• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.587-597
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• 2017

If we, as educators, want to put students at the center of learning in science classroom, we must let students express their voices and exercise authority. To do this, we developed a classroom activity about 'Making a pet poster', and then we explored how elementary school students perceived their roles and expressed their authority during this activity. Fourth grade students from an elementary school in the city of Seoul participated in the activity, which was videotaped and recorded. We found that students expressed their epistemic authority differently in small group activities and in whole group discussions. In small group activities, they desired to show their authority as "pet experts" by using and selecting various resources from their everyday lives and transforming those resources into suitable forms in public spaces. Meanwhile, in whole group discussions, participants were classified as either presenters or audience members to verify their authority in regard to the pet poster activity; presenters desired to achieve recognition as "pet experts," and audience members assessed the presenters as "testers." In addition, they expressed authority as teachers by leading the whole group discussions. Based on these findings, this paper suggests the implications for new educational strategies to foster a student-centered learning environment.