• 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 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.783-790
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• 2016

The 'Integrated Inquiry' unit is a new addition in the 5th~6th grade science textbooks, and was developed for the 2009 revised national curriculum. The unit deals with six integrated inquiry process skills: problem cognition, formulating hypotheses, controlling variables, transforming and interpreting data, drawing results, and generalization. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions and the teaching practices of elementary school teachers on this unit in their school curriculum and where improvements can be made. Data was collected from questionnaires filled out by 92 elementary school teachers. The results are as follows: First, teachers do have a positive perception on the importance of teaching integrated process skills. Second, with that being true, this unit ended up receiving both positive and negative reviews by teachers. This research found that there were good and bad responses on the educational aspects of this unit in three particular areas: dealing with the development of integrated inquiry process skills, facilitating science learning in other units, and implementing open inquiry. Third, teachers have difficulties particularly in problem cognition, formulating hypotheses, controlling variables, transforming and interpreting data, generalization, and drawing results. There is a lack of student understanding as well as a lack of professionalism for teachers on this unit, and many issues related to the composition of the textbook. This study may have important implications for making improvements in this unit and teaching integrated process skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.573-584
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• 2015

Inquiry has been consistently emphasized in science education as a crucial element for learning. Although many researchers came to agree on the importance of scientific inquiry, authentic inquiry activities are hard to be actualized in an educational context. Therefore it is required to critically examine what teachers have difficulty in teaching inquiry. In this article, we looked into inquiry-based science activities in a small group setting where pre-service science teachers faced dilemmas between cognition and practice of inquiry. A case study was conducted on eight undergraduate students who are majoring in science education. The participants attended a weekly science program for middle school students in low SES as teaching assistants and mentors, and took full care of his/her mentees during open-inquiry activities. The results were drawn by analyzing participants' personal and group interviews, participant observations, self-reports, and others. The pre-service teachers viewed the knowledge and procedure of science as an essential factor in inquiry activities along with student's spontaneous attitude. However, in the process of performing inquiry, they faced several dilemmas between ideal cognition and real activities. The aspects of dilemmas could be summarized in three pairs of opposing concepts: 'diverging inquiry or converging science', 'interest-centered inquiry or learning-centered inquiry', and 'student as the subject or student with the insufficient expertise.' We discussed ways of resolving dilemmas and alternative perspectives on scientific inquiry.

• School Mathematics
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.313-326
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• 2007

Recently in algebra curriculum, to recognizes and explains general nile expressing patterns is presented as the one alternative and is emphasized. In the seventh School Mathematic Curriculum regarding 'regularity and function' area, in elementary school curriculum, is guiding pattern activity of various form. But difficulty and problem of students are pointing in study for learning through pattern activity. In this article, emphasizes generalization process through research activity of pictorial/geometric pattern that is introduced much on elementary school mathematic curriculum and investigates various approach and strategy of student's thinking, state of symbolization in generalization process of pictorial/geometric pattern. And discusses generalization of pictorial/geometric pattern, difficulty of symbolization and suggested several proposals for research activity of pictorial/geometric pattern.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.291-303
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• 2010

The purpose of this study is to investigate the difficulties in engaging in open-inquiry activities of elementary pre-service teachers. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 22 pre-service teachers and their open-inquiry products. The 22 pre-service teachers who participated in this study were enrolled in college openinquiry course and performed open-inquiry activities for fifteen weeks. The results of this study show that pre-service teachers struggled with several difficulties; selection of the subject, the lack of understanding about the science process skills and content knowledge, background knowledge, environment matters and self confidence about open inquiry. However, they thought open-inquiry is interesting in spite of much difficulties, and is necessary for science education.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.63 no.1
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• pp.1-18
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• 2024

This study aims to analyze low-performing high school students' difficulties in constructed response (CR) mathematics assessments and explore ways to use writing activities to support student learning. The participants took CR assessments, engaged in guided writing activities across 15 lessons, and provided responses to our interviews. The study identified 20 types of student difficulties, which were sorted into two main categories: "mathematical difficulties" and "CR difficulties." The difficult nature of mathematics as a school subject included a lack of understanding of mathematical concepts, students' difficulty with mathematical symbols and notations, and struggles with word problems. Challenges specific to CR assessments included students' difficulties arising from the testing conditions unlike those of multiple-choice items, and included issues related to constructing appropriate responses and psychological barriers. To address these challenges in CR assessments, the study conducted guided writing activities as an intervention, through which six themes were identified: (1) internalization of mathematical concepts, (2) mathematical thinking through relational understanding, (3) diverse problem-solving methods, (4) use of mathematical symbols, (5) reflective thinking, and (6) strategies to overcome psychological barriers.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.627-641
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• 2022

This study aims to help elementary school teachers increase their knowledge about the changes in the positions of the sun and moon during the day and the first time the moon observation begins in the Earth and Space section of the Earth and the Moon. The survey questions were grouped into four categories, namely, textbook explanation, inquiry activities, achievement of learning goals, and other opinions. The perception of each question differed according to advanced science majors and teaching careers and experiences of this unit. In addition, understanding the diverse views of the participants using descriptive questions was possible. The study recruited 67 teachers working at an elementary school in Gyeonggi-do. The conclusion is as follows. First, the teachers exhibited similar positive and negative perceptions about the description of the textbook on the changes in the positions of the sun and moon during the day. Second, the study found that majority of teachers used alternative methods when guiding students regarding the change in the positions. This trend was not correlated with the sun and the moon, and the study observed no difference in advanced majors and teaching careers and experience of this unit. Third, the majority of teachers responded that they could achieve their learning goals through this learning. However, many teachers complained of various difficulties in guiding students about the lesson, and the majority alternative methods. The results demonstrated the perception of teachers that students can achieve learning goals through alternative methods without direct observation.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.60 no.5
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• pp.342-352
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate inquiry-based science instruction developed and implemented by a pre-service chemistry teacher regarding the difficulties that she encountered and the ways how she tried to solve out problems. Main data of this study were pre-service teacher reflections that were written after developing both each lesson plan and the whole 10 lesson plans, and after implementing both each lesson and the whole classes. Supplemental data were lesson plans, class audio recordings, and student written journals. The pre-service teacher learned that she was lack of science content knowledge and understanding of students’ understandings. Also she had difficulties of developing inquiry-based science lesson plans, managing classrooms, and guiding students to engage in science inquiry. In order to overcome the difficulties, she asked for advice to experienced teachers, studied science concepts using textbooks and internet resources, provided detailed and concrete guidance for student argumentation and writing.