• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.453-464
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• 2019

In this study, the types of inquiry activities in the $5^{th}$ & $6^{th}$ grade science textbooks according to the 2015 revised science national curriculum were analyzed and compared according to grade level and science area. Science textbooks for elementary school $5^{th}$ & $6^{th}$ graders contain quite diverse types of inquiry activities, which are student-centered inquiry activities. There were comparatively higher proportions of inquiry types such as experiment & observation and simulation, but relatively lower of inquiry types of investigation-discourse & presentation, discussion, expression. Elementary science textbooks are expected to cultivate science key competencies for elementary school students. Considering the science area, the motion & energy, substances, earth & space, and integration areas had the most experiment & observation among activity types, while the life area had the most simulation activities. Even in some area of the 6th grade science textbook, there was little or no data interpretation, discussion, and simulation activities. In order to achieve the goal of elementary science education, science textbooks should be developed considering the revision of future elementary science curriculum.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.11-22
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• 1998

The present educational and social circumstances require the improvement of science education and the promotion of scientific technology simultaneously Under this situation, it is necessary to develop the performance assessment evaluating the ability of scientific inquiry. The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument of the performance assessment that is can evaluate the scientific inquiring ability. The characteristics of the instrument developed through this study, are as follows, 1. The performance assessment can be impartially achieved for all the elements of scientific inquiry, which are required in the units of elementary science from 3rd to 6th grade of elementary school. 2. To maintain the objectivity of performance assessment, the detailed standpoints and standards are established. 3. The instruments are devised to evaluate the thinking skills with the experimental reports of student, the operation skills by the check list of evaluation that the teacher's observation for the student are recorded. 4. Considering the level of elementary school student, the items required the complex thinking and the investigative skills are exclude as much as possible. 5. The items are arranged according to the learning steps of elementary school, so that the evaluation may be achieved in parallel with the process of the real teaching -learning in class. 6. According to circumstances, make use of these materials for the evaluation as the practical teaching-learning materials instead of the normal teaching-learning materials The first field trial with the instrument was carried out, using a sample of 20 students from the 3rd to 6th at K and Y elementary school located in Kwangju city. The results of mean achievement quotient for each grade are as follows, the first term of 3rd grade (experiment and exercise skills ; 85%, inquiry thinking skills ; 74%), the second term of 3rd grade (experiment and exercise skills : 81%, inquiry thinking skills ; 76%), the first term of 4th grade (experiment and exercise skills ; 70%, inquiry thinking skills ; 59%), the second term of 4th grade (experiment and exercise skills ; 61%, inquiry thinking skills ; 71%), the first term of 5th grade (experiment and exercise skills ; 84%, inquiry thinking skills ; 67%), the second term of 5th grade (experiment and exercise skills; 73%, inquiry thinking skills ; 70%), the first term of 6th grade (experiment and exercise skills : 83%, inquiry thinking skills ; 84%), the second term of 6th grade (experiment and exercise skills ; 87%, inquiry thinking skills ; 81%).

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.56-65
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• 1993

The purpose of this study is to analyze the inquiry activities of SCIIS and Korea primary school science curricular meterials and to make suggestions for the improvement of inquiry learning based on the analysis The Scientific Inquiry Evaluation Inventory (SIEI: Myung Hur, 1984) was used to evaluate the inquiry activity content of the primary school "Science, Level-6" and "SCIIS, Level-6" textbooks. The results are as follows: 1) The inquiry activities of Korean science textbooks are stressing on gathering and organizing data, but rarely require students to formulate a hypothesis, to design an experiment. 2) The SCIIS textbooks relatively tended to put more weight on interpreting/ analysing data and hypothesizing/ designing experiments. 3)The Korean science textbooks had little concern about establishing hypothesis and designing experiments, interpreting / analysing data. 4) The SCIIS textbooks require students to perform a variety of inquiry skills when compare to Korean science textbooks. 5) Competition / Cooperation Scale checks the level of competition and cooperation among student teams inherent in science curricular materials. The result from each team is incorporated into the formation of a class result. The communication is required to formulate a synthesized class response, enhances cooperation among teams. The SCIIS(84%) is the higher than Korea(50%) in cooperation scale. 6) Korean science textbooks rarely require students to discuss about experiment when compare to SCIIS textbooks. 7) Korean science textbooks provide students with both inquiry problems and experimental procedure, or including answers SCIIS textbooks provide students with both inquiry problems and experimental procedure, or problems only. 8) The Korean textbooks emphasize demonstrating or verifying of the text while the SCIlS emphasize extending the content of the text in inquiry scope scsle. The inquiry pyramid which helps analysis the inquiry activity curriculum as a whole is one of type 1- the course is centered on gathering and organizing data. The SCIIS are better than the Korean science textbook in the light of proportion of interpreting / analysing data and hypothesizing / designing experiments.

• 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.452-458
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• 1995

Science textbooks are very important materials in order to know elementary science learning in Japan and Korea. In this research the 5th grade science textbooks in Japan and Korea are analyzed by an analyzing category. The analyzing category is consisted of knowledge and scientific inquiry. Knowledge is divided by fact, concept, and rule. Scientific inquiry is divided by problem cognition, variable control, experiment planning, observing, measuring, categorizing, inferring, data transformation, predicting, correlation, cause and effect, result, communication, which are 13 subcategories. Analyzing methods are counting the frequency of each subcategory and tabulating the data. The results of this study are: 1. The frequency of scientific inquiry appeared in Korean 5th grade science textbooks is three times more than that in Japanese textbooks. 2. In scientific inquiry category, Japanese science textbooks emphasized observing, predicting, measuring and problem cognition; Korean science textbooks emphasized experiment planning, observing and problem cognition. 3. In knowledge category, fact subcategory is mostly emphasized in both countries.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.115-128
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• 2014

Students' argumentation during science inquiry should be regarded important as it could help students to make meaningful connections between theories and experiments and to make scientific claims based on evidences. In this study, elementary science-gifted students' argumentation during small group inquiry was analyzed according to inquiry process. There were three stages of argumentation during students' inquiry. The first argumentation was to predict what would happen(Prediction stage). In this stage, the scientific problem was presented by concept cartoon as a way to start and to facilitate students' argumentation. The second argumentation was to design an experiment to solve the problem(Planning stage) and the third was to interpret the result of experiment(Interpretation stage). The discourse move, level of grounds and their relationship were analyzed to find the characteristics of argumentation during science inquiry. In terms of discourse move, 'Asking for opinion' was the most frequent whereas 'Claim' or 'Rebuttal' were rare. Students tended to listen to or ask others' opinion rather than provide their own claims or critics on others' opinion. 'Rebuttal' was shown a few times only during prediction and planning stage. There was no single 'Rebuttal' during interpretation stage. Students tended to easily accept or agree other student's interpretation of data instead of arguing their own ideas. In terms of level of grounds, students mostly provided their ideas without any attempt to justify their position. Especially during planning stage, students tended to suggest or decide ways of measuring or controlling variables without any grounds. They used evidences only a few times during prediction stage. In terms of relation between discourse move and level of grounds, students provided grounds most frequently when they dispute others' claims. The level of grounds were higher when they advocate or clarify their own or others' ideas than when they claim their ideas. The result of this study showed that the quality of elementary science-gifted students' argumentation during science inquiry was undesirable in many ways. Implications for scaffolding and facilitating argumentation during science inquiry were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.27-38
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• 1995

The purposes of the 'Students' Science Inquiry Experiment Tournament' which is one of the 'Students' Science Inquiry Olympic Tournaments' are; 1) cultivate students' intellectual interests, inquiry abilities, and scientific attitude dealing with students' scientific reasoning abilities, problem solving abilities, and experimental apparatuses operation abilities. 2) contribute substantiality of science education through experimental inquiry learning. 3) make the ground of basic science development of the future society by selecting excellent students who have talents for science. 4) elevate science teachers' morale by this tournament. The test items set and evaluation results of the tournament were analysed in this study. The results of this study were ; 1) the discrimination ability of the paper-and pencils test and the experiments were low because the students' scores of the items were not normally distributed and standard deviations were very small values. 2) most of the tournament participation students did not answered to the subjective type test items. 3) according to the responses of the tournament participation students, the tournament contribute to the students' interests in science. But the opinion was dominant that the tournament didn't contribute to school science education improvement.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.449-463
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• 2020

This study was to analysis teaching strategies, types of inquiry activities and the relationship between science concepts and inquiry activities presented in science textbooks. As a result of the study, first, the inquiry-based teaching strategies presented in science textbooks were experiment, simulation, demonstration, and field study. Second, there were 53 inquiry activities presented in 8 units related to the earth science area of science textbooks, and the types of inquiry activities were experimental observation (EO) 18, mock activity (SA) 20, investigation discussion and presentation (IP). It was analyzed as 12, data interpretation (ID) 2, and express (EX) 1 piece. Third, the relationship between inquiry activities and science concepts presented in science textbooks was analyzed. As a result of the analysis, out of a total of 42 inquiry activities, 21 inquiry activities corresponded to EA (explicit activities), in which the result of inquiry activities was directly and explicitly linked to science concepts. And IA (implicit activities), which is an implicit inquiry activity in which science concepts must be inferred using the results of inquiry activities, were analyzed as 21. In particular, IA (implicit activities), which is an implicit inquiry activity, can be said to be the result of reflecting the characteristics of earth science areas where many simulated activities (SA) are used. This is considered to be a matter to be considered in the process of developing various elementary science textbooks in the future.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.57-63
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• 1984

An inquiry approach in teaching science has been advocated by many science educators for the past few decades, and most elementary and secondary science curricula have incorporated it in varying degrees. It has been proven in recent studies, however, that there exists considerable discrepancy between the expectation of outcomes of the inquiry approach and the actuality. This in part implies that there is a somewhat urgent need for the systematic evaluation of the approach in teaching science. The purpose of this study is to develop a comprehensive instrument for evaluating inquiry teaching approaches embedded in science curricular materials. To develop a more valid and reliable instrument a set of empirical data was used in the developmental procedure, and most of the previous studies regarding inquiry teaching method and inquiry evaluation were consulted. The inquiry evaluation method developed in this study, called the Scientific Inquiry Evaluation Inventory (SIEI), is composed of three parts: (1) analyzing and coding each science process task of inquiry activity; (2) evaluating each inquiry activity as a whole; and (3) evaluating each science laboratory curriculum as a whole. The first part of the instrument consists of twenty science process categories and thirty subcategories grouped into four sections: (1) gathering and organizing data; (2) interpreting and analyzing data; (3) synthesizing results and evaluation; and (4) hypothesizing and designing an experiment. The science process categories are arranged according to the level of difficulty, psychological level of thinking, degree of creativity demand, and the model of the process of scientific inquiry, which is also developed in the study. The second part of the instrument contains four evaluation scales of inquiry activity: (1) competition/cooperation scale; (2) discussion scale; (3) openness scale; and (4) inquiry scope scale. And the last part consists of three methods for evaluating a science laboratory curriculum as a whole: (1) inquiry pyramid; (2) inquiry index; and (3) difficulty index. The instrument is designed to be used by teachers, science curriculum developers and science education evaluators for the purpose of diagnosing the nature and appropriateness of scientific inquiry introduced in secondary science curricular materials, especailly in laboratory work and field work.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.185-204
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• 2010

Inquiring earth science phenomena is characterized by the followings: a big scale of time and space, inaccessibility, uncontrollability, and complexity. Thus, it is very difficult or, in some cases, impossible to investigate them through the actual manipulation in laboratories. Therefore, it is necessary to provide chance for students to experience scientific inquiry without actual manipulation in earth science classes. This study is to explore the role of reasoning based on a thought experiment as a representative model without actual manipulation, and to investigate features of various inquiry models using reasoning in classes. We can make implications when applying for applying each inquiry model to earth science classes, proposing a reasoning-based inquiry model embedded in earth scientific phenomena.