• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.29 no.7
• /
• pp.626-639
• /
• 2008

To present the suggestions for improvement in science textbooks of high school, scientific inquiry activities in geology of earth science textbooks of Korea and the U.S. were assessed in the areas of the contents, processes and contexts. Regarding the contents of inquiry activities, Korean textbooks contain more number of inquiry activities (5.8 per section) than the U.S. curriculums (4 per section). Inquiry activities of Korean textbooks mostly fall on the interpretation of diagrams and graphs whereas those of the U.S. textbooks more hands-on experiment, data transformation and self designing. As for the number of inquiry process skills per inquiry activity, Korean curriculums contain an average of 1.8 whereas the American ones 3. It suggests that the U.S. textbooks require more integrated process skills than the Korean earth science curriculums. In the process skills of all textbooks studied, the highest frequent elements were inferring and data interpretation; the percentage of these two elements was an average of 73.3% in Korean textbooks and 46.2% in the U.S. This suggests that the Korean textbooks emphasize the process skill on particular area, and uneven distribution of elements of process skills may hinder the development of integration ability of students. particularly in the integrated process skills, the U.S. textbooks presented all 7 elements, while Korean ones presented only 2 to 4 elements, indicating that the Korean textbooks may have weak points in providing various inquiry activities for students compared to the American textbooks. In inquiry context analysis, Korean curriculums provide simplistic inquiry contexts and low applicability to real life whereas the U.S. curriculums provide more integrated inquiry contexts and high applicability to real life.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.24 no.4
• /
• pp.731-747
• /
• 2004

The scientific inquiry enterprise consists of formulating hypotheses, testing hypotheses, evaluating evidence, and revising hypothesis. Scientific inquiry in the science classrooms requires students' background experience and knowledge with the phenomenon in order to ask appropriate questions, identify and define variables operationally, formulate hypotheses, and design clear and complete experiment. The ability to test hypotheses has been postulated to play a central role in cognitive processes. The purpose of this study was to analyze what the change of the quantity and quality of the hypothesis, the rejecting or accepting of the hypothesis, and the use results in the repetitional hypothesis activity experiments. To examine the problems, this study analyzed 5 classes which were designed and administered to 16 students of the 7th grade. The results of this study showed that students preferred the engineering method to scientific method and the quality of a second hypothesis got low. The quality of the hypothesis came to be higher through a repetitional hypothesis and the number of hypothesis was reduced. The results of the experiments did not play central roles in revising hypotheses and accepting or rejecting hypothesis.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.24 no.6
• /
• pp.1245-1255
• /
• 2004

The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable evaluating instrument for elementary school fifth and sixth graders. The instrument is developed through R&D procedure, which includes two checks of science specialist and two field trials of the instrument. Evaluating items are content-free for each science inquiry skill. Each science inquiry element is based on SAPA and the 7th curriculum. This study has selected 10 science inquiry skills(observing, classifying, measuring, predicting, inferring, recognizing of a problem, controlling variables, interpreting data, drawing a conclusion, designing an experiment), formulated a clear definition of the elements of science inquiry skills, and established the objectives of evaluation. The content areas are divided into three categories, material and energy, life and environment, and the earth and circulation. Each category contains 10 items. So the instrument consists of 30 items. The content validity of items, objectivity of the scoring keys, and clarity of the items has been checked twice by specialists in science education. At the same time, two field trials were performed to produce the reliability of the instruments, discrimination index, and item difficulty index. The instrument has the content validity is 91.6%, reliability 0.79, objectivity 93.3%, discrimination index 0.30, and item difficulty index 66.1%.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.43-60
• /
• 2006

This study mainly intended to investigate the relation between scientific inquiry and several entrance exam results of the gifted in earth science gifted program. The scientific inquiry was tested with their experiment designs. Entrance exams included achievement scores, creativity scores, problem solving, and oral test of high ability students. Student entrance scores were used to judge the level of students' competency in science. Recently students' ability of 'doing science' as measured by their designing experiments has been highly appreciated as a criteria of scientifically gifted students. One of the well known tests was Diet Cola Test developed by Fowler(1990). We used it as a test to figure out students' experiment design ability. We selected 22 gifted students in earth science. We compared their entrance test scores and Diet Cola Test results. Based on the comparison results we proposed several guideline of science education program for high ability students.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.33 no.2
• /
• pp.184-192
• /
• 2009

Understanding about the Nature of Science (NOS) is element of scientific literacy. Its importance is emphasized, especially understanding about NOS was presented as goal of science education on the fifth curriculum in Korea. Attempt of teaching NOS has been continuous in school, that was limited by method of using History of Science. Except method of using History of Science, Experimenting is appropriate for method of teaching NOS. We expected that is effective to apply reflective approach method for understanding the NOS and composite lesson to emphasize reflection and discussion to general experiment class in the school. We applied experiment class to emphasize reflection and discussion to second grade students in the middle school and researched whether positive reflection and discussion is helpful understanding the NOS in science experiment class or not, through questionnaire about NOS and analysis of observation and interview. As a result, experiment class to emphasize reflection and discussion was effective for scientific inquiry skills and sociality of scientific inquiry, particularly for relation observation with deduction and possibility of variable analysis to experiment result. Therefore, experiment class to emphasize reflection and discussion is effective for understanding the NOS.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.42 no.3
• /
• pp.308-321
• /
• 2018

The purpose of the study is to develop a questionnaire that examines unskeptical attitudes in scientific inquiry context. The questionnaire items were developed through literature research, expert review, and statistical analyses for validity and the differences in scores were identified by gender and tracks. A total of 363 high school students participated in the study. To explore the validity evidence of items, the Rasch analysis and the reliability of internal consistency were performed, and the two-way ANOVA was performed to compare the scores of the unskeptical attitudes between gender and academic track. Self-reporting and Likert-scaling 23 items were developed to measure unskeptical attitudes in scientific inquiry context. The items were developed in the sub-domain of scientific inquiry: 'questioning and hypothesis generating,' 'experiment designing,' and 'explaining and interpreting.' Second, the validity and reliability of the unskeptical were identified in a rigorous method. The validity of items were identified by multi-dimensional partial score model analysis through the Rasch model, and all 23 items were found to be fit to model. Various reliability evidences were also found to be appropriate. It was found that there were no significant differences of unskeptical attitude score between the gender and academic track except one comparison. The developed questionnaire could be used to check an unskeptical attitude in the course of scientific inquiry and to compare the effects of scientific inquiry classes.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.29 no.1
• /
• pp.93-101
• /
• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate the internal factors whether teachers execute experiments at the science classes in the elementary school. Semi-structured in-depth interviews were performed with 9 elementary school teachers who have served for more than three years. In-depth interviews were performed individually and all the interviews were recorded. Data sources were analyzed by grounded theory. The results were as follows: The internal factors that they did experiments at the science classes were science teaching faiths in experiment, self confidence in experiment, interest in science. and the internal factors that they did not experiment at the science classes were lack of science content knowledge, lack of science education knowledge, memory of failure at experiment, and so on. The investigation results imply inquiry activities should be more strengthened in elementary teacher education program and pre-service teacher curriculum. And it needs to give a materials of receiving information and guidance detailed about the experiments.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.36 no.1
• /
• pp.113-123
• /
• 2016

The purpose of this study is to understand the elementary student's growth and its implications from the students' experience participating in the science fair by phenomenological study. The results are as follows. First, the students have various experiences. They acquire scientific knowledge and inquiry skills by conducting in-depth experiments, visiting several places, and interviewing experts. They have some experience in writing experiment journals to record the inquiry process in their own language, and presenting their results in public. Second, the students suffer several difficulties while preparing for the science fair. They have some difficulties when the results were not consistent with the hypothesis, or they had to repeat the experiment over and over. They feel burdened in writing the experiment journal. They had a few time to meet friends or for hobbies. Third, the students improve scientific attitude through the science fair, and they receive a positive effect on the affective side. They developed scientific interest, curiosity, cooperation, etc. And they also gained a sense of accomplishment, confidence, friendship, good relationship with teachers, career interest, etc. This study finds out that students participating in the science fair have a lot of experience that cannot be done easily in a normal science class. Even though students confront some difficulties in the inquiry process, they make good progression and feel accomplished. So the science fair is valuable experience for them.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.33 no.1
• /
• pp.44-55
• /
• 2009

The research is aimed at investigating the development and application of high school biology classes utilizing discourse-typed inquiry learning program fitted with POE, and the corresponding effect on student's academic achievement and attitude toward science. 4 classes of 11th graders in a general high school located in Busan were selected as subjects. Biology I, 'Circulation' unit was lectured for 4 weeks (6 classes), and the experimental group underwent classes utilizing discourse-typed inquiry learning program fitted with POE. The control group was taught identical major learning contents, but based on the learning objectives and research activities provided by Biology I textbook. As a result of application, first, the discourse-typed inquiry learning program fitted with POE exhibited positive consequences of linking previously acquired knowledge and the new learning attained through experiments, as well as not only improving the students' problem solving capacity through diverging questions from the teachers to drive the students' higher-level contemplation, but also enhancing student academic achievement by assisting their logical thinking. Second, POE-fitted discourse-typed inquiry learning program rendered presupposing session of the experiment that resulted in drawing learners' attention in advance, and incited active participation in the learning process through solving the contradiction between what was actually observed and what was expected, which eventually proved to lay out positive impact on students' attitude toward science.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.66 no.2
• /
• pp.150-162
• /
• 2022

In this study, we investigated pre-service science teachers' NOS-PCK by analyzing their NOS lesson planning and demonstration. Four pre-service science teachers participated in the study. They planned and demonstrated NOS lessons in the context of 'Science Inquiry Experiment' developed under the 2015 Revised National Curriculum. Their lessons were observed. All of the teaching-learning materials were collected, and semi-structured interviews were also conducted. The analyses of the result revealed that pre-service teachers mainly referred to the curriculum and textbooks when selecting the NOS learning objectives. However, they felt difficulty because the curriculum and textbooks did not clearly present the NOS to be dealt. Although all of them took explicit approaches, there were not many open and divergent reflective approaches. In addition, they expected that high school students would consider scientific knowledge absolute and would have negative perceptions of NOS lessons. They rarely assessed students' NOS learning, and were reluctant to assess. Finally, most of them had a negative perception that learning NOS is not necessary for all students. On the bases of the results, educational implications for improving the expertise of pre-service science teachers in NOS lessons were discussed.