• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.102-113
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• 2001

In order to compare with the 6th and 7th science curricular for the inquiry skill elements in the elementary and secondary school, we divided skill domains into five classes which were process skill, step skill for inquiry instruction, inquiry activity skill, manipulative skill and breeding-farming skill. And then we investigated the kinds and frequencies for the inquiry skill elements of the 6th and 7th curricular in the elementary and secondary school. The results were as follows: 1. The total kinds of inquiry skill element showed 17 kinds in the 6th curriculum and 23 kinds in the 7th. Therefore, the 7th curriculum was higher 1.4 times than the 6th curriculum in the kinds of skill elements. 2. The total frequencies for the inquiry skill elements of the 6th curriculum were 408 and those of the 7th were 729. Therefore, the 7th curriculum was about 1.8 times as many as the 6th. 3. In the kinds of inquiry skill elements according to the school levels, the course of the elementary school showed 14 kinds in the 6th curriculum and 18 kinds in the 7th. The course of middle school showed 7 kinds in 6th and 16 kinds in 7th. The integrated science course of high school was 10 kinds in the 6th and 10 kinds in the 7th. The skill elements in four science curricular of the high school course showed total 11 kinds in the 6th and 21 kinds in the 7th. And then the kinds of inquiry skill elements of the 7th curriculum in the middle and high school course showed about 2 times as many as the 6th curriculum. In the school level, the increase of skill elements showed the highest in the middle school course, and then in the high school course. 4. The total skill elements from the elementary school to the high school in the 6th science curriculum showed 17 kinds and in the order from the highest to the lowest rates, such as experimenting 20%, observing 15%, interpreting and analyzing data 13%, investigating 9%, measuring 7%, drawing a conclusion and assessment 7%, discussion 6%, communicating 5%, classifying 4%, recognizing problems and formulating hypothesis 4%, predicting 3%, designing and carrying out an experiment 3%, collecting and treating data 2%, manipulating skill 1%, modeling 0.5%, breeding and farming 0.3% and inferring 0.2%. 5. The total skill elements from the elementary school to the high school in the 7th curriculum appeared 23 kinds and in the order from the highest to the lowest rates, such as drawing a conclusion and assessment 31%, investigating 14%, collecting and treating data 8%, observing 7%, experimenting 7%, recognizing problems and formulating hypothesis 6%, interpreting and analyzing data 4%, measuring 3%, discussion 3%, manipulating skill 3%, modeling 3%, classifying 2%, project 2%, educational visits 1%, controlling variables 1%, predicting 1%, inferring 1%, operational definition 1%, communicating 1%, designing and carrying out an experiment 0.3%, breeding and farming 0.3%, applicating a number 0.2% and relating with time and space 0.2%. In the conclusion, the 7th curriculum was added 6 kinds of skill elements to the 6th curriculum, such as operational definition, applicating a number, relating with time and space, controlling variables, educational visits and project.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.173-184
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• 1995

The purpose of this study was to analyse the problems of 'Science Inquiry Experiment Contest(SIEC)' which was one of 8 programs of 'The 2nd Student Science Inquiry Olympic Meet(SSIOM)'. The results and conclusions of this study were as follows: 1. It needs to reconsider the role of practical work within science experiment because practical work skills form one of the mainstays in current science. But the assessment of students' laboratory skills in the contest was made little account of. It is necessary to remind of what it means to be 'good at science'. There are two aspects: knowing and doing. Both are important and, in certain respects, quite distinct. Doing science is more of a craft activity, relying more on craft skill and tacit knowledge than on the conscious application of explicit knowledge. Doing science is also divided into two aspects, 'process' and 'skill' by many science educators. 2. The report's and checklist's assessment items were overlapped. Therefore it was suggested that the checklist assessment items were set limit to the students' acts which can't be found in reports. It is important to identify those activities which produce a permanent assessable product, and those which do not. Skills connected with recording and reporting are likely to produce permanent evidence which can be evaluated after the experiment. Those connected with manipulative skills involving processes are more ephemeral and need to be assessed as they occur. The division of student's experimental skills will contribute to the accurate assess of student's scientific inquiry experimental ability. 3. There was a wide difference among the scores of one participant recorded by three evaluators. This means that there was no concrete discussion among the evaluators before the contest. Despite the items of the checklists were set by preparers of the contest experiments, the concrete discussions before the contest were necessary because students' experimental acts were very diverse. There is a variety of scientific skills. So it is necessary to assess the performance of individual students in a range of skills. But the most of the difficulties in the assessment of skills arise from the interaction between measurement and the use. To overcome the difficulties, not only must the mark needed for each skill be recorded, something which all examination groups obviously need, but also a description of the work that the student did when the skill was assessed must also be given, and not all groups need this. Fuller details must also be available for the purposes of moderation. This is a requirement for all students that there must be provision for samples of any end-product or other tangible form of evidence of candidates' work to be submitted for inspection. This is rather important if one is to be as fair as possible to students because, not only can this work be made available to moderators if necessary, but also it can be used to help in arriving at common standards among several evaluators, and in ensuring consistent standards from one evaluator over the assessment period. This need arises because there are problems associated with assessing different students on the same skill in different activities. 4. Most of the students' reports were assessed intuitively by the evaluators despite the assessment items were established concretely by preparers of the experiment. This result means that the evaluators were new to grasp the essence of the established assessment items of the experiment report and that the students' assessment scores were short of objectivity. Lastly, there are suggestions from the results and the conclusions. The students' experimental acts which were difficult to observe because they occur in a flash and which can be easily imitated should be excluded from the assessment items. Evaluators are likely to miss the time to observe the acts, and the students who are assessed later have more opportunity to practise the skill which is being assessed. It is necessary to be aware of these problems and try to reduce their influence or remove them. The skills and processes analysis has made a very useful checklist for scientific inquiry experiment assessment. But in itself it is of little value. It must be seen alongside the other vital attributes needed in the making of a good scientist, the affective aspects of commitment and confidence, the personal insights which come both through formal and informal learning, and the tacit knowledge that comes through experience, both structured and acquired in play. These four aspects must be continually interacting, in a flexible and individualistic way, throughout the scientific education of students. An increasing ability to be good at science, to be good at doing investigational practical work, will be gained through continually, successively, but often unpredictably, developing more experience, developing more insights, developing more skills, and producing more confidence and commitment.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.759-772
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to understand characteristics of eighth graders' conclusions presented in their self-directed scientific inquiry reports. We developed a framework, Analysis of Conclusions of Self-Directed Scientific Inquiry, to analyze students' conclusions. We then compared the conclusions with the inquiry questions students generated to find out whether the questions affected students' conclusions. In addition, we analyzed students' responses from the survey about their perceptions of drawing conclusions. According to the results, the conclusions were characterized into two categories, i.e., scientific basic assumption and scientific explanation. Almost half of the students' conclusions fall under the scientific basic assumptions. Most of the scientific explanations were deductive explanations and inductive explanations. Then, the kinds of conclusions were affected by the inquiry questions because the scientific explanations were made more than the scientific basic assumptions in answering the inquiry questions. Some students couldn't recognize differences between conclusions and experiment results.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.399-413
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• 2020

In this study, we analyzed science teachers' NOS-PCK in Science Inquiry Experiment lessons. Four science teachers in charge of Science Inquiry Experiment in high schools located in the Seoul metropolitan area participated in the study. NOS Lessons were observed, all of the teaching-learning materials were collected, and semi-structured interviews were conducted. All the collected data were analyzed according to five factors of NOS-PCK. As a result of the study, their understanding and consideration of the curriculum related to NOS were insufficient in some cases. They thought that given inquiry activities or textbook composition was not effective for NOS teaching so that they actively reconstructed the curriculum. In terms of teaching strategies, their lessons were close to explicit approaches. However reflective approaches were generally lacking. They were neglected in evaluating NOS for reasons that views of NOS are individually subjective or that NOS is not an area of cognitive learning. They guessed the state of students by relying on their own experiences rather than based on evaluation results. They recognized a specific aspect of values of NOS learning. And intention to teach NOS played an important role throughout their classes. Based on the above results, we discuss some ways to improve the professionalism of science teachers for NOS teaching.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.1094-1105
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• 2004

The effects of learning using Information Communication Technology(ICT) on the students' scientific inquiry ability and science-related affective characteristics were analyzed in Earth History and Crust Movement units of science textbook for eighth graders. For this study, two classes of middle school second students in Chung-nam were selected and taught for six week under different teaching methods. One class is the test class taught with ICT applied teaching materials and the other class is the control class instructed by a conventional method. One week before the experiment, both classes were given tests on scientific inquiry ability and science-related affective characteristics, and they were tested again after the experiment. The results of scientific inquiry test showed statistically meaningful differences in the experimental class and the control class. The experimental class showed statistically meaningful difference in scientific inquiry test. Science-related affective characteristics test showed no statistically meaningful difference in the experimental class. Among three scientific science-related affective characteristics, especially the one fields of interests showed statistically meaningful differences which suggest that learning using ICT has a positive effect on the expanding of students' science-related affective characteristics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.421-431
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics of observation and measurement inquiry process in the Korean science textbooks. For the inquiry process of observation, the higher grade textbooks contained more 'comparative observation' rather than 'simple observation'. Students should express their observation results in written words rather than verbal descriptions in the higher grade. For the inquiry process of measurement, the temperature measurement was the most frequent measurement activity. 'Measurement design' was found more frequently in the lower grade textbooks. The uses of measurement tools were not presented systematically and were presented restrictively when the relevant experiment wanted to use these tools. The higher grade textbooks include 'quantitative measurements' rather than 'qualitative measurements' and 'operation measurement' rather than 'simple measurement'. In the application of measurement results, we had difficulty in finding the activities related with the usage of unit, unit conversion, significant figure, error and uncertainty.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.57 no.6
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• pp.845-854
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to develop a teaching strategy focused on science writing and to investigate its effects on enhancing students' creative thinking skills. In advance, students in the experiment were led to write by inquiry elements. And students in the experiment group were taught by science writing strategy. Students in the control group were taught by traditional lecture-based instructions. The program was implemented over a semester. The results indicated that the experimental group presented statistically meaningful improvement in creative thinking skills(p<.05). Especially, science writing was effective on fluency and flexibility development(p<.05). This study suggests that science writing can be effective for improvement of creative thinking skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.674-683
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to compare the ideas of pupils with that of the scientists about controlling and identifying of variables, in the two cases: open or guided inquiry. The subjects were the 7th grade boys and girls in a school, in Seoul, Korea. For the guided inquiry, the problems were given by the experiments of pupils' text. Pupils were asked to identify the variables in the experiments. For the open inquiry, pupils set their own inquiry problem. The pupils whose marks are within upper one-third of three classes were chosen. Pupils' ideas on variables were investigated in the design of experiment for their problems. In that, questionnaire developed by researchers was used. In the former, many of the pupils identify just only one variable despite of the fact there were two independent or dependent variables in the experiments. In the latter, the number of independent variables increased two or three. However, pupils do not control independent variables: they vary two independent variables simultaneously in the design of experiment. From these, we compared the pupils' ideas on variables with the scientists'

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.2
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• pp.206-216
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate science related attitudes, scientific knowledge, and scientific inquiry skills of middle school students when HASA(3H-hand, head, heart-at Science Activity) programs were applied to them. The HASA program is a program developed as an alternative to the current educational system. There are some basic principles for developing this program; it should be fun or of interest to students; it should be a manual activity that students can do with their own hands; it should be found in everyday life; and it's final goal is to improve scientific attitudes. The learning program consists of a series of 10 activities (10 periods). One hundred and sixty-two middle school students (7th graders) participated in the study and were divided into three groups. The HASA group (N=58) was exposed to the HASA program and the Lecture group (N=59) was exposed to the expository method of learning scientific knowledge, and the Lab group (N=45) was exposed to the experiment through textbooks. The results were as follows: 1) the HASA group was marginally higher than others but with no significant difference in science related attitudes; 2) the Lecture group had a significantly greater level of achievement in science knowledge; 3) There was no difference in the improvement of scientific inquiry skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.79-92
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to develop an inquiry-based argumentation task for use in science teachers' professional development by providing them with the substantial experience of argumentation. To do so, the study has developed an argumentation task by utilizing the experiment on the Charles' Law of gas and revised by applying to eight teachers three times. We have revised the questions by analyzing three issues that have been revealed throughout this process in ways that facilitated teachers' argumentation. The effects of revision have been confirmed by the improvements in teachers' argumentation pattern. Three issues have been identified in developing argumentation tasks for science teachers' professional development and they are as follows: determining the openness of the structure of a question, achieving cognitive conflict and convergence of opinions at the same time, and ways of utilizing various evidence. As the task has been revised in ways that enabled scientific approach to the inquiry topic and facilitated the convergence of various opinions, the participants' argumentation patterns have improved both quantitatively and qualitatively. Meanwhile, the inclusion of an actual experiment has not influence their argumentation, while the observation of experimental data has been used as the core evidence according to the character of the problem. Based on the study's result, we suggest practical implications for developing argumentation tasks for science teachers in more varying contexts.