• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.1199-1213
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties in engaging in open-inquiry activities - especially finding inquiry topics for student themselves. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 11 middle school students and their open-inquiry worksheets from 4 months of activities. The investigation tools were composed of three domains for topic choice: selecting subjects, making 10 questions, and choosing a topic with the 10 questions. The study revealed that middle school students have difficulties in the domain of 'object selection' and 'finding inquiry topic.' Under the object selection domain, they showed burden of selection of unlimited subject, lack of knowledge on the science object, and lack of interest in object. Under the domain of finding inquiry topic, they have difficulties from their selected topics that were non-scientific, focus only on interest, lack of background information or those that could be resolved by short answers. Each student has difficulty in doing open-inquiry with relatively different seriousness. The findings suggested that an open inquiry program should be provided along with a systematic guide program on finding inquiry topic for open-inquiry activities to be a successful and continual performance gauge.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.318-333
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• 2017

In this study, we analyzed activities in life science chapters of middle school 'science' textbooks for the 2009 revised Korea national curriculum and examined the difference between the analysis based on scientific practices and the analysis based on inquiry skills. As a results, there was a lot of inquiry skills in the order of 'reasoning', 'observing', 'classification' in the all of grade. In scientific practices, 'data analysis and interpretation' and 'constructing explanations and devising problem solving' were biased. This shows that life science inquiry activities in middle school 'science' textbooks are lacking in diversity in scientific practice elements as well as inquiry skills, and that the goals of the activities are limited. In addition, through the interrelationships between scientific inquiry skills and scientific practice elements, we examined contents relevance in the transition from inquiry function center to scientific practice, and compared with the results of inquiry activities in textbook, The results of this study were matched monotonously due to the tendency to basic inquiry-data interpretation / basic inquiry-explanation. This comes from results of the lack of diversity in activities presented in middle school 'science' textbooks. In this study, it is suggested that efforts should be made to include diverse scientific practice elements in the process of realizing 2015 revised Korea national curriculum from the simple and diversity-less inquiry activity through analyzing the textbooks of the 2009 revised Korea national curriculum.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.225-230
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• 1999

The inquiry activities closely related to chemistry which were presented in the 4 middle school science textbooks were compared and analyzed. The total volume of chemistry part was 64.8 pages (22.3%), which were the smallest one in the four categories of science. The total numbers of inquiry activities related to chemistry were 171; 59 for the first grade, 47 for the second, and 65 for the third grade and those were composed of 29 observations, 20 measurements, 113 experiments, 9 data explanations, no investigation and discussion. Therefore, the major inquiry activity was experiment (66.7%) and this maldistribution will need to be improved.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.47 no.4
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• pp.391-400
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• 2003

This study was performed the analysis of seven kinds of the hight school chemistry II textbooks based on the 6th curriculum. Particularly, inquiry activity part was analyzed by the three dimension framework which consists of inquiry content dimension, inquiry process dimension and inquiry context dimension. In the analysis of the inquiry content dimension of inquiry activities, the total number of themes in seven kinds of textbook was 212. And the number of inquiry activities in seven kinds of textbook was diverse: A textbook had 28, B textbook 25, C textbook 31, D textbook 35, E textbook 31, F textbook 29 and G textbook 33. As for the avaerage number of inquiry activities of each chapter, chapter I "Material Science" is 3.00(9.91${\%}$), chapter II "Atomic Structure and Periodic Table" 4.57(15.1${\%}$), chapter III "Chemical Bonding and Compound" 6.86(22.6${\%}$), chapter IV "State of Matter and Solution" 7.00(23.1${\%}$), chapter V "Chemical Reaction" 8.86(29.2${\%}$). For the analysis of inquiry process dimension, it follows in the order of 'observation and measuring (66.7${\%}$)', 'Interpreting data and formulating generalizations (26.5${\%}$)', 'seeing a problem and seeking ways to solve it (4.1%)', and 'building, testing and revising the theoretical model (2.7${\%}$)'. As for the analysis of the inquiry context dimension, the scientific context occupied 90.5${\%}$, the individual context 4.3${\%}$, the social context 0.9${\%}$, and the technical context 4.3${\%}$. It shows that the proportion of STS(Science-Technology-Society) related contents in inquiry activities was only 9.5${\%}$.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.213-223
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to identify the types of essential inquiry activities presented in elementary science textbooks for grades 5-6, and to find out what difficulties teachers have in the actual teaching process. To this end, the essential research activities presented in the textbook were analyzed into six types: experimentation/observation, investigation/discussion and presentation, data interpretation, discussion/discussion, simulation activity, and expression. In addition, 108 elementary school teachers were investigated for the suitability of inquiry activity achievement standards, suitability at the student's level, student interest, and difficulty in teaching instruction. To summarize the research results, the most frequently suggested type was the experiment/observation type, followed by simulation activity type and data interpretation type. It was analyzed that there was no discussion/discussion type in the 5th grade textbooks, and the 6th graders did not present research activities that correspond to the research/discussion/presentation type and the expression type in the textbook. In the results of teachers' responses to the suitability of achievement standards for inquiry activities presented in textbooks and the suitability of the student's level, 5th graders showed lower average scores than 6th graders, and showed similar average scores in student interest and instructional difficulty. Also, it was confirmed that improvement was required for a total of 17 inquiry activities. Specifically, teachers responded that they had difficulty in guiding inquiry activities when the experimental results did not appear as intended in the textbook, when students' interest in inquiry activities was low, and when students and teachers had low understanding of related science concepts. Teachers pointed out practical problems such as difficulties in long-term observation in astronomy-related units, and students in upper elementary school not actively participating in dynamic play activities.

• Journal of Elementary Mathematics Education in Korea
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.471-489
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• 2012

2007 Curriculum Revision adopted new Inquiry Activities in mathematical textbooks. So it is critical to analyze the problems of actual application of Inquiry activities in the classrooms. For this purpose, we analyzed the Inquiry activities of Measurement Area of the textbooks and find the appropriate solutions. Secondly, we develop the reorganization materials to fix and solve the existing problems found in the previous problem analysis, and apply the development materials and examine the effects afterwards. The results of the survey indicated that most of teachers are well aware of the importance of Inquiry Activities. However, many teachers answered that Inquiry activities does contain neither diverse strategic approaches nor solutions accommodating with various learning levels of students. The most difficult points to educate Inquiry Activities are that it is difficult to teach students based on individual learning level and that activities consist of mainly short answers that makes it difficult to do in-depth Inquiry Activities. Analyzing Inquiry Activities in the textbook shows that Inquiry Activities in some chapters were constructed as simple sentence questions or presented with the solving process in the questions themselves. The following application classes were implemented by partially taking advantage of the newly developed reorganization materials. Then, the effects were measured by before and after questionnaires, the survey to teachers, and the results of activities. The reorganization materials were effective at arousing the curiosity from students as well as enabling the natural ability-level driven classes.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.414-426
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• 2004

This study analysed inquiry process and activities of the inquiry area in the chemistry field of middle school science textbooks by the inquiry elements based on the 7th science curriculum. The purpose of this study is to grasp a degree of reflecting the 7th science curriculum in the 9th grade science textbooks, and to find out educational implications for the various inquiry learning. Overall, for the analysis of inquiry elements, basic inquiry elements except classification were well reflected on the middle school science textbooks in 9th grade. However, for the integrated inquiry elements, interpreting data occupies almost half of them. This phenomenon is shown in the analysis of inquiry process and inquiry activities, as well. Especially, project and field trip introduced in the 7th science curriculum are hardly found in the textbooks. 9th grade is classified as an upper grade in the 7th science curriculum in terms of inquiry level. Integrated inquiry elements and inquiry activity types, however, are not thoroughly reflected in the 9th grade science textbooks. It is desirable that a variety of inquiry learning of 9th grade be implemented by reconstructing inquiry area based on the results of this study. Hence the degree and ratio of utilizing the integrated inquiry elements and inquiry activity types to the inquiry area of science textbook in 9th grade should be studied.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.204-217
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• 2008

This study analyzed the inquiry activities appearing in the astronomy sections of elementary, middle and highschool level science textbooks according to the five essential features of inquiry in the classroom as proposed by the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 2000), and SAPA (Science-A Process Approach). On the basis of this analysis, it is clear that the science textbook inquiry activities released the limitation to meet the goal of science education, namely scientific literacy, as it has been laid out by the 7th Science Educational Curriculum. This study revealed that the features of scientific inquiry which are most frequently used in the astronomy sections of science textbooks are 'data collection' and 'form explanation', whereas the features of 'oriented-question', 'evaluate explanations' and 'communicate and justify' rarely appeared. The analysis of inquiry activities by SAPA showed that the basic inquiry skills of 'observing', 'communicating' and 'manipulating materials' were used with increasing frequency according to grade level, and the integrated skills of 'investigating', 'creating models', 'interpreting data' and 'experimenting' were more emphasized in the textbooks. Therefore, it is suggested that students be provided with more opportunities to experience all the features of scientific inquiry and scientific processes as envisioned by the 7th Science Educational Curriculum in order to achieve the stated goal of scientific literacy. Science educators should be required to develop new lesson modules which will allow students to experience authentic scientific inquiry. It is crucial for science teachers to reflect upon and develop their understanding and teaching strategies regarding scientific inquiry through professional development programs in teacher education.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.63 no.3
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• pp.183-195
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• 2019

In this study, we investigated the characteristics of the authentic inquiry components in the inquiry tasks of Science Inquiry Experiments textbooks developed under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. After classifying inquiry tasks by core concepts, we analyzed the cases that students autonomously planned or performed the authentic inquiry components. The results of the study revealed that investigating multiple materials component most frequently appeared in all units. However, generating research question, selecting variables, observing multiple variables and transforming observations components appeared in a few tasks of history and everyday science units as they were often guided or structured in textbooks. Controlling simple or complex variables, observing intervening variables and considering methodological flaws components rarely appeared in all units as most of textbooks did not consider or indicate explicitly. Authentic inquiry components of everyday science unit tended to be handled in small group activities. On the bases of the results, the implications for the development of the inquiry tasks of Science Inquiry Experiments textbooks are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.225-238
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to explore the factors that are critical for successful scientific inquiry activity in the classroom and to analyze the students' abilities of 'Doing' scientific inquiry. Two hundred and forty gifted science students in grades $7^{th}$ and $8^{th}$ participated in this study and demonstrated their abilities of framing questions and designing investigation through a survey questionnaire. The survey was developed for measuring factors in terms of personal and interactive variables that are needed for 'Doing' a successful scientific. Additionally, two other questionnaires were developed to measure students' abilities of framing testable questions and designing the investigation in a sequence. The results were as follows: Students' learning motivation factors as personal variable (self-confidence about group and inquiry activity, views about inquiry value) also considered as influential for students' group inquiry activity. Other four components of interactive variable (grouping, kinds of task, physical context, and teachers' role) were found to be influential in successful students' 'Doing' group inquiry activity. In students' evaluation of group inquiry activity, the grouping factor was the most critical one for a successful 'Doing' inquiry activity. Participating students showed some level of inability of in the process of framing inquiry question and designing investigation.