• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.153-167
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• 2007

In this study, it is assumed that understanding the nature of science (NOS) would enhance students' performance of scientific inquiry in more authentic ways. The ultimate goal of this study is to suggest new models for developing scientific inquiry activities through understanding the NOS by linking the NOS with scientific inquiry. First, the various definitions and statements of the NOS are summarized, then the features of the developmental nature of scientific knowledge and the nature of scientific thinking based on the philosophy of science are reviewed, and finally a synthetic list of the elements of the NOS is proposed, consisting of three categories: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the nature of scientific thinking. This suggested synthetic list of the NOS is used to suggest a model of scientific inquiry through the understanding of the NOS. This list was designed to provide basic standards regarding the NOS as well as practical guidance for designing activities to improve students' understanding of the NOS.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.194-204
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• 2004

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate what kinds of research have been done about scientific inquiry in terms of scientific argumentation in the classroom context from the upper elementary to the high school levels. First, science educators argued that there had not been differentiation between authentic scientific inquiry by scientists and school scientific inquiry by students in the classroom. This uncertainty of goals or definition of scientific inquiry has led to the problem or limitation of implementing scientific inquiry in the classroom. It was also pointed out that students' learning science as inquiry has been done without opportunities of argumentation to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Second, what is scientific argumentation, then? Researchers stated that scientific inquiry in the classroom cannot be guaranteed only through hands-on experimentation. Students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through their reasoning skills using opportunities of argumentation based on their procedural skills using opportunities of experimentation. Third, many researchers emphasized the social practices of small or whole group work for enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills through argumentations. Different role of leadership in groups and existence of teachers' roles are found to have potential in enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand science as inquiry. Fourth, what is scientific reasoning? Scientific reasoning is defined as an ability to differentiate evidence or data from theory and coordinate them to construct their scientific knowledge based on their collection of data (Kuhn, 1989, 1992; Dunbar & Klahr, 1988, 1989; Reif & Larkin, 1991). Those researchers found that students skills in scientific reasoning are different from scientists. Fifth, for the purpose of enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed, other researchers suggested that teachers' roles in scaffolding could help students develop those skills. Based on this literature review, it is important to find what kinds of generalizable teaching strategies teachers use for students scientific reasoning skills through scientific argumentation and investigate teachers' knowledge of scientific argumentation in the context of scientific inquiry. The relationship between teachers' knowledge and their teaching strategies and between teachers teaching strategies and students scientific reasoning skills can be found out if there is any.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.327-345
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• 2013

This study aims to investigate how pre-service elementary school teachers understand 'something scientific', 'being scientific', 'scientific events' and 'scientific questions' through semantic network analysis. To achieve this purpose, this study carried out a central analysis of the frequency and density of words and the degree of connection between key words, a concentric analysis, a click analysis and a common network analysis through text semantic network analysis by using NetMiner 4.0 Program. Based on the results of these analyses, this study came to the following conclusions. Firstly, in perceiving 'something scientific', pre-service elementary school teachers recognized 'verification', 'objective' and 'experiment' as most important words. In other words, they perceived that main grounds for something scientific should be provided through clear facts, possible to be verified and accompanied by an exact and logical theoretical system. In regard to 'being scientific', they perceived 'explanation', 'objective' and 'verification' as most important words, while having a traditional point of view that science is a set that can be explained objectively. Secondly, in regard that the term, 'observation', is contained in 'scientific events', they showed a high rate of understanding it as a scientific event. In regard to scientifical reasons, they showed the highest frequency of 'observation', and for unscientific reasons, they showed the highest frequency of 'behavior'. In perceiving 'scientific questions', they showed the highest frequency of determining bacteria-related questions as scientific. As a reason why they thought as scientific, they mentioned 'observation' most frequently like 'scientific events', while mentioning 'value judgement' as a reason why they thought as unscientific most frequently. From the results of integrated network analysis, this study found out that words pre-service teachers commonly used in stating scientific events or scientific questions were overlapped with words they mentioned for scientific events or scientific questions. As a result, it was found there were many pre-service teachers having interpreted scientific words without clearly distinguishing scientific events or scientific questions.

• 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 Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.27-41
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• 2010

Scientific texts are some of major sources for scientific understanding. Therefore, reading scientific texts should be considered as an important learning activity. However, there is little research about reading scientific text in Korea. In this study, as a starting point for research about reading scientific text, lists of scientific text constituents and scientific text functions are suggested based on a comprehensive literature review. The study also reviewed how scientific text structure, familarity of scientific text and analogy involved in scientific text can affect students' scientific understanding through reading scientific text. Finally, further study plans, such as analysis of actual science textbooks using the lists suggested in this study as well as the investigation of actual students' thinking processes when reading scientific text, were described.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.759-767
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• 2008

This article arose from the previous studies, which suggested a synthetic list for the nature of science (NOS), discussed the relationship between the NOS and scientific inquiry and the development of the NOS in the context of scientific inquiry. In this article, for teaching scientific inquiry through the NOS, I proposed three teaching models - reflection, interaction, and the direct model -. Within these teaching models, understanding the NOS is viewed as a prerequisite condition for the improved performance of scientific inquiry. In the reflection model, the NOS is embedded and reflected in scientific inquiry without explicit introduction or direct explanation of the NOS. In the interaction model, concrete interaction between scientific inquiry and the NOS is encouraged during the process of scientific inquiry. In the direct model, subsequent to directly comprehending the NOS at the first stage of activity, students conduct scientific inquiry based on their understanding of the NOS. The intention of this present article is to facilitate the use of these models to develop teaching materials for more authentic scientific inquiry.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.401-415
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• 2006

The science education reforms put the emphasis of scientific literacy, so that students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through scientific inquiry at schools. However, scientific inquiry at schools has a problem as a cookbook system without the opportunity of developing argumentation, where students could understand how they use evidence to support their theory or vice versa. Teachers are supposed to understand the basic elements, purpose, and definition of scientific inquiry to implement authentic scientific inquiry at schools, then develop the instructional strategies of providing the opportunity of scientific argumentation to meet its needs.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.893-905
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• 2001

Korean students ranked the 3rd out of 32 participating countries in the first cycle of PISA(Programme for International Student Assessment) science field, which assessed 15-years-old students' scientific literacy. PISA developed several variables such as parents' socio-economic status, parents' educational attainment, family wealth, and cultural possession, to investigate the effects of background variables on scientific literacy. On the other hand, motivation and engagement in science study were not given much attention, partly because science was the minor area in the first cycle of PISA. Therefore, PISA Korea developed a series of variables to collect data on students' learning motives and out-of-school activities in science as a national option. The results are as followings. First, Korea was found to be one of the PISA participating countries with the scientific literacy achievement least influenced by parents' socio-economic status, family wealth, and parents' cultural possession. Second, the degree of achievement in scientific literacy according to parents' educational attainment was in a positive correlation, similar to the overall tendency of PISA. Third, the most crucial learning motive for Korean students was their desire to develop scientific thinking abilities or obtain science knowledge. On the other hand, choosing jobs in the field of science or parental expectation was the least important learning motive. In particular, the motive for scientific learning was found to have a positive relationship with the degree of scientific literacy achievement. Therefore, the higher the students achievement, the stronger the motive for scientific learning in order to develop their ability to think scientifically or acquire science knowledge. Fourth, Korean students were shown to participate very little in out-of-school scientific activities other than watching TV programs related to science. Whatever the activities may be, the more actively involved students are in out-of-school scientific activities, the higher their scientific literacy achievement. Fifth, Korean girls were rather passive compared to boys in all areas, including science learning motive and out-of-school scientific activities. The gender difference was especially more pronounced in out-of-school scientific activities with wider gaps in such activities as reading scientific books or articles and visiting science-related web sites.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.208-218
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• 2017

This study was to investigate factors and disclose causal model of the scientific literacy competency about the motivation for science and the scientific literacy competency. The 3 grade university students and the 1 grade university students as pre-service elementary teachers were participated to questionnaire investigation. The data were analyzed by the factor analysis method and the structural equation model method, and the following results were obtained. First, the 3 grade university students and the 1 grade university students perceived the science interest factors and science usefulness factors as the motivation for science, and also revealed the scientific problem recognition factor and the scientific evidence use factor as the scientific literacy competency. Second, the science interest factor had a greater effect on the scientific problem recognition factor than the scientific evidence use factor in both the 3 grade and 1 grade university students. In the path from the science usefulness factor to the scientific problem recognition factor, the science usefulness factor of the 3 grade university students had a greater influence on the direct route to the scientific problem recognition factor than that of the 1 grade university students. In the path from the science usefulness factor to the scientific evidence use factor, the science usefulness factor of the 1 grade university students influenced more on the direct route to the scientific evidence use factor than that of the 3 grade university students.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.382-398
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• 2020

This study aims to analyze the relationship between scientific content knowledge of science-gifted elementary students and their expression of scientific creativity, and the characteristics of divided groups according to the levels of their scientific content knowledge and scientific creativity. A science-gifted program was implemented to 33 forth-graders in the Science-Gifted Education Center of an education office in Seoul, Korea. The method of evaluating scientific knowledge was divided into well-structured paper-pencil test (asking specific and limited range of content knowledge of plants) and ill-structured descriptive test (stating all the knowledge they know about plants) to find out which methods were more related to scientific creativity. In addition, in order to find out the characteristics of each group according to the level of scientific content knowledge and scientific creativity, students were required to answer a questionnaire about their own self-perception of scientific knowledge and scientific creativity and how to obtain scientific knowledge. The main results of this study are as follows. First, Both well-structured paper-pencil test (r=.38) and ill-structured descriptive test (r=.51) results of elementary science gifted students were significantly correlated with scientific creativity. Second, As a result of the regression analysis on scientific creativity of science-gifted elementary students, both the knowledge measured by the two evaluation methods have the ability to explain scientific creativity. Third, the students were categorized into four groups according to the levels of their scientific content knowledge and their expression of scientific creativity, and the result showed that the higher the knowledge of science, the higher the scientific creativity. Fourth, the description about self-perception of scientific knowledge revealed that the highest percentage of Type LL students of all 13 students (53.8%, 7 students) answered 'I have little knowledge of plants because I have little interest in them.' Fifth, the description about self-perception of scientific knowledge revealed that the highest percentage of Type HH students of all 15 students (40%, 6 students) answered 'I think my science creativity is high through my experience of scientific creativity. Sixth, the responses to the Questionnaire revealed that 'reading' was the most popular way to obtain scientific knowledge, with 27 out of total 33 students choosing it. In particular, all 18 students from Type HH (high scientific knowledge and high scientific creativity) and Type HL (high scientific knowledge and low scientific creativity) - those with high scientific knowledge - gave that response. On the basis of this research, we should explore practical teaching methods and environment for gifted students to improve their scientific creativity by revealing the nature of the factors that affect scientific creativity and analyzing relationship between knowledge and scientific creativity.