• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
• /
• v.6 no.2
• /
• pp.124-135
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study was to find the relationship between elementary school teachers' beliefs of inquiry and science performance assessment. To collect data for analyzing elementary school teachers' beliefs of inquiry and their practice of science performance assessment, the researcher was surveyed with elementary school teachers by open-ended questionnaires and interview. The findings of this study were as follows; First, Most of elementary school teachers beliefs of inquiry was shown as constructivist tendency. This view of inquiry involves watching and doing experiments, and the skills of thinking processes, in which learners make their own interpretations rather than merely acquiring preexisting knowledge structures. Second, for content knowledge, participants' preception about the target of science performance assessment involved assessing application of science knowledge rather than basic level of substantive knowledge. For inquiry process, participants' preception about the target of science performance assessment involved assessing the lower level of inquiry rather than the higher level of inquiry. Most of participants was measured using a paper and pencil test for the actual evaluation methods due to the ease and objectivity of the assessment, the lack of understanding how to perform the performance evaluation process and method. Especially, participants who recognize that the higher level of inquiry was used performance and informal mode of assessing.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.29 no.7
• /
• pp.626-639
• /
• 2008

To present the suggestions for improvement in science textbooks of high school, scientific inquiry activities in geology of earth science textbooks of Korea and the U.S. were assessed in the areas of the contents, processes and contexts. Regarding the contents of inquiry activities, Korean textbooks contain more number of inquiry activities (5.8 per section) than the U.S. curriculums (4 per section). Inquiry activities of Korean textbooks mostly fall on the interpretation of diagrams and graphs whereas those of the U.S. textbooks more hands-on experiment, data transformation and self designing. As for the number of inquiry process skills per inquiry activity, Korean curriculums contain an average of 1.8 whereas the American ones 3. It suggests that the U.S. textbooks require more integrated process skills than the Korean earth science curriculums. In the process skills of all textbooks studied, the highest frequent elements were inferring and data interpretation; the percentage of these two elements was an average of 73.3% in Korean textbooks and 46.2% in the U.S. This suggests that the Korean textbooks emphasize the process skill on particular area, and uneven distribution of elements of process skills may hinder the development of integration ability of students. particularly in the integrated process skills, the U.S. textbooks presented all 7 elements, while Korean ones presented only 2 to 4 elements, indicating that the Korean textbooks may have weak points in providing various inquiry activities for students compared to the American textbooks. In inquiry context analysis, Korean curriculums provide simplistic inquiry contexts and low applicability to real life whereas the U.S. curriculums provide more integrated inquiry contexts and high applicability to real life.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.40 no.1
• /
• pp.77-87
• /
• 2020

Scientific inquiry has emphasized its importance in various aspects of science learning and has been performed according to various methods and purposes. Among the various aspects of science learning, it is emphasized to develop core competencies with science, such as scientific thinking. Therefore, it is necessary to support students to be able to formulate scientific reasoning properly. This study attempts to explore problem-finding and scientific reasoning in the process of performing scientific inquiry. This study also aims to reveal what factors influence this complex process. For this purpose, this study analyzed the inquiry process and results performed by two groups of college students who conducted the inquiry related to osmosis. To analyze, research plans, presentations, and group interviews were used. As a result, it was found that participants used various scientific reasoning, such as deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning, in the process of problem finding for their inquiry about osmosis. In the process of inquiry and reasoning complexly, anomalous data, which appear regularly, and the characteristics of experimental instruments influenced their reasoning. Various reasons were produced for the purpose of constructing the best explanation about the phenomena observed by participants themselves. Finally, based on the results of this study, several implications for the development context of programs using scientific inquiry are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
• /
• v.3 no.2
• /
• pp.132-140
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of the POE(Prediction-Observation-Explanation) teaching-learning model on the academic achievement and the capability of scientific inquiry of elementary school students. POE teaching-learning model is a three stage process modeling scientific inquiry : Prediction, Observation, and Explanation. This research is to see the effectiveness of the POE method in earth science class by applying this simple practical strategy out of various methods in science teaching with the purpose of improving the capability of scientific inquiry and the academic achievement of learners. The findings of the study are as follows: First, the POE strategy in science teaching-learning was found effective for the improvement of learners' scientific inquiry capability. Second, the POE strategy in science teaching-learning is effective for the improvement of learners' academic achievement in science. The findings mentioned above suggest that using the POE strategy in science class of elementary science education has significant effects on improvement of scientific academic achievement and scientific inquiry capability of learners compared with the general science teaching-learning strategy. It also shows to be highly recommendable for use in science class.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.33 no.5
• /
• pp.459-466
• /
• 2012

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry in terms of designing exploration and reasoning that is used to formulate explanations based on evidence. The research context was an open inquiry with using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) template in which participant students were not provided with inquiry questions. As data, lab. 39 pre-service elementary teachers participated in this study while taking their science methods course. Analyses of the reports were framed by the cognitive processes of inquiry (Chinn and Malhotra, 2002) and each report was coded and analyzed by the framework of inquiry (Tytler and Peterson, 2004). Results showed that groups' works that utilized the SWH template encouraged the participants to interact each other about scientific inquiry. They came up with more relevant and testable questions for their scientific inquiry. It implicates that children will be able to have chances of testing their own questions more properly by using the SWH template in science classes just as the participants did in this study. The use of the SWH template would help pre-service teachers to teach appropriately how to test inquiry questions to their students in the future. Discussion was made to figure out the characteristics or Korean pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.41 no.2
• /
• pp.307-324
• /
• 2022

This study examined the content diversity of seven authorized science textbooks by comparing the characteristics of the science concept description and the contents of inquiry activities in the "weight of objects" unit. For each textbook, the flow of concept description content and the uniqueness of the concept description process were analyzed, and the number of nodes and links and words with high connections were determined using language network analysis. In addition, for the inquiry activities described in each textbook, the inquiry subject, inquiry type, science process skill, and uniqueness were investigated. Results showed that the authorized textbooks displayed no more diversity than expected in their scientific concept description method or their inquiry activity composition. The learning elements, inclusion of subconcepts, and central words were similar for each textbook. The comparison of inquiry activities showed similarities in their contents, inquiry types, and scientific process skills. Specifically, these textbooks did not introduce any research topics or experimental methods that were absent in previous textbooks. However, despite the fact that the authorized textbook system was developed based on the same curriculum, some efforts were made to make use of its strengths. Since the sequence of subconcepts to explain the core contents differed across textbooks, this explanation process was divided into several types, and although the contents of inquiry activities were the same, the materials for inquiry activities were shown differently for each textbook to improve and overcome the difficulties in the existing experiments. These findings necessitate the continuation of efforts to utilize the strengths of certified textbooks.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.43 no.2
• /
• pp.227-238
• /
• 2019

In this study, we investigated the perception of elementary school students on inquiry activities and collaborative problem-solving ability in data-based scientific inquiry. For this purpose, 20 data-based scientific inquiry classes were conducted in 26 elementary school students in Gyeongnam City. After selecting the inquiry problem, students conducted an inquiry process to collect data using digital inquiry instruments. The following results were obtained through questionnaires and interviews after the classes: First, students perceived the step on 'inquiry design and execution' as the most useful in the data-based scientific inquiry. Second, students perceived that their scientific ability and cooperation improved through data-based scientific inquiry, with the selection of inquiry problems being the most difficult. Third, students perceived positively the improvement of cooperative problem-solving ability. From the above results, it was found that data-based scientific inquiry is necessary to improve the elementary school students' scientific inquiry ability and cooperative problem-solving ability. Based on this research, we hope that the development and research of various inquiry activities will provide opportunities for inquiry that can cultivate various abilities needed for students living in the future.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.23 no.5
• /
• pp.494-504
• /
• 2003

The primary purpose of the study was to determine the appropriateness of the inquiry processes described in Science VII's written based on the 7th National Science Curriculum. It was found that the basic processes were well reflected on the textbooks analyzed for the research. However, only a few integrated processes and the inquiry activities could be seen on the same textbooks. Furthermore, a larger majority of the inquiry processes and activities were not agreed with what the tasks and titles say. Especially, the none of as many as 71 experiments were not coincided with their titles' intentions. Also suggested in the paper were the implications of the results for the science education in the Korean middle schools.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.77-94
• /
• 1990

The Inquiry Activities the newly developed Korean High Schol Biology Textbooks were evaluated using SIEI(Seientific Inquiry Evaluation Inventory). The textbook evaluated are five Introductory Biology books and five Advanced Biology books developed in 1990. The instrument, SIEI, was developed by Myung Hur in his doctoral study at Columbia University in 1984. The major findings of the study are summarized below. 1. The inquiry activities in the textbooks are focusing on the low level science process skills 2. Students are rarely asked to formulate a hypothesis or to design an experiment. 3. The structure of the Inguiry Activities are mostly competitive, thus inhibiting the inquiry achievement of students. 4. The Inquiry Indices of the textbooks are between 14 and 16, meaning only 14 to 16 percent of the total instructional time are to be devoted to inquiry activities.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.139-152
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study is to provide some suggestions for future improvement of scientific inquiry activities in Korean elementary science textbook. The modified framework of Lee(2005) and Millar et al.(1998) was used to compare inquiry activities in the Korean and Singaporean science textbooks. The results of this study are as follows: Korean text books have more activities than Singapore's, but both countries have similar time allotment for science classes. In the area of 'inquiry process skill', Singapore is more balanced in 'Basic inquiry process skills' and 'Integrated inquiry process skills' than Korea. Singapore's integrated inquiry rate is also higher than Korea's. Next the results of comparing leaning objectives to scientific inquiry activities shows that Korean text books tend to focus on 'contents objectives', while Singapore's text books focus on balancing 'contents objectives' and 'process objectives'. Korean science textbooks encourage students to communicate the results of experiments but in most case these communication activities are actually not performed. Lastly Korea and Singapore have low degree of openness in inquiry activities. Remarkably 'Suggest questions' are totally conducted by teachers. This study implies that Korean science textbooks should have lower amounts of inquiry activities to accomodate enough time for communication about results. Next we need to make balance not only 'Basic inquiry process skills' and 'Integrated inquiry process skills' but also 'Content objectives' and 'Process objectives'. Lastly we need to make student to be the leader in science classes through encouraging them to plan procedures for experiments and to discover results by themselves.