• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.1
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• pp.15-29
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to investigate the educational factors on career choice of science-gifted students to science and technology bound universities and the difference of perception in regards to group factors. In addition, this study aimed to examine the effects of science-gifted education and critical events in relation to career choice to science and technology bound universities. For the study, 104 university freshmen, 75 males and 29 females, were sampled from UNIST (Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology), that many science high school graduates entered this year. The survey was conducted with questionnaires to do with the perceptions concerning career choice and educational factors that cause them to choose such career directions. The educational factors on career choice to science and technology bound universities were classified as 3 main categories such as educational environment factor (teaching-learning factor), human factor, attitude towards science factor and the subcategories within each category. The research findings are as follows: First, the factors were closely connected with each other and 'the project centered classes' were highly interrelated with other educational environment factors such as 'the experiment activity and environment for the activity' and 'influence of teachers (professors).' Second, the female students and graduates of the science high school were more positively influenced by the educational environment and human factors on their decision for career than male students and graduates of the general high school. Third, this research found that historical scientific knowledge, perception of scientists' social status and job applications in the science field gave less influence rather than other factors on their decision for career. As a result of examining critical events for science-gifted education in relation to career choice to science and technology bound universities, numerous students mentioned that the extracurricular science activities such as science camps and field trips gave significant effects on students' career choices to science and engineering fields.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.392-412
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• 2007

It has been understood that Confucian culture only blocks creative problem solving(CPS). However, it is claimed that Confucian culture exerts positive and negative influence on nurturing CPS. Confucian culture fosters CPS by urging strong motivation for learning, and building rich base of knowledge and skills in general and in specific domains through teaching joy of learning and hardworking fueled by parents' education fever. Confucian culture has negative influence on CPS with emphasis on obedience and conformity. Keju system, as a part of Confucian culture, resulted in excessive private tutoring to prepare for the high-stakes test, delimitation of students' experiences to matters to be tested, and students' weak interest, self-concept, and self-directed learning. Negative influence from Confucian culture on CPS is analyzed and some suggestions are provided for revising educational policies and educational practices in order to maximize the creative problem solving in Confucian countries.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.1471-1476
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• 2013

This research examines how PBL(Problem-based Learning; PBL) system affects to 'Self-directed learning ability', by developing and applying it to the participants of "Science Cyber Conference" - the web based on-line debating learning program - among those students of the Affiliated Institute of Science gifted education of K University, for 16weeks. With this, also the cognizance of learners for the PBL class process are looked into together. After conducting the program applied with the web-based PBL strategy, the participants 'Self-directed learning ability' showed the remarkable change statistically (p<.05). Especially it showed the meaningful changes in six sections (p<.05), among those subdivided seven sections of 'Self-directed learning ability', with the one exception, 'Self-confidence as a Learner'. They also showed the positive response to the class which adopted the web-based PBL strategy.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.719-730
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to investigate how engineering design-based STEM research experience affects gifted students' creative engineering problem-solving propensity and attitude toward engineering. The students' creative engineering problem-solving propensity and attitude toward engineering were measured before and after the STEM research experience. The pre-/post-tests results were analyzed by paired t-test with the significance level of p <.05. The conclusions of the study are as follows: First, the engineering design based STEM research experience had a positive effect on the students' creative engineering problem-solving propensity. Over all, the average score of the creative engineering problem-solving propensity increased significantly (p <.05) after the STEM research experience. Second, the average score of gifted-students' attitude toward engineering had increased significantly after the integrated STEM research activities (p <.05). In addition, we analyzed the difference between pre-post results of both instruments based on the gifted students' desired career paths (natural science and engineering) and gender. The result shows that the students' career paths or gender did not affect the results in most of the sub-categories in both instruments. However, the STEM research experience had more positive effect on the female students than male students in term of their 'engineering design ability', which is one of the sub-categories of the creative engineering problem-solving propensity instrument.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.818-831
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• 2007

Recognizing the importance of abductive inquiry in Earth science, some theoretical approaches that deploy abduction have been researched. And, it is necessary that the abductive inquiry in a geological field excursion as a vivid locale of Earth science inquiry should be researched. We developed a geological field trip based on the abductive learning model, and investigated students' abductive inference, thinking strategies used in those inferences, and the impact of a teacher's pedagogical intervention on students' abductive inference. Results showed that students, during the field excursion, could accomplish abductive inference about rock identification, process of different rock generation, joints generation in metamorpa?ic rocks, and terrains at the field trip area. They also used various thinking strategies in finding appropriate rules to construe the facts observed at outcrops. This means that it is significant for the enhancement of abductive reasoning skills that students experience such inquiries as scientists do. In addition, a teacher's pedagogical interventions didn't ensure the content of students' inference while they helped students perform abductive reasoning and guided their use of specific thinking strategies. Students had found reasoning rules to explain the 01: served facts from their wrong prior knowledge. Therefore, during a geological field excursion, teachers need to provide students with proper background knowledge and information in order that students can reason rues for persuasive abductive inference, and construe the geological features of the field trip area by the establishment of appropriate hypotheses.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.495-505
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to analyze the level of evidence used in gifted elementary students' argumentation. The subjects were 15, 5th and 6th grade students selected in the Science Education Institute for Gifted Youth in K University. After the argumentation task was given to students 2 weeks ago, the students grouped themselves in the affirmative and negative and took part in a debate for 2 hours. Their argumentation process was observed, recorded and transcribed for analysis. Transcribed data was given a Protocol Number according to priority and was examined to find out what were the characteristics when students participated in the task. The evidence used in argumentation was graded from level 1 to level 6 according to Perella's Hierarchy of Evidence and the rate of frequency classified by the level was expressed in graph. Students used Level 1- Level 2 evidence above 50% without for or against task. They had weak argumentation making use of low-level evidence such as individual experience, opinion and another person's experience rather than objective evidences. On the other hand, students commented on the lack of opponent's evidence when they could not trust an opponent's evidence. If one team asked the other to present more evidence but could not, they disregarded the question and turned to another topic. And in cases where the opponent team refuted with evidences of high level, the other team just repeated their claim or evaded the rebuttal. The students tended to complete the argument without the same conclusions with some interruptions. The results show that we need an educational programs including scientific argumentation for science-gifted elementary school students.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.179-198
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• 2011

The understanding of mathematical concepts should be backed up on a constant basis in oder to grow problem-solving skills which is one of the ultimate goals of math education. The purpose of the study was to provide readers with the information which could be considered valuably for the math educators trying both to prevent mathematical misconceptions and to develop curricular program by estimating the actual conditions and developing backgrounds of the mathematical misconceptions held by the gifted education learners. Accordingly, this study, as the first step, theoretically examined the meaning and the developing background of mathematical misconception. As the second step, this study examined the actual conditions of mathematical misconceptions held by the participant students who were enrolled in the CTY(Center for Talented Youth) program run by a university. The results showed that the percentage of the correct statements made by participant students is only 35%. The results also showed that most of the participant students belonged either to the level 2 requiring students to distinguish examples from non-examples of the mathematical concepts or the level 3 requiring students to recognize and describe the common nature of the mathematical concepts with their own expressions based on the four-level of concept formulation. The causes could be traced to the presentation of limited example, wrong preconcept, the imbalance of conceptual definition and conceptual image. Based on the estimation, this study summarized a general plan preventing the mathematical misconceptions in a math classroom.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.40 no.3
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• pp.267-286
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• 2016

The study aimed to investigate a research trend in science gifted education of six years from 2010 to 2015 by utilizing literature analysis and Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods. In this study, 275 papers published in eight major academic journals of science education and gifted education were selected as research subjects. First, through the literature analysis, it was found that the most frequent research topics were cognitive characteristics (25.8%), curriculum/programs (22.6%), and social and emotional characteristics (20.2%). For the research method employed in research papers, the survey research (46.5%) was appeared as the most frequently employed method, and followed by experimental (18.8%), program development (10.6%), correlation (10.3%), and qualitative (6.4%) research methods. The most frequent research subject was appeared as middle school students (33.7%) and followed by elementary school (30.6%), and high school (12.7%) students. Second, the SNA method was utilized for producing keyword frequency, degree centrality and network analyses. It was appeared that the most common keywords over six years included 'science gifted', 'gifted education', and 'creativity' and frequent keywords were science gifted, gifted education, gifted, creativity, science inquiry, perception, (creative) problem solving, science high school, scientific attitude, and STEAM. Third, through 2-mode network analysis, it was found that the research papers about cognitive characteristics were mainly related to perceptions, thinking ability, scientific argumentation, science inquiry and so on. It was also found that the research papers about social and emotional characteristics were related to correlation, motivation, creativity-character, self-efficiency and so on. It was concluded that the SNA method can be performed with literature analysis together for better understandings and interpretations of the research trend of science gifted education in-depth.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.25-33
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• 2010

Teaching aids Robot Education, through early education and contests, is very commonly known to elementary school students, their parents and teacher. However, not only we do not have complete knowledge of how robot education for after school performs, but also we lack a proper management skills in educating new teachers and running a structured program. Thus, through this research, we would like to identify the problems in teacher's knowledge and how the robot education is running according to provinces, size of cities, public private school, and size of schools and provide proper and most effective way of teaching after school robot class. According to the result of this research of running 'Robot class' in different area, sub-areas and size of schools, there was a meaningful difference and the biggest problem in performance was the class organization. In addition, about the expectation through after school classes, the research showed that the teachers expect lower cost of private education and improvement in creativity the most.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.79-93
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• 2013

This study examined value-judgement and decision-making process of middle school students on three biotechnology related socioscientific issues (SSI) (i.e. designer baby, amniotic fluid test, and embryonic stem cell research). In particular, it focused on the level of consistency in their value application to the decisions. Twenty 8th grade students participated in the SSI program. The participants were asked to mark their positions on each issue before and after the debates. All classroom and sub-group debates were audio-recorded. The researcher conducted individual interviews with 10 students after the program. The results show three patterns emerging. First, five students applied their personal values in a consistent manner when making decisions on the three consecutive issues. Second, three students demonstrated incremental resoluteness in their value application as the sessions proceeded and had tendency to be oriented towards a specific value, more so towards the end of the program than the beginning. And third, four students gradually showed ambivalence in their decisions as they participate in the program. The results suggest that science teachers addressing SSI need to encourage students to be aware of their own values and to engage in internalized decision-making in light of those values. They also need to be aware of the possible challenges that students might feel in their decision-making process caused by the complexity of SSI.