• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.183-198
• /
• 2005

The purpose of this study was to develop teaching modules related to Earth Science courses in order to enhance scientific inquiry skills of middle school students. A 'process skill-centered' module was developed to induce scientific process skills, while students explore specific scientific context. A module consists of several activities, and each activity focuses on a specific science process skill. Modules were designed such that the skills would improve depending on the completion of the module. To evaluate the effectiveness, field workshops for middle school science teachers were done twice. Science teachers, who were participants of the workshop, commented that the activities in each module were suited to enhance students' interest in science. They noted that scientific inquiry skills would be developed from each activity. Students responded that the activities in the modules were interesting, and it was a good experience to do them by themselves. Students were the focal point in class, not teachers. This enabled teachers to evaluated each student's achievement level, and provide a proper feedback. Hence, applying these modules in classes should enhance the students' scientific inquiry skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.30 no.5
• /
• pp.533-543
• /
• 2010

This paper analyzed the improvement of cognitive level of the students and interactions which occurred in each step of free-topic scientific inquiry to help science teachers understand free-topic scientific inquiry better. Free-topic scientific inquiry is helpful to students with a deep strategic learning goal orientation type or a deep strategic ability goal orientation type in their transition (2B/3A) of cognitive levels. Most students have difficulties in the phase of establishing topics and hypotheses. The result says that the discussion techniques are improved through free-topic scientific inquiry, but the quality of interaction is not easily improved. The deep strategic learning goal orientation type concretizes opinion through interaction in free-topic scientific inquiry. The deep strategic ability goal orientation type are actively involve in the interaction, but they pay no attention to the process because they stick to the result. The surface strategic ability goal orientation type can not deepen a discussion due to high frequency of low level inquiry. However, the frequency of high level inquiry increases through free topic scientific inquiry operation. As a result, the characteristics of free-topic scientific inquiry were discussed and the educational implications of the progress of free-topic scientific inquiry and the organization of grouping were drawn.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.40 no.2
• /
• pp.188-199
• /
• 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate the tendency of inquiry of earth science content presented in North Korean textbooks of the 2013 National curriculum using Romey's method, and to help use as basic data for better understanding earth science education in North Korea. The content of earth science in the text, figure, question, and activity index of textbooks of Natural Science 1 and 2, Chosun Geography 2 of elementary junior high school, and of Geography 1 of advanced junior high school were all analyzed using Romey's method. The results of this study were as follows: First, the atmospheric science question and the astronomy text showed the tendency of inquiry type. Second, the proportion of oceanography was relatively small. Third, there were many non-inquiry questions or excessive inquiry questions, and both types of questions needed to be balanced. Fourth, there were a tendency that did not emphasize inquiry learning. Finally, the quantitative and qualitative level of inquiry tendency should be improved. In this paper, we propose to use a qualitative method when analyzing earth science content in North Korean textbooks, and suggested that we should further study the comparative analysis of inquiry tendency of earth science content using South and North Korean textbooks.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.35-48
• /
• 2012

The purpose of this study was to analyze inquiry activities in the middle school science textbooks focused on the unit 'Nutrition of Plants' of the 2007 revision curriculum and the corresponding unit 'The Structure and Function of Plants' of the 7th curriculum in terms of content, process and contexts of inquiries. The average number of the inquiry activities in the unit 'Nutrition of Plants' was 9.2, which was a 3.8 decrease than in the unit 'Structure and Function of Plants'. In the respective of process of the inquiry activities, 'observation' was most prevailing in the basic inquiry process and 'data interpretation' was most prevailing in the integrated inquiry process in both of the units. In the respective of the types and contexts of the inquiry activities, 'experiment/observation' was most prevailing and the percentage of the natural scientific contexts was larger in both of the units. In the unit 'Nutrition of Plants', the components of the integrated inquiry process and the percentage of personal contexts were larger than in the unit 'Structure and Function of Plants'. And simulation activities were newly presented and technical contexts and natural environmental contexts were included in the unit 'Nutrition of Plants'. This study makes a suggestion that a wider variety of inquiry activities should be included when new science textbooks are developed.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.213-223
• /
• 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 Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.25 no.1
• /
• pp.96-108
• /
• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate how prospective elementary school teachers perceived teacher's inquiryoriented teaching practice, with an emphasis on students' scientific explanations based on scientific evidence. For this study, 94 prospective elementary school teachers were participated. 14 among 94 participants had chances to intensively experience this particular teaching methods for 15 weeks. All of the 94 participants observed the intended science teaching practice for 4th graders in two different elementary schools, which utilized the science talks emphasizing students' scientific explanation activity. For quantitative data analysis, they were asked to provide their reaction to the science teaching methods after their classroom observation. For qualitative data analysis, 5 among the participants, who had relatively long term experience with this teaching practice, were chosen to interview in order to understand their individual reasons of the ways they perceived about the inquiry-oriented teaching methods boosting students' scientific explanation. The results show that the prospective elementary teachers generally thought the emphasis of students' scientific explanation based on scientific evidence could enhance young elementary students' science content understanding, stimulate their curiosity/interests, and further develop their ability to engage actively in scientific discussions. However, some prospective teachers tended to think that the science teaching. methods would not be effective in terms of managing science classes, though. This study concludes that the prospective teachers tended to hold an endemic dilemma. On the one hand, they had their clear preference to the inquiry-oriented teaching practice as the most ideal teaching methods. On the other hand, they also had their persistent hesitance in using these methods due to their fear that elementary students might not adequately grasp the important science content when engaged in scientific discourse through an inquiry-oriented class.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.323-337
• /
• 2013

The purpose of this study was to analyze the scientific reasoning ability during open-inquiry activities of science-gifted 2nd middle school students. Open-inquiry activity is similar to process of scientists' science knowledge generation. Identifying and analyzing the scientific reasoning process and the scientific reasoning ability during open-inquiry activities of science-gifted students, will be able to provide implications for future research. CSRI Matrix(Dolan & Grady, 2010) was used to analyze the complexity of the scientific reasoning ability. The higher degree of complexity of the scientific reasoning is similar to process of scientists' science knowledge generation. The results showed that each process of the open-inquiry activities were distributed by various steps of complexity of the scientific reasoning. Particularly, 'The generating questions' and 'Connecting data to the research question' were 'most complex' step in all teams. On the other side, 'Posing preliminary hypotheses', 'Selecting dependent and independent variables', 'Considering the limitations or flaws of their experiments' were low steps in most teams. And 'Communicating and defending findings' was distributed by most various steps of complexity of the scientific reasoning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.32 no.2
• /
• pp.201-209
• /
• 2012

This study aims to explore patterns and characteristics of coordination between evidence and theories which were found in pre-service elementary teachers' writing for their science inquiry. Five science inquiry activities and a total of 115 writings of the participant teacher at the elementary teacher preparation university in Korea were collected and analyzed for this study. Based on the writing analyses there were found four types of coordination between the evidence and theory. We proposed four types as: Type 1-Consistency of evidence and theory; Type 2-Consistence of evidence and theory including more extension or elaboration of theory; Type 3-Inconsistence of evidence and theory Type 4-Inconsistence of evidence and theory followed by coordination of them. Firstly the findings indicated that the most to least frequent types were Type 1, Type 3, Type 2, and Type 4. The most frequent type was Type 1. It is interpreted that theory in the inquiry questions were frequently figured out by participants and they selected supporting evidence out of data found. There were rarely found relations between activity topics and frequencies of coordination types except in activity 1. The findings in this study will connect to the point of how students collaborate their previously owned knowledge with experiment planning, data analysis and interpretation and making of their own scientific claims.

• Journal of The Korean Association of Information Education
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.171-182
• /
• 2006

Science education in elementary school is mostly based on solving investigative tasks conducted by small groups on the basis of the inquiry activities such as experiments, observations, etc. Students should be able to draw conclusions from experiments and observations through their collaborative interactions by exchanging ideas. If learners use the advantages of Blended-Learning as a new pedagogical method comprehending merits of both off-line and on-line learning to complement off-line activities throughout the entire process, the interactions among them may be reinforced, and they would take part in the inquiry learning more actively. Accordingly, the proposed system can help children foster science inquiry learning effectively by using on-line communication facilities to arrange learners' diverse opinions and thoughts coming from off-line inquiry activity process. The result shows that the system enhanced learners' interest about science inquiry learning and improved their learning achievements by exchanging diverse opinions via the Web communication facilities.

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