• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.13-23
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• 2010

The revised 7th education course of information implies that students use variety of information devices to solve the common problems and it also includes the programming education for improving problem-solving abilities. Not only improving problem-solving abilities but also developing thinking skill is expected in programming education. However, traditional programming education is teacher-oriented and focused on language syntax. Accordingly, students have heavy cognitive load and it decrease students' interest of programming. Therefore, in this paper, a instructional method of programming using educational robot is proposed to improve interest of elementary students in concretive operation stage for effectiveness of programming education. Additionally, results of experiments show that proposed robot programming instructional method can be applied in elementary education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.47-60
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• 1998

The purpose of this study was to analyze the problem solving strategies of elementary school students and to find out correlations between the functional mental capacity, the perseveration error and the Creature Card Task solving ability. To study this purpose, four categories were selected through pilot test. The sample consisted of 231, the 4th grade students and the 5th grade students in Inchon, Korea and selected 32 students among them. Three instruments were used in this study, Creature Card Task, FIT(Figural Intersection Test) and WCST(Wisconsin Card Sorting Test). Researcher interviewed 32 students about Creature Card Task solving strategies and tests with FIT, WCST. Major findings of the study are as follows: 1. Creature Card Task solving strategies of the selected 4th & 5th grade students were different. Some students solved problems during individual interviews. 2. Creature Card Task solving abilities were significantly correlated with the functional mental capacity and the perseveration error.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.69-89
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to develop a test which can be used in identification of the gifted students in the area of mathematics. This study was carried out for two years from 1996. Mathematical giftedness is, in this study, regarded as a result of interaction of mathematical thinking ability, mathematical creativity, mathematical task committment, background knowledge. This study presumed that mathematical thinking ability is composed of seven thinking abilities: intuitive insights, ability for information organization, ability for visualization, ability for mathematical abstraction, inferential thinking ability(both inductive and deductive thinking abilities), generalization and application ability, and reflective thinking. This study also presupposed that mathematical creativity is composed of 3 characteristics: fluency, flexibility, originality. The test for mathematical creative problem solving ability was developed for primary, middle, and high school students. The test is composed of two parts: the first part is concentrated more on divergent thinking, while the second part is more on convergent thinking. The major targets of the test were the students whose achievement level in mathematics belong to top 15~20% in each school. The goodness of the test was examined in the aspects of reliability, validity, difficulty, and discrimination power. Cronbach $\alpha$ was in the range of .60~.75, suggesting that the test is fairly reliable. The validity of the test was examined through the correlation among the test results for mathematical creative problem solving ability, I. Q., and academic achievement scores in mathematics and through the correlation between the scores in the first part and the scores in the second part of the test for mathematical creative problem solving ability. The test was found to be very difficult for the subjects. However, the discrimination power of the test was at the acceptable level.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.329-343
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to develop the middle school science curriculum to enhance creative problem-solving abilities. The reconstructed curriculum consisted of three big components, that is, scientific knowledge, process skills, and creative thinking skills. Five themes have been selected to incorporate with four areas of the middle school science curriculum, namely, physics, chemistry, biology, earth science. The five themes are structure, change, interaction, energy, and stability. Based upon these five themes, the individual or separated scientific knowledges of learners can be put into the unified knowledges. The process skills were observing, measuring, classifying, communicating, inferring, predicting, variable differentiating controling, data gathering analysis, establishing hypotheses, experiment design, and experimenting. Creative thinking skills include divergent and critical thinking. The finally developed curriculum is presented in the form of matrix.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.546-558
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to identify heuristically how abduction was used in a context of solving an earth-environmental problem. Thirty two groups of participants with different institutional backgrounds, i,e., inservice earth science teachers, preservice science teachers, and high school students, solved an open-ended earth-environmental problem and produced group texts in which their ways of solving the problem were written, The inferential processes in the texts were rearranged according to the syllogistic form of abduction and then analyzed iteratively so as to find thinking strategies used in the abductive reasoning. The result showed that abduction was employed in the process of solving the earth-environmental problem and that several thinking strategies were used for inferring rules from which abductive conclusions were drawn. The strategies found included data reconstruction, chained abduction, adapting novel information, model construction and manipulation, causal combination, elimination, case-based analogy, and existential strategy. It was suggested that abductive problems could be used to enhance students' thinking abilities and their understanding of the nature of earth science and earth-environmental problems.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.11-22
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• 2009

Scratch, one of the educational programming languages, provides a media-rich programming environment and easy interface to users. It supports Korean language and is utilized usefully in programming classes in elementary and middle schools. However, programming causes cognitive loads to young students. Because the programming process is a complex problem solving procedure that requires logical and abstract thinking abilities. Therefore, we developed a problem based scratch programming teaching and learning model to enhance intrinsic motivation of learners and to maximize the effects of using the scratch, educational programming language. The developed problem based teaching and learning model considered elementary students' characteristics. It was implemented in fifth grade elementary school classes and the educational effects of the model was analysed. The developed model was helpful in enhancing students' problem solving potential and logical thinking abilities.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.57 no.3
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• pp.289-309
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• 2018

There has been a gradually increasing focus on adopting mathematical modeling techniques into school curricula and classrooms as a method to promote students' mathematical problem solving abilities. However, this approach is not commonly realized in today's classrooms due to the difficulty in developing appropriate mathematical modeling problems. This research focuses on developing reformulation strategies for those problems with regard to mathematical modeling. As the result of analyzing existing textbooks across three grade levels, the majority of problems related to the real-world focused on the Operating and Interpreting stage of the mathematical modeling process, while no real-world problem dealt with the Identifying variables stage. These results imply that the textbook problems cannot provide students with any chance to decide which variables are relevant and most important to know in the problem situation. Following from these results, reformulation strategies and reformulated problem examples were developed that would include the Identifying variables stage. These reformulated problem examples were then applied to a 7th grade classroom as a case study. From this case study, it is shown that: (1) the reformulated problems that included authentic events and questions would encourage students to better engage in understanding the situation and solving the problem, (2) the reformulated problems that included the Identifying variables stage would better foster the students' understanding of the situation and their ability to solve the problem, and (3) the reformulated problems that included the mathematical modeling process could be applied to lessons where new mathematical concepts are introduced, and the cooperative learning environment is required. This research can contribute to school classroom's incorporation of the mathematical modeling process with specific reformulating strategies and examples.

• 대한공업교육학회지
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.239-258
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to define what circuit repairing ability is and to check improvement in learner's circuit repairing abilities by verifying conformity of learner's achievement of target goals that have been derived from headlight assignment based on circuit repairing ability that has been categorized into six sub-factors, which are preparing ability, attaching/detaching ability, circuit analyzing ability, inspecting and measuring ability, repairing (problem solving) ability and organizing ability. In order to achieve the purpose of study, degree of improvement in circuit repairing ability of learner's group was measured through experiment design and verification by group of experts. SPSS statistics program was used for statistical analysis in which average value for descriptive statistics, Cronbach ${\alpha}$ coefficient and t-test were conducted. Level of significance for t-test was p<.05. The conclusions from conducting this study are as follows. Firstly, the usage of terminology 'circuit repairing ability' pertaining to ability to repair failure of electrical devices in automobiles was confirmed to be appropriate. Secondly, the categorization of circuit repairing ability into sub-factors of preparing ability, attaching/detaching ability, circuit analyzing ability, inspecting and measuring ability, repairing (problem solving) ability and organizing ability was confirmed to be appropriate. Thirdly, field instruction on headlight assignment that has been revised according to achievement of learner's goals was confirmed to be effective in improving learner's circuit repairing abilities compared to regular training. Fourthly, field instruction on headlight assignment that has been revised according to achievement of learner's goals was confirmed to be effective in improving sub-factors of circuit repairing abilities, which are preparing ability, attaching/detaching ability, circuit analyzing ability, inspecting and measuring ability, repairing (problem solving) ability and organizing ability.

• Journal of Digital Contents Society
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.67-74
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• 2012

Students with learning disabilities need special education programs. In the traditional class, those students may not be satisfied with their studies. Thus, it is important to provide individualized class for those students. Classes using smart devices may give one of the solutions for individualized class. Unlike the typical mathematical problems, written problems require students to use various cognitive strategies, mathematical reasoning, inference ability, and so on. In this sense, written problems are good tools to develop the logical minds for students with learning disabilities. In this paper, a WOE-based smart learning system is proposed to help those students develop learning abilities. The proposed system has the following characteristics. First, students can learn naturally problem-solving abilities by following the work-out examples given from experts. Second, the proposed system can invoke motivation and interests of students using attractive icons and guidance rules provided with smart phone. Third, the proposed system can provide self-directed study for those students. The proposed system is applied for some students with learning disabilities. The following results are obtained. First, the individualized study can be possible since the system can provide continuous feedbacks and level-differentiated classes. Second, students can increase written problem solving abilities with natural understanding of study contents from smart phone. Finally, satisfaction, study motivation, and self-concept of students are increased through their successful experience during study processes.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.45 no.1
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• pp.23-41
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• 2021

This study is to investigate the characteristics of problem-finding and problem-solving abilities demonstrated by the secondary gifted students in the context of STEAM convergent problems. For this, using the STEAM convergence problem solving ability test, we qualitatively and quantitatively compared and analyzed the workbook outputs written in the process of finding and solving problems for each student in the gifted class. The results are as follows: First, we found that the speciality of the major of the proposed activity paper influenced the preference for questions and pattern of finding problems. Second, it was found that the difference in the ability to find and solve problems for a specific task was not by the major of the gifted class, but by the composition of the group. Third, in finding and solving the STEAM convergent problem, the individual creativity and the cooperative creativity of the group were more significant than the major. These results suggest that it is necessary to include the affective factors of gifted students and the concept of cooperation in problem-finding and problem-solving ability evaluation, and there is a need to develop a teaching and learning strategy that can improve cooperative problem-solving skills so that group creativity can be exhibited well.