• Journal of Science Education
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• v.45 no.3
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• pp.304-316
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• 2021

The purpose of this study is to analyze high school students' critical opinions on others' inquiries in small group open inquiry. Forty-one high school students participated in these activities at the inquiry planning stage and the intermediate stage of inquiry. In the two activities, 595 and 233 opinions were presented respectively, and analyzed into categories based on the inquiry process. The main research results are as follows: first, many opinions were presented in the areas of 'problem recognition and hypothesis setting' and 'design of inquiry' in the feedback on the inquiry plan, especially related to 'revision and addition of research problems,' 'research targets and conditions,' and 'control of variables.' Second, in the feedback on the results of the inquiry, there were many opinions related to 'report preparation' and 'design of inquiry' area. Based on the research results, implications related to the application of critical opinion activity were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.3
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• pp.334-346
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• 2012

For teachers' conceptions and understandings are critical to their decision making and classroom practice, this study attempts to understand pre-service elementary teachers' views and practices of science inquiry during peer teaching practice. Fifteen 4th year university students in teacher education program participated in peer teaching practice. Their teaching and reflective discussion were video and audio recorded and written lesson plans were collected for data analysis. Five science teacher educators individually looked into the data and shared their comments and interpretations on pre-service teachers' views and practice. The study findings suggest that pre-service teachers emphasized the importance of providing students with motivating resources in the beginning of lesson, employing certain inquiry teaching models, the process of predicting and dis/proving via experiment, and teachers' minimal intervention as the important features of inquiry teaching. Science teacher educators emphasized that it is critical to help children understand inquiry questions in the beginning of inquiry process, to be mindful of children's problem solving and critical thinking rather than following instruction models or simply going through prediction and test process. They also commented that teachers' guidance could lead a good inquiry process in classroom practice, not always interfering students' inquiry. Based on the findings, the study suggests science teacher educators need to understand what and how pre-service teachers view and practice science inquiry teaching and consider these as useful resources where they can start effective teaching for pre-service teachers at the university level.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.61-73
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• 1992

In response to epoch-making development in science and technology, the innovative curricular materials have been begun to develop since the late 1950s and early 1960s. However, the new inquiry-centered materials have failed to be successfully used in teaching/learning practices of science. Among the various reasons for the failure, the very nature of the inquiry approach has been identified as the most critical problem. Nevertheless, fostering inquiry faculties on the part of the students has been emphasized as one of the most important objectives of science instruction. Therefore this study was conducted for the purpose of developing a practical inquiry-oriented instructional method. In order to obtain this goal the nature of scientific inquiry was analyzed and the status quo of science education in which inquiry-oriented instructional strategies were applied was examined. The results of the study are described in this paper.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.149-160
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• 1998

The purpose of this study was to analyze the 6th national secondary science curriculum and classroom practices to collect the basic data for developing secondary science program focusing on creative problem-solving ability. The creative problem-solving ability was conceptualized as an active process of producing new solutions to problems and consisted of five components: general knowledge, domain-specific knowledge, motivation, divergent thinking and critical thinking. The research questions were generated as follows: (1) Whether creative problem-solving elements-domain specific knowledge(declarative knowledge and inquiry methods) were included or not in the 6th secondary science curriculum, textbooks and teacher's guide? If so, how are they represented? (2) Whether the teachers tried to enhance divergent and critical thinking of their students. Through content analyses, observations and interviews, these research questions were answered as follows: (1) Inquiry methods, which are important to develop creative problem-solving abilities in science, were underestimated in comparison with declarative knowledge. In other words. inquiry methods were regarded only as tools to understand the scientific concepts and principles. (2) It was hard to find the situations which teachers provided opportunities for divergent and critical thinking to their students. Based on these results, the followings were recommended: (1) Inquiry methods should be regarded as a goal not as a tool and be used to acquire inquiry methods themselves. (2) Teachers should not stick to the prescribed inquiry methods prescribed in the textbook, but to give opportunities for thinking various kinds of inquiry methods to improve divergent and critical thinking.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.211-226
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate science teachers' understandings about scientific argumentation in the classroom. Seven structured interview protocols were developed, asking the definition of scientific inquiry, the differentiation between scientific inquiry and hands-on activity, the opportunity of student argumentation, explicit teaching strategies for scientific argumentation, the critical example of argumentation, the criteria of successful argumentation, and the barrier of developing argumentation. The results indicate that there are differences and similarities in understandings about scientific argumentation between two groups of middle school teachers and upper elementary. Basically, teachers at middle school define scientific inquiry as the opportunity of practicing reasoning skills through argumentation, while teachers at upper elementary define it as the more opportunities of practicing procedural skills through experiments rather than of developing argumentation. Teachers in both groups have implemented a teaching strategy called "Claim-Evidence Approach," for the purpose of providing students with more opportunities to develop arguments. Students' misconception, limited scientific knowledge and perception about inquiry as a cycle without the opportunity of using reasoning skills were considered as barriers for implementing authentic scientific inquiry in the classroom.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to understand characteristics of students' reflective inquiry disposition in the contexts of classroom and to find educational implications for the promotion of the reflective inquiry activity in the inquiry-based class. In this study, we determined a characteristic of the reflection inquiry by examining students' responses showed in response to the different class types in high school earth science inquiry class. The result of the study indicated that the difference between the newly developed class type to promote the reflective inquiry and the existing inquiry class type was found significant. The newly developed reflective inquiry class had a multitude of reflective inquiry statements related to various elements of data context in terms of the quantity and diversity of the reflective inquiry. In conclusion, we found that the newly developed class type had a positive impact on the students' reflective inquiry activity. We believe that the development of the inquiry activity to promote students' reflective inquiry is critical.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.569-580
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• 2013

This study examined how a Structured Reading Framework (SRF) is related to improving students' critical thinking ability in an argument-based inquiry approach, called the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) approach. A total of 75 $8^{th}$ graders participated in the study, with 34 in the control group and 41 in the treatment group. The gains in critical thinking skills were compared between two groups, and relationships among the components of the reading framework and the critical thinking skills were explored at the group level. Result indicates that the treatment group who used the SRF had larger gains in critical thinking scores than control group who used the Original Reading Framework (ORF). In addition, results show that the correlations between Reading Framework (RF) components and critical thinking scores are statistically significant in the treatment group, while no correlations exist in the control group. It appears that using the SRF have an impact on developing students' critical thinking ability by providing a scaffold to assist argumentation practice.

• 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.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.969-978
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to figure out gifted elementary science students' improvement in performing open inquiry after peer review. In this study, gifted fifth-grade students performed open inquiry and review of each other as peers after the inquiry. Students' inquiries were evaluated and the influences of the feedback from the peer reviews were analyzed in relation to the inquiry performances. As a result of this study, three key points were discovered: First, the evaluation score increased with frequent feedback or long discussions. On the other hand, with less feedback, the evaluation score didn't rise. Second, there were three types of improvement in inquiry related to peer review: No. 1 was improvement after feedback given by themselves. No. 2 was reflection of feedback given to other groups. As a last type, No. 3 was that the students learned from other groups' presentation without any feedback and improved their inquiry. Third, there were five kinds of giving feedback; (1) feedback understanding the inquiry correctly, (2) insufficiency of peer's inquiry without deep thought. (3) on the usefulness of the inquiry, (4) on the scientific and logic validity through critical thinking, and (5) how to develop the inquiry. In these kinds of feedback, the fourth kind of feedback (4) occurred most frequently but the fifth (5) occurred rarely. It means peer review helps students develop their critical thinking ability and teachers should encourage students to give peers feedback of the fifth kind.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.541-557
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• 2012

Interest is acknowledged to be a critical motivational variable that influences learning and achievement. The purpose of this study was to investigate the interest of the elementary students when free inquiry activities were performed through a brain-based evolutionary scientific teaching and learning model. For this study, 106 fifth grade students were chosen and performed individually free inquiry activities. The results of this study were as follows: First, after free inquiry activities, as to free inquiry science related attitude, a statistically significant difference was not observed. But they came to have positive feelings about the free inquiry. Especially students marked higher mean score in openness showed consistency in sub-areas of free inquiry science related attitude. Second, students had interests in various fields, especially they had many interests in area of biology. They chose inquiry subjects that seems to be easily accessible from surrounding and as an important criterion of free inquiry they thought the possibility that they could successfully perform it. And students who belong to the high level in the science related attitudes and academic achievement diversified more topics. Third, most of students failed to further their topics. However, the students who specifically and clearly extended their topics suggested appropriate variables in their topics. On the other hand, students who couldn't elaborate their topics were also failed to suggest further topics and their performance of inquiry was more incomplete. In conclusion, the experiences of success in free inquiry make the science attitude of students more positive and help them extend their inquiry. These results have fundamental implications for the authentic science inquiry in the elementary schools and for the further research.