• Korean Journal of Optics and Photonics
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.203-212
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• 2017

A scientific model refers to a conceptual system that can describe, explain, and predict a particular physical phenomenon. The co-construction of the scientific model is attracting attention as a new teaching and learning strategy in the field of science education and various studies. The evaluation and modification of models compared with the predicted models of data from the real world is the core of modeling strategy. However, there were only a limited data provided by the teacher in many studies of modeling comparing the students' predictions of their own models. Most of the students were not given the opportunity to evaluate the suitability of the model with the data in the real world. The purpose of this study was to develop a scientific model co-construction program that can evaluate the model by directly comparing the predicted models with the observed data from the real world. Through a collaborative discussion between teachers and researchers for 6 months, a 5-session scientific model co-construction program on the subject 'image formation by convex lenses' for second grade middle school students was developed. Eighty (80) students in 3 classes and a science teacher with 20 years of service from general public co-educational middle school in Gyeonggi-do participated in this 2-week program. After the class, students were asked about the helpfulness and difficulty of the class, and whether they would like to recommend this class to a friend. After the class, 95.8% of the students constructed the scientific model more than the model using the construction rule. Students had difficulties to identify principles or understand their friends, but the result showed that they could understand through model evaluation experiment. 92.5% of the students said that they would be more than willing to recommend this program to their friends. It is expected that the developed program will be applied to the school and contribute to the improvement of students' modeling ability and co-construction ability.