• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.262-276
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the elementary teachers' views and students' views about the difficulties in teaching and learning on open inquiry activities of elementary school science. Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with three elementary teachers who have serviced more than three years, and with twenty four elementary students attending schools located in Cheongju City. And their anecdotes were collected and analyzed. The interview questions were developed through Seidman's steps to acquire the reliability in the interview data. From the interviews and anecdotes, we found that elementary teachers' views about the difficulties of teaching open inquiry activities: the difficulties of teaching in finding inquiry problem and planning inquiry, the difficulties of managing group activities, the difficulties of managing class hours for inquiry, the lack of the students' inquiry abilities, and problems on students' affective characteristics. And the students have the views about the difficulties in doing open inquiry activities: the difficulties of finding inquiry problem and planning inquiry, being unaccustomed to write reports, the troubles with investigating, problems on affective characteristics, the difficulties of joining in a group, and the lack of inquiry abilities. The teachers give suggestions for effective application of the open inquiry activities: first, the teachers must encourage students' emotion and will in doing open inquiry activities, second, there must be the steady inquiry teaching and learning in ordinary elementary science classes. Based on the results, this study suggested that elementary teachers should concern specially about students' being unaccustomed to write reports and the troubles in doing scientific investigation.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.399-419
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to develop performance assessment materials of scientific inquiry skills on 62 scientific activities in elementary science textbook for third and fourth grades. For this study, a total of 318 elementary teachers were sampled and surveys were carried out to examine the status of performance assessment of scientific inquiry skills in school. The classification system of assessment methods by Hart(1994) was also analyzed to create assessment strategy of scientific inquiry skills for elementary school students. Based on the quantitative data analysis, literature study and existing performance assessment materials analysis, performance assessment materials were developed and applied to science classes for third and fourth grades. Teachers and students were interviewed after the classes for asking about merits and improvements and the performance assessment materials were revised.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.242-254
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to understand the teaching effects according to the cognitive levels after conducting inquiry activities using science notebooks in the open inquiry activities of the elementary science class. The results of this study were as follow. first, students having the open inquiry activities using science notebooks showed improvement in scientific inquiry abilities in both groups with the low and high cognitive level. Second, regarding the changes of scientific attitudes, both groups with the low and high cognitive level exhibited improvement. According to the result of analyzing interaction between the cognitive level and class treatment on the effects for scientific inquiry abilities and scientific attitudes, there was no difference by the cognitive level. And the use of science notebooks in open inquiry activities had effects on improving scientific inquiry abilities and scientific attitudes regardless of the cognitive level.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of integrated science inquiry teaming method through literature materials on the learner's science concept formation, inquiry ability, and attitude related to science when it was applied to the unit 'The temperature of atmosphere and winds', 'The journey of water' in the 5th grade, and to find out the effect on science learning according to teaming styles. To study these subjects, 4 classes of 5th grade in J elementary school in Busan were selected. The result of this study were as follows: First, Integrated science inquiry learning method through literature materials was more effective for concept formation than conventional teaching method. In science inquiry ability, there was not significant difference at all between the comparison group and the experimental group. In attitude related to science, the experimental group showed significant difference only in the interest in occupation related to science. The visual modality learners within the experimental group showed significantly higher statistics than the other modality learners in the post-investigation into the science concept and there was significant difference between the visual and the kinesthetic modality learners in the result of post-test on science inquiry ability.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.146-151
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• 1993

This study analyzed the problem associated with inquiry centered science education and formulated some improvement Strategies for inquiry learning in the standard Korean high school course. In order to attain the goals of questionaire survey methods were used. To examine the current status of biology education, seperate questionaires were developed through an educational research and development procedure used for tearchers and student. The questionaires were developed to ask about instruction and evaluation methods, the level of inquiry learing and abstacles to it. Here are some of our results: 1) Biology instruction and learning is more knowledge-orinted than inquiry-orinted, 2) Inquiry approach in science teaching is hard to be applied because of crowed classroom conditions. 3) The material is too broad in range and too difficult in content. There is virtually nothing that can be related to everyday life. The material focusing on inquiry activities is unsatisfactorily selected and organized. 4) Effective methods of inquiry-based instruction and evaluation are not available. 5) Biology teachers are burdened with too many class hour a week and too many varieties of additional works. 6) 91.1% of biology teachers and 90.3% of students recognize that lab and field works are needed to enhance inquiry learning. However, in reality, such inquiry activities are lacking. 7) 73.3% of schools have no lab assistants. 8) The university entrance examination is the greatest factor against inquiry learning. 9) There are very few chances of in-service education for biology teachers to learn more about biology curriculum and science education theory.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.7
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• pp.909-927
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• 2009

Inquiry became an essential methodology in science education. Recently, argumentation becomes more important in inquiry, but inquiry-based teaching in school science would not provide enough opportunities for students to have voluntary and active interactions during inquiry activities. Informal science learning can be an alternative for authentic inquiry. Accordingly, this study aims to find interaction patterns in dialogic inquiry of junior high school students in small groups in the natural history gallery. Inquiry elements and interaction patterns are analyzed with 42 dialogues of 13 small groups. As a result, seven interaction patterns are identified. First, five major interaction patterns were drawn as follows; Sharing questions, asking questions and simple response, asking questions and simple explanation, asking questions-simple explanation-(collecting data)-data based explanation, and asking questions-collecting data-data based explanation. Second, pattern 2, 'asking questions and simple response', is subdivided into three categories; passive and/or evasive response, inaccurate response, and repeated patterns of asking questions-simple response. The results of the study provide different patterns of dialogic interactions in a small group inquiry in informal contexts from formal contexts, and provide foundations to understand middle school students' interactive dialogues of inquiry occurred in the natural history gallery.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.109-122
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• 2015

In National Curriculum of Science revised in 2007, free inquiry was newly introduced to increase student's interest in science and to foster creativity by having students make their own curiosity questions and find answers by themselves. The purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school students' perceptions on free science inquiry activities applying a brain-based evolutionary approach. For this study, 106 the fifth grade students participated, and then completed a questionnaire on free inquiry activities according to a brain-based evolutionary science teaching and learning principles. The students performed a series of steps of the Diversifying, Estimating-Evaluating-Executing, and Furthering activities in each of Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive domains (ABC-DEF approach) and constructed their own free inquiry diary, then the observations by the researcher and interviews with the students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The major results of the study were as follows: First, the majority of the students perceived the each domain and step positively although a few of them perceived negatively. The reasons perceived as negatively were categorized into two; preference dimension of like or dislike and ability dimension of metacognitive or self-reflective capacity. Also, they perceived the free inquiry experience in the form of ABC-DEF as helpful to understand the nature of scientists' scientific activities. Based on these findings, implications for supporting authentic inquiry in school science are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.321-328
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• 2005

In this study the effects of science teaming with the level of inquiry requirement in elementary school science experiment instruction were investigated on cognitive domain. We assigned seventy-three students of the fifth grade into two groups according to the levels of inquiry requirement. After each instruction was implemented, the characteristics of the students' tearning science on cognitive domain were compared and analyzed with the levels of them. The higher level (HL) inquiry-required instruction was more effective in increasing and maintaining the memory on the science teaming than the lower level (LL). Especially, in the aspects of the experimental methods and taking cares which the students engage and perform actively rather than do passively, the memory scores of HL group were higher than those of LL. In addition, the memory scores and the degree of maintenance were higher among students who perceived the instruction as easy and interesting. In conclusion, the HL of instruction could stimulate the students to challenge the problems, thereby make them construct meaning actively and improve the amount and degree of maintenance of memory on science teaming.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.288-296
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• 2015

This study aimed to analysis of concepts and inquiry activities related to the 'Earth Science' area in the South Korean elementary school textbooks to the current and to seek the improvement of future textbook. For the study, we were collected South Korean elementary school textbooks to the current. After the collection had been made, we were analyzed related to the 'Earth' area in the South Korean elementary school textbooks and were extracted central concepts and inquiry activities. The result of this study: First, there were 'A change in the land', 'Strata and Fossil', 'Volcanoes and Earthquakes', 'Earth and Moon', 'The weather', 'The Solar system and the Star', and 'Seasonal Change' in the central concepts related to the 'Earth' area in the South Korean elementary school textbooks to the current. Second, central concepts were almost the same but the curriculum was changed. Third, inquiry activities also were confirmed to be maintained with little change. This result was believed that it can provide a variety of suggestions at this point in changing the curriculum.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.30-43
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• 2014

'Basic Inquiry' unit was newly included in the grade 3~4 science textbook developed for 2009 revised national curriculum. The unit deals with six basic inquiry skills such as 'observation', 'measurement', 'classification', 'prediction', 'inference', and 'communication'. This study investigated elementary school teachers' perceptions on the effects of 'Basic Inquiry' unit by questionnaires (N=104 for pre-survey, N=90 for post-survey). The results showed that how the teachers have taught basic inquiry skills before this new textbook and how they perceived the educational effects of the unit after experimental teaching period in three aspects; development of basic inquiry skills, facilitating science learning in other units, and implementation of open inquiry. The reasons of positive perceptions as well as negative perceptions were analyzed and discussed with the suggestions for further study.