• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.707-715
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• 2019

The self-directed inquiry to improve students' core scientific competency is an important teaching method. Students experience a variety of difficulties in carrying out their inquiry tasks, sometimes fail to produce the desired results, or fail to perform a meaningless inquiry. This study was conducted to identify the causes of difficulties and failures in students' self-directed scientific inquiry. The study involved 16 high school students with experience in science research at science high schools and science-focused high schools. The data collection consisted of in-depth interviews centered on semi-structured open questions. Qualitative data analysis was imputed by finding paragraphs from the interview material that might reveal the difficulties and failures experienced by participants and the reasons for them. The study found that most of the causes of failure were lack of ability, incomplete procedures, and selection of complicated tasks. A variety of cognitive biases, such as overconfidence, planning fallacy, and groupthink, were also analyzed as causes. Based on the results of the study, it is necessary to develop an educational strategy that students can be fully prepared to reduce their trials and errors in a self-directed inquiry maximally.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.155-166
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• 2024

This study investigated and compared orientations toward scientific inquiry learning among general and science-gifted elementary students. It also investigated and compared the relationship between their orientations toward scientific inquiry learning and their coping strategies for anomalous situations. To realize this, 61 general elementary students and 53 science-gifted elementary students in Seoul were selected, and questionnaires were administered to investigate their orientations toward scientific inquiry learning and coping strategies for anomalous situations. In addition, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted individually with some of the general and science-gifted students. The results showed that among orientations toward scientific inquiry learning, regardless of grade level, the general students were most likely to possess 'concept understanding' and second most likely to exhibit 'scientific practice'. On the other hand, the science-gifted students demonstrated the highest frequency of 'scientific practice', with 'concept understanding' and 'complexity' also being relatively common. 'Activity driven' was found only among some of the general students and 'engineering practice' was found only among some of the science-gifted students. 'Process skills' were not found. No clear relationships between orientations toward scientific inquiry learning and coping strategies for anomalous situations were found. However, some differences in the choice of coping strategies for anomalous situations between the general and science-gifted students were discovered, even when they had the same orientations toward scientific inquiry learning. The educational implications of these findings were discussed.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.49-55
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to examine how online knowledge-based search service is being used by students in science education. Reviewing information and summarizing data are important parts in scientific inquiry. As more and more information is available online, how to review and summarize online information for scientific inquiry also becomes an issue. In this study, we examined one of the popular online knowledge-based search services to see what kinds of information in secondary school chemistry are mostly sought and how reliable those information could be. The result indicated that users mostly seek scientific explanations and problem solving but about 30% of provided information appeared to be incorrect. It implicates that it is necessary to pay attention for teaching students how to obtain, evaluate, and communicate online information in science education to enhance students' ability for scientific inquiry.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.213-223
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to identify the types of essential inquiry activities presented in elementary science textbooks for grades 5-6, and to find out what difficulties teachers have in the actual teaching process. To this end, the essential research activities presented in the textbook were analyzed into six types: experimentation/observation, investigation/discussion and presentation, data interpretation, discussion/discussion, simulation activity, and expression. In addition, 108 elementary school teachers were investigated for the suitability of inquiry activity achievement standards, suitability at the student's level, student interest, and difficulty in teaching instruction. To summarize the research results, the most frequently suggested type was the experiment/observation type, followed by simulation activity type and data interpretation type. It was analyzed that there was no discussion/discussion type in the 5th grade textbooks, and the 6th graders did not present research activities that correspond to the research/discussion/presentation type and the expression type in the textbook. In the results of teachers' responses to the suitability of achievement standards for inquiry activities presented in textbooks and the suitability of the student's level, 5th graders showed lower average scores than 6th graders, and showed similar average scores in student interest and instructional difficulty. Also, it was confirmed that improvement was required for a total of 17 inquiry activities. Specifically, teachers responded that they had difficulty in guiding inquiry activities when the experimental results did not appear as intended in the textbook, when students' interest in inquiry activities was low, and when students and teachers had low understanding of related science concepts. Teachers pointed out practical problems such as difficulties in long-term observation in astronomy-related units, and students in upper elementary school not actively participating in dynamic play activities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.135-145
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to investigate elementary teachers' views on the democratic scientific inquiry and the methods for promotion of democratic citizenship in science classroom, and to conduct exploratory discussions about science classroom for promotion of democratic citizenship based on their views. Data were collected from 96 elementary teachers. AS results show, the elementary teachers in the study thought that the features of democratic scientific inquiry was 'communication and cooperation', 'autonomy and fairness', and 'contribution to the benefit of mankind and society'. In addition, the participants regarded the 'inquiry/activity focused on communication and cooperation' as the best method for promotion of democratic citizenship in science classrooms. Finally, several suggestions on the science education for promotion of democratic civic literacy and the democratic inquiry were given.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.544-556
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the change in beginning science teachers' inquiry-oriented teaching practice through mentoring program. Participants in this study are three mentor teachers and three beginning teachers. The three beginning teachers are middle school science teachers who have less than four years teaching experience. Also three science teachers participated in the program as mentors, who have more than twelve years teaching experience. We collected data such as video recordings of beginning teachers' classes, lesson plans, recordings of one to one mentoring and RTOP class observation reports. Mentor teachers observed and analyzed five classes of each beginning teacher. Before the mentoring program, beginning teachers' teaching methods were more concept-oriented and teacheroriented. They rarely used inquiry-elements including prediction, reasoning, hypothesizing and students were not actively engaged in communicative interactions in a classroom. But during the mentoring program, these teachers recognized and responded to student diversity and encouraged all students to participate in science learning. Beginning teachers' teaching methods have changed to become student-oriented, teachers and students collaborated in pursuit of ideas, and students often initiated new activities relevant to an inquiry. As a result, this mentoring program provided beginning teachers the opportunities to reflect on their own teaching and reform their classes. The results show that school-centered mentoring program is helpful to enhance beginning science teachers' inquiry-oriented teaching ability.

• The Mathematical Education
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• v.49 no.2
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• pp.223-246
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• 2010

Goos(2004) introduced educational researchers' demand for change on the way that mathematics is taught in schools and the series of curriculum documents produced by the National council of Teachers of Mathematics. The documents have placed emphasis on the processes of problem solving, reasoning, and communication. In Korea, the national curriculum documents have also placed increased emphasis on mathematical activities such as reasoning and communication(1997, 2007).The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of inquiry-oriented instruction with guided reinvention on students' mathematical activities containing communication and reasoning for science high school students. In this paper, we introduce an inquiry-oriented instruction containing Polya's plausible reasoning, Freudenthal's guided reinvention, Forman's sociocultural approach of learning, and Vygotsky's zone of proximal development. We analyze the impact of mathematical findings from inquiry-oriented instruction on students' mathematical activities containing communication and reasoning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.928-937
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to analyze inquiry activities in high school chemistry II textbooks on the revised 2009 curriculum. It also compared them to the textbooks based on the 7th curriculum, which were published by the same companies. The results in this study turned out to be as follows: First, the number of the activities and rate of inquiry activities per total pages were quite different from each publisher, and all of them decreased. Second, there were too many activities for specific inquiry process elements. Third, the types of inquiry activities differ slightly between each publisher. Experimenting and thinking were the most used while practicing was the least. Fourth, in the inquiry context, activities in scientific context were prevalent and activities in usual context were the second most common. Comparing to the text book on the 7th curriculum, the use of technical-social context increased, however, the technical-social context as well as the natural-environmental context were not used enough, as they constitute less than 10% of the activities. From these results, chemistry teachers should introduce a variety inquiry activities in chemistry curriculum for resolving those problems. Also, textbook developer should accommodate the results of research about science textbooks.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.509-520
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyze laboratory instructions in a secondary school science with an analysis instrument on science laboratory instruction. For its purpose, we used an instrument that analyzes three dimensions of the secondary laboratory instructions. This analysis instrument was composed of 3 categories (the aim of the laboratory activity, interaction, and inquiry process) which are spread into 20 sub-categories, and its validity was checked by four science educators with factor of 0.89. For its purpose, 21 sessions of lab instructions were video-recorded and transcribed. According to the results, in the aims category, the instructions mainly focused on two aims; acquiring the declarative knowledge and increasing attitudes toward science. In the interaction category, some of the observations made were that the teachers's questions could not gather the students' divergent thinking, their directive instructions were centered around themselves rather than giving opportunities for students to be centered within laboratory activities, and students' interaction were rarely shown. Therefore, interaction was classified as level I. In the inquiry process, presenting phenomenon or questionings about the subjects were little observed, and students' hypothesizing and predicting were almost nonexistent. Most of the activity designs within lab session were given from the teachers' directions or worksheets, and students solely focused on data collecting and recording. Hence, inquiry process were classified level I.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.305-315
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• 2016

The purpose of this paper was to analyze the role of illustrations in elementary textbooks (3~4 grade) of the 2009 revised curriculum of science education in Korea from point of view of aim of science by applying the criteria of 5E inquiry process model for reflecting core aim of the science education. The subjects of the paper was the 105 illustrations in the earth-science domain of elementary science textbooks (3~4 grade) of the 2009 revised curriculum of science education in Korea. The analysis criterion was of two categories, the function of illustration and the role of illustration. the function of illustration was divided into three subcategories such as Exclusiveness type, correspondence type and supplementary type. The role of illustration was divide into five subcategories such as Engagement, Exploration, Explanation, Elaboration and Evaluation. According to results of the illustration analysis are as follows: the result of the function of illustration are exclusiveness type 39, correspondence type 36 and supplementary type 30, the important of point to note is that there are a lot of exclusiveness type considerably. compared with other subjects, this fact indicate character of illustration of the only science textbook. The result of the role of illustration are Engagement 14, exploration 64, explanation 25, elaboration 2 and evaluation 0. This data indicate main role of illustrations in earth-science domain is to help the students to be able to observe and explore. Cross-analysis of the function and role was a significant difference. Role of illustration was evenly distributed within Exclusiveness type on the other hand, the role of illustrations was mainly exploration and explanation in correspondence and supplementary type. Especially, illustration of exploration was mainly correspondence type.