconstruct the science curriculum focusing on Disciplinary Core Ideas(DCI) in many countries such as America and Europe, the most practical effort has been to design a curriculum with learning progressions(LPs). LPs describe stepwise how students can systematically move toward the understanding of more sophisticated ideas or scientific activities and explain in succession the process of understanding the ideas while the students learn. In this study, a LP for ecosystems has been developed, and the developed LP is then evaluated accordingly. The Ecosystem is one of the DCI of the life science in Next Generation Science Standards(NGSS). The development process of the LP was set at step 4(Development, Assessment, Analysis, and Amendment), and developed through an iterative process of sequences. As a result of analyzing the developed LP, an assessment based on the LP provides reliable information to identifying student ability. This study proposes the development process of the LP and its methodological aspects to use Core Achievement Standards, Ordered Multiple-Choice items and the Rasch model. In addition, using the empirically proven LP suggests a way of strengthening curriculum linked to educational content, teaching methods and assessment. Utilizing the proposed development process in this study will be to present the standard into the direction of becoming part of the curriculum. Currently, the state of domestic research for the LP is still lacking. This study determined the development process of the LP and the need to conduct future research on the LPs.

• 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.38 no.3
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• pp.355-367
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• 2018

The purposes of this study are 1) to identify systems thinking level and definition, 2) to develop a framework for the assessment of systems thinking level, and 3) to develop a rubric for scoring open-ended written responded test. In order to achieve these purposes, a total of 60 articles were analyzed by using the literature analysis framework. The systems thinking level and definition are identified through the results of systems thinking literature analysis. Based on the systems thinking level and definitions, the research derived a framework that includes the core ideas and evaluation content of each level. In addition, rubric for the scoring of open-ended response test items was revised and supplemented. It is concluded that a content validity test on the tools (systems thinking level and definition, framework for item development, rubric) has been developed in the study. The content validity was verified by 7-science education experts. According to the result of CVI, it was found to be more than .95 in all three tools. Based on the results of this study, the research will develop items that can measure students' level of systems thinking. The construct validity and criterion validity of the developed items should be verified systematically. The research could carry out a validation study for the systems thinking measurement related to the core competence emphasized in the 2015 revised curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.452-471
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• 2010

As the Korean College scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) has been implemented for 17 years since 1994, it is becoming more and more difficult to make new items that haven't been previously used to measure students' thinking ability. Therefore, it is necessary to keep conducting research on making new test items that can measure students' scholastic ability reliably. For this reason, multiple choice items on the Japanese university entrance exam, which is a Japanese National Center Test for University Admissions (NCTUA) equivalent of CSAT, were analyzed in order to draw implications for CSAT item development. In this study, we analyzed the Japanese NCTUA administered in January 2009 to investigate the structure of its science test. We also analyzed the NCTUA items by the domains of contents and behaviors, and tried to predict item difficulty from the perspective of Korean applicants. Major findings are as follows: Most NCTUA items measure understanding knowledge or low level thinking ability. Also the alloted time for each item is longer than CSAT. The number of test items, and the number of choice and alloted points for each item are diverse, unlike CSAT. The number of items using real-life materials are much more, but the items are not rigorous in sentence expression compared to CSAT. And the difference of difficulty level among science tests were larger with reference to CSAT. Also science score is required for most applicants regardless whether they are taking liberal arts or going onto the science track.

• Science of Emotion and Sensibility
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.3-16
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• 2018

Despite the substantial changes made in the product design field to adopt light as an essential design element, there has been little effort to define how customers respond emotionally to the light design of products. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze the emotional effect of light as a new design element. However, previous research focuses solely on deriving optimal lighting conditions to achieve particular emotional effects. Therefore, this paper investigates the customers' desired emotional effects of product's light design. We studied refrigerators that utilize light as the main design element of the product. We applied mixed methods by combining close-ended questions and open-ended question to efficiently derive the desired emotion. Participants were asked to choose the most favorable refrigerator image in each of the twelve image groups and indicate why they choose that image with the short-answer survey form. Approximately one thousand terms were collected, and those terms were classified into 29 groups using thesaurus relationships. The term groups were again classified into the four big emotion categories and labelled as "abstract quality," "light property," "space perception," and "visual comfort." Also, a model of the relationship between desired light style and light properties was proposed, since we observed the light properties related to three other categories. This study used mixed methods to identify the emotional value of a new design element. We suggest that the emotional categories derived and the proposed relationship model could be used to evaluate the product's light design.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.295-302
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• 2016

In this study, we investigated a learning progression focusing on $5^{th}$ to $9^{th}$ graders' performances with dissolution and solution concepts using the construct modeling approach. We designed a construct map describing hypothetical pathways of the concept development of dissolution and solution by analyzing both National Science Curricula and related studies. A conceptions test consisting of ordered multiple-choice items was developed and administered to 826 students. A revised construct map was derived from analyses of the results based on the partial credit model, a branch of polytomous item response theory. The sequence of dissolution and solution concepts presented in the current science curriculum was found to correspond with the learning progression of the students. However, the lower anchor, the concept of the homogeneity of particles in solution, and the factors affecting solubility were not consistent with the expected levels of the construct map. After revising the construct map, we proposed a learning progression for dissolution and solution concepts with five levels: Students of level 1 (the lower anchor) recognize the particles in the solution but misunderstand various concepts; Students of level 2 understand the homogeneity of particles in solution; Students of level 3 understand solubility and the conservation of particles during dissolution; Students of level 4 partially understand the interaction between particles; and Students of level 5 (the upper anchor) understand the interaction between particles and the factors affecting solubility.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.815-833
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• 2016

This study investigated children's (grade 3 to 9) responses to assessment items on energy as a cross-cutting concept in order to get basic information for a learning progression. The assessment consisted of 8 ordered multiple-choice items at the contexts of electric circuit, mechanical energy of falling objects, phase change of matter, dissolution, biological phenomena of a lizard, food chain, radiative equilibrium between Sun and Earth, and the system of water cycling. Children's responses to each item were analyzed with using cross-tabulations in terms of grades and item option levels and Wright map and Differential item functioning based on Rasch modeled item response analysis. The results offered empirical evidence of children's development of understanding energy from relation between energy and its phenomena, types of energy, transfer and conversion of energy, towards conservation and equilibrium of energy for all of eight contexts. Children of each grade did not fully understand energy conservation. As grade goes up, their understandings of energy transfer and conversion were differentiated across the contexts and topics of energy. According to Rasch analysis, children had easier understanding of energy on dissolution and poorer understanding of energy on water cycling than that on other contexts. It was discussed and suggested that the results of this study help us organize science topics with regard to energy when developing new national science curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.487-498
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• 2015

This research is for acquiring implications to science education based on learner's characteristics by analyzing the relationship between contents on science learning and cognitive domain of students in elementary schools through TIMSS 2011-based academic achievement test. Forty one multiple choice items from by TIMSS 2011 were used on 317 primary school students, fourth to sixth grade, and according to grade and achievement level of research targets, test results were analyzed. With these data, the relationship between contents on science learning and the score by cognitive domains, and through correlation by items, we drew static and negative correlations, and then compared the value. The result are as follows: First, other fields except for 'physical science' and 'inference' revealed meaningful differences by learners' grade, and the interrelationship between all contents domains and cognitive fields also appeared statically different. Second, both achievement level of contents and cognition of learners presented significant differences, but the correlation between scientific contents and cognitive field of learners showed different aspects. Third, in static and negative correlation by items, the complexity and their aspects could be classified by targets' academic achievement levels.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.511-523
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• 2005

The purpose of this study is to analyze the 1st and 2nd Korea Earth Science Olympiad (KESO) items, in order to find informations to enhance item quality. To do this, internal and external item classification frameworks are developed. Item difficulty (P), discrimination index (DI), correlation, and reliability are estimated by using classical test theory. Generalizability is also estimated by applying the generalizability theory. The results of item classification are as follows: (1) ‘Geology’, ‘astronomy’ and ‘data analysis and interpretation’ are dominant in content and inquiry process domain, respectively. Nearly every item has textbook context. (2) There is no difference between the preliminary and final tests in terms of their thinking skills sections. (3) As a whole, the ratio of items with pictures is high in item representation. However, multiple-choice and short answer items are more common in preliminary competition, and essay type items are found more often in final competition. The ratio of simple items is high in middle school section and preliminary competition, but composite items are dominant in high school section and final competition. The findings of item analysis are as follows: (1) In the middle school section, P is low and DI is moderate. But in the high school section, there is a considerable differences between science high schools and other high schools in general. (2) The highest correlation is reported between the scores of meteorology domain and total score in middle school, whereas in high school astronomy domain and total score show the highest correlation. (3) General high school section show the highest Cronbach $\alpha$ and generalizability. (4) General high school section show acceptable generalizability coefficient (> 0.80), but middle and science high school section should increase the number of items to reach acceptable generalizability level.

• 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.