• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.124-135
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to find the relationship between elementary school teachers' beliefs of inquiry and science performance assessment. To collect data for analyzing elementary school teachers' beliefs of inquiry and their practice of science performance assessment, the researcher was surveyed with elementary school teachers by open-ended questionnaires and interview. The findings of this study were as follows; First, Most of elementary school teachers beliefs of inquiry was shown as constructivist tendency. This view of inquiry involves watching and doing experiments, and the skills of thinking processes, in which learners make their own interpretations rather than merely acquiring preexisting knowledge structures. Second, for content knowledge, participants' preception about the target of science performance assessment involved assessing application of science knowledge rather than basic level of substantive knowledge. For inquiry process, participants' preception about the target of science performance assessment involved assessing the lower level of inquiry rather than the higher level of inquiry. Most of participants was measured using a paper and pencil test for the actual evaluation methods due to the ease and objectivity of the assessment, the lack of understanding how to perform the performance evaluation process and method. Especially, participants who recognize that the higher level of inquiry was used performance and informal mode of assessing.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.239-245
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• 2003

The primary purpose of the study was to determine the appropriateness o the inquiry processes and its activities as described in Science 8's which were written according to the 7th National Science Curriculum. It was found that the basic processes were well reflected on the textbooks analyzed for the research. However, only a few integrated processes and the inquiry activities could be read on the same textbooks. Furthermore, a large majority of the inquiry processes and activities were not agreed with what the tasks and titles say. Especially, the none of as many as 216 experiments were not coincided with their titles' intentions. Also suggested in the paper were the implications of the results for inquiry-based science education in the Korean middle schools.

• 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 of Information Education
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.171-182
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• 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 Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.152-161
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to diagnose difficulties and problems that the preservice teachers experience when teaching inquiry-based classes in elementary science and to improve their professionalism through prescriptive instruction consulting utilizing PDRE (preparation, diagnosis, reflective implementation, evaluation) model. The result of this study was as follows. First, preservice teachers considered themselves to be lack of scientific knowledge, but this study confirmed that the application of instruction consulting improved their understandings in scientific concepts and principles and corrected their misconceptions. Second, preservice teachers experienced difficulties in variables that might influence the results of experiments, cautions for the experiments and unexpected results of experiments, and this consulting allowed them to gain instruction ability to cope with such circumstances and solve problems effectively. Third, preservice teachers experienced difficulties in applying instructional model into their classes and preparing lesson plans, but consulting actually made limited but positive changes in their abilities. However, from a longer-term perspective, quantitative increase in their teaching opportunities, the development and distribution of example manuals, and the utilization of various class materials provided by the assistant centers for teaching and learning should be achieved side by side.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.197-206
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to research pre-service chemistry teachers' inquiry ability and perception on inquiry by analyzing their argument structure. Nine graduating senior students have participated in this study. They have experimented with mass change during state change, which is included in 7th grade science textbook. We have analyzed pre-service teachers' experimental reports using Toulmin's argument model. Also, we have researched their views on science and experiments through questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. As results show, various factors have affected pre-services' argument structures; lack of science knowledge and inquiry ability, belief about error, and additive data. This study shows that pre-service teachers' inquiry abilities is insufficient, and it is necessary to review rearrangement of pre-service science teacher curriculum in order to offer inquiry experiments in teacher education program.

• 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.282-295
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• 1993

This study was accomplished to survey of current situation and management of science education in the special classroom(school) managed by firm. The status of management and the evalution of the scientific inquiry ability were taken on workers attending 17 Special Classes and 9 Special Schools located in Taegu City and Kyungpuk Province. As a responses, most students chose the subject "Science"as an option within their limited 8 units credits. About 88.5% of the students were female. About 78.3% of the classes/schools were conducted in the evening only. About 59.4% of teaching staffs were prevailed with female in these classes, and most of them were young, naive, and unexperienced with their major in chemistry and physics. Insufficient facilities and equipments, crowded classes, understaffed instructors, and inappropriated text materials. etc., were reasons for the students not receiving maximum benefit from these classes and schools. In order to evaluate of scientific inquiry ability, 25 items were constructed and administered to 250 students. The processes of scientific inquiry were classified into 5 categories(category I : establishing a subjects, category II : planning a experiments, category III : conducting a experiments. category IV : interpreting a result of experiments, category V : formulating generalization). As the result obtained from the achivement test analysis, the scores for all the students were significantly low, and the scores for girls were higher than those for boys. The results of test in the selected students showed that inquiry abilities in the category I, II and V were higher than those in category III and IV.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.986-997
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• 2011

In this study, we developed analogical experimental activities to foster scientific creativity in inquiry learning and applied them to 7th grade science-gifted students. The influences of inquiry learning-based analogical experiments were investigated with respect to the experimental design processes. We classified the patterns of experimental design processes by creative thinking processes and analyzed performance levels by the elements of experimental design processes. The students' experimental design processes were categorized into three kinds of patterns such as reinitiated motion, backward-divergent motion and stationary motion. Those belonging to the reinitiated motion performed precise experimental design from new perspectives by identifying the mapping in depth and considering the elements of experimental design processes. In the case of the backward-divergent motion, they shifted their positions to new directions, but the concreteness of experimental design was insufficient due to the lack of mapping or considering the elements. In the type of stationary motion, maintaining their previous positions, they showed less performance of experimental design without considering the elements sufficiently. Educational implication of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.538-552
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• 2022

This study attempted to understand the characteristics of pedagogic activities performed by pre-service elementary school teachers. To this end, it applied Algodoo simulations to analyze the actions of students and obtain educational implications for optical learning. The study's participants comprised 79 first-year students enrolled in a teacher training college. Their activities could be classified as representation reproductions, verification experiments, and inquiry experiments. Students who performed representation reproduction exercises replicated renowned and authoritative exemplars, apprehending and demonstrating their principal features through simulations. Students performing verification experiments attempted to validate previously learned optical concepts by reviewing the relevant theoretical contexts. Such students primarily conducted simple experiments. Students accomplishing inquiry experiments used simulations to explore phenomena they did not know. Some of them even investigated optical phenomena beyond the domain of general physics. The above results confirmed that free optical experiments performed using Algodoo can effectively denote starting points for learners to engage in activities at varying levels. Additionally, students require assistance from instructors in addressing queries about the application of the principles and models related to optics. This study suggests ways in which instructors should help students at each level of activity. Additionally, the paper presents examples of varying levels of inquiry-related activities available on Algodoo. It also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of performing inquiry-based activities on Algodoo and suggests ways of enhancing the learning achieved through this platform.