• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.269-277
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• 2016

Recently, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of cases that have formed and operated teachers' learning communities through cross-curricular consulting at the school level. The purpose of this study is to explore cross-curricular instructional consulting as an activity of teachers' learning communities at the school level, and investigate the effect of cross-curricular instructional consulting on middle school science teaching. We analyzed features and limitations of cross-curricular instructional consulting revealed in three case studies in middle school, including open classes and instructional consulting sessions, and conducted additional instructional consulting on the same videotaped science classes with science experts from outside. According to the results, science inquiry experiments are often replaced with text reading and interpreting, students' misconceptions and exact scientific representations are ignored, and the goal setting as well as class coverage has been questionable and disputable in science classes resulted from cross-curricular instructional consulting. Discussed in the conclusion are the necessity of cross-curricular instructional consulting in middle school, and ways to overcome limitations of the method of cross-curricular instructional consulting, including alternatives to a praise-only policy in cross-curricular instructional consulting, ways to use cross-curricular instructional consulting without compromising the subject's essence, and ways to improve the undue authority of consultants.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.8
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• pp.955-963
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• 2008

This study was conducted to assess any change in students' views on the nature of science (NOS) after lessons through the activities of model construction and pattern identification. The instrument used to examine NOS views was the Views of Nature of Science questionnaire (VNOS). Four students' responses on VNOS before and after instruction were analyzed. The two levels of their views, novice and expert, were judged by the authors based on criteria set by several science educators. The instruction consisted of six hours of the so-called black box and cube activities developed for model construction and pattern identification, respectively. Students' views were at the novice level in definition of scientific theory, tentativeness of scientific knowledge, difference of hypotheses, theories and laws, model construction, and creativity and imagination in experiments and investigations. Students' views on NOS knowledge such as model and theory have improved for two students after instruction. The improvement seemed to be due to an explicit approach using the activities of model construction and pattern identification. The factors of changes and no-changes of views on NOS were identified and discussed in terms of improvement of the views.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.6
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• pp.997-1006
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• 2015

Perception of the experiment is one of the most important factors of students' understanding of scientific inquiry and the nature of science. This study examined the perception of middle and high school students of the meaning of 'experiment' in the biological sciences. Semantic network analysis (SNA) was especially used to visualize students' perception structure in this study. One hundred and ninety middle school students and 200 high school students participated in this study. Students responded to two questions on the meaning of 'experiment' in science and biology. This study constructed four semantic networks based on the collected response. As a result, middle school students about the 'experiment' in science are 'we', 'direct', 'principle' of such words was aware of the experiments from the center to the active side. The high school students' 'theory', 'true', 'information' were recognized as an experiment that explores the process of creating a knowledge center including the word. In addition, middle school students relative to 'experiment' of the creature around the 'dissection', 'body', high school students were recognized as 'life', 'observation' observation activities dealing with the living organisms and recognized as a core. The results of this study will be used as important evidence in the future to map out an experiment in biological science curriculum.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.47-63
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed the PCK components in the materials units of the third and fourth grades of the Korean government-authorized teacher's guides for elementary school, developed in the 2015 revised national curriculum. The results showed that the PCK components were presented in a relatively balanced manner compared to the teacher's guides for middle school. Knowledge of the subject matter accounted for the highest proportion, and knowledge of instructional strategies in science accounted for a higher proportion than knowledge of the science curriculum. The knowledge of assessment in science showed the greatest deviation among publishers, and knowledge of students tended to show the lowest. By subcomponents, experiments and inquiries had a higher proportion than concepts and theories. The ratio of horizontal articulation was lower than that of vertical articulation or lesson objectives, and lesson objectives were presented in various ways, such as in core competencies and achievement standards for science. As questioning was emphasized, teaching strategies and questioning appeared at a similar rate. Motivation and interest, misconceptions were linked to teaching strategies and questioning. In some cases, assessment items and assessment criteria were presented at each level, and various PCK components were linked to these two components. Components with relatively large differences among publishers were supplementary or in-depth concepts, inquiry in textbooks, instruction sequence and method, subject-specific strategies, and assessment items. From the results, the implications for the development of teacher's guides were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.325-340
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• 2022

This study attempts to analyze the causes of low affective achievement of elementary, middle, and high school students in Korea in science. To this end, a total of 27 students, three to four students per grade, were interviewed by grade from the fourth grade of elementary school to the first grade of high school, and a total of nine teachers were interviewed by school level. In the interview, related questions were asked in five sub-areas of the 'Indicators of Positive Experiences about Science': 'Science Academic Emotion', 'Science-Related Self-Concept', 'Science Learning Motivation', 'Science-Related Career Aspiration', and 'Science-Related Attitude'. Interview contents were recorded, transcribed, and categorized. As a result of examining the causes of low science academic emotion, it was found that students experienced negative emotions when experiments are not carried out properly, scientific theories and terms are difficult, and recording the inquiry results is burdensome. In addition, students responded that science-related self-concept changed negatively due to poor science grades, difficult scientific terms, and a large amount of learning. The reasons for the decline in science learning motivation were the lack of awareness of relationship between science class content and daily life, difficulty in science class content, poor science grades, and lack of relevance to one's interest or career path. The main reason for the decline in science-related career aspirations was that they feel their career path was not related to science, and due to poor science performance. Science-related attitudes changed negatively due to difficulties in science classes or negative feelings about science classes, and high school students recognized the ambivalence of science on society. Based on the results of the interview, support for experiments and basic science education, improvement of elementary school supplementary textbook 'experiment & observation', development of teaching and learning materials, and provision of science-related career information were proposed.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.3
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• pp.525-537
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate science integrated process skill of the students in science education center for the gifted. In order to do this, 'free-response test for the assessment of science process skills' developed by Yu-Hyang Kim(2013) was administered to 102 students(15 in elementary school science class, 58 in middle school science class I, and 29 in middle school science class II) who attend the program of science education center for the gifted in C university. The assessment tool measured 9 skills ; formulating inquiry questions, recognizing variables, formulating hypotheses, designing experiment, transforming data, interpreting data, drawing conclusions, formulating generalizations, and evaluating the designed experiments. As a result, the students in science education center for the gifted had relatively high scores in the area of 'formulating hypotheses' and 'recognizing variables', but they had relatively low scores in the area of 'transforming data', 'interpreting data', and 'evaluating the designed experiments'. The 2 items' percentage of correct answers were below 40% ; one is about a drawing a line graph in 'transforming data', and the other requires finding improvements of the experimental design in 'evaluation'. There was no significant difference between boys' scores and girls's one, and between the scores of students in the field of biology and those of students in the other fields(physics, chemistry, and earth science) in science integrated process skills. And there was significant difference according to the periods receiving the gifted education in 'formulating generalizations'. The teaching and learning has to focus on improving science integrated process skills in the program of science education center for the gifted and teaching and learning materials needs to be developed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.2
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• pp.253-264
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• 2022

The purpose of this study is to examine the practice of scientists from the perspective of Ian Hacking's 'creation of phenomena'. Scientific phenomena, according to Hacking, are regular and do not exist in nature without the intervention of scientists or experimental tools. This study tries to derive scientific educational meaning by analyzing the thoughts and episodes of the 'Sontanda (inter-individual variability)' phenomenon experienced by four life scientists. The Sontanda phenomenon is a common term used by scientists to describe phenomena in which findings do not appear consistently even when studies are carried out using the same experimental procedure and materials. The following four educational implications were discovered as a result of the research. First, we confirmed the importance of embodied knowledge, or non-verbal knowledge, which solves issues by making appropriate judgments and reactions at all times, rather than simply becoming accustomed to the experimental method. This argues that propositional knowledge and non-verbal knowledge should be handled equally in order to provide students with a practical scientific inquiry. Second, we tried to reconsider the picture of the experiment. The phenomenon revealed in the interviews of scientists is rare, and it takes a long time to stabilize the phenomenon. On the other hand, the image of school experiments is always positive and consistent, necessitating a shift in perspective. Third, the precise meaning of scientific practice could be confirmed. This study confirms that scientists use their knowledge effectively in line with the circumstances, and we examined strategies to apply scientific practice to school instruction based on this. Finally, by provoking uncertainty, the Sontanda phenomena may give students with an opportunity to engage in meaningful scientific involvement. By breaking away from the cookbook experiment, this study expects school experimental education to help in efforts to experience scientific practice.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.50-61
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to analysis eye tracking for high school students' learning styles in the process of solving in the behavioral domains of the College Scholastic Ability Test on Earth Science I. The subjects of this study were 50 students from two classes out of 4 classes in E high school in Chungcheong province. Among them, we conducted experiments by randomly sampling 2 students of each type of learning based on the criteria that they had not encountered the problem of Earth Science I from the past two years. The findings indicate that the item correctness rate of divergers, assimilators, convergers, and accommodators were higher in the knowledge domain, application domain, knowledge-understanding domain, and understanding domain. This confirms that there is a difference among the four learning styles in the level of achievement according to the behavioral areas of the assessment questions. The latter finding was that the high eye-share of AOI 2 appeared higher than AOI 1, 3, 4 in the course of solving the problems. This is because the four types of learners pay more careful attention to the AOI 2 area, which is the cue-or-information area of problem solving, that is, the Table, Figure, and Graph area. Therefore, in order to secure the fairness and objectivity of the selection, it is necessary that an equal number of questions of each behavioral domain be selected on the Earth Science I Test of the College Scholastic Ability Test in general. Besides, it seems to be necessary that the knowledge, understanding, application, and the behavior area of the inquiry be highly correlated with the AOI 2 area in development of test questions.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.47 no.3
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• pp.238-250
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• 2023

This study aims to explore the effect of an appropriate technology program related to water acquisition and purification on scientific attitudes and creative problem-solving skills in elementary school students. Thus, this study developed a learning program related to the appropriate technology composed of 8 sessions, and some were for exploring water acquisition-related scientific principles and the appropriated technology of Warka Tower, and the others were for conducting water purification-related inquiry experiments, such as Life Straw and Drinkable Book, and the last two sessions were for presenting practical tasks through creative ideas and designs and carrying out the relevant campaign activities. For research subjects, this study selected 51 students from two sixth-grade classes, and after modifying the scientific attitude questionnaire and the creative problem-solving skill questionnaire fit for the environment and situation, this study conducted a paired-sample t-test by applying both the questionnaires before and after this program. In addition, while looking into the correlation between scientific attitudes and creative problem-solving skills, based on the post-test results, this study examined relationships between sub-domains perceived by the students after this program was applied. The results can be summarized as below. Out of all the scientific attitudes, curiosity, openness, cooperation, and creativity showed statistically significant results with an increase in the average value when their overall averages of the pre-test were compared with those of the post-test. With creative problem-solving skills, the domain of mastering a specific area and the domain of divergent thinking showed statistically significant results. The correlation analysis results showed that cooperation out of the scientific attitudes had a significant correlation with all the domains of creative problem-solving skills, especially showing the highest correlation coefficient with such sub-domains as critical and logical thinking. All the four domains of creative problem-solving skills showed a number of significant correlations with the sub-domains of scientific attitudes. Through the research results above, this study has several implications on how and where to apply such appropriate technology-related topics in the future and various responses from students.