• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.401-413
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• 2010

This study analyzed the kinds and frequencies of descriptors in 154 articles in ERIC data base on the 4th day of January in 2010. The titles of the articles includes the words, 'scientific literacy'. As each descriptor is constituted of two words and over, in this study the first word in the descriptor was defined as 'restrictive word' and the rest word(s) as 'target word(s)'. The results are as follows. First, the descriptors which show high frequencies of target words are the traditionally important themes of scientific literacy education. Target words which show relatively high frequency are 'education', 'literacy', 'instruction' and 'countries'. Low frequency word is 'curriculum', which has various restrictive words and represents wide differentiation. Second, among the descriptors which show low frequencies of target words, relatively high frequency descriptors are '(and)society', 'change', 'secondary education', 'concepts', and 'biology', which have been given more attention in scientific literacy research than the rest descriptors. Third, the number of the descriptors that shows largely distributed pattern A, which happens over 15 years continuously, is over the half of all analyzed descriptors, which shows that they have been the major objectives in researches about scientific literacy. Most descriptors of pattern A shows normal distribution of frequency or the trends of increasing frequency as the time is nearer. Fourth, The descriptors are divided into four groups according to the time span. Each research trends are as follows. In later 80s, the research which emphasizes the importance of the sociality and technology in all level school science curriculum. In later 90s the research for educational change of inquiry-centered science curriculum which considers technological literacy in social contexts. In earlier 2000s the research that scientists and science teachers develop science curricula mostly related to scientific principles and thinking in chemistry and biology especially. In later 2000s case studies which relates teaching methods and science process activities to students' attitudes, scientific concepts and curricula.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.487-494
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• 2009

Since the term, 'scientific literacy' was introduced by P. D. Hurd in 1958, it has been used as a term, representing major goals in science education. In Korea, the term 'scientific literacy' was used in the statement of the summative objective of the 2007 science reformed curriculum. But in various educational contexts m which teachers and researchers works, the definition of the term has not been used consistently. This phenomena would be interpreted as showing limits of the term describing the goals of science education. This study examined the historical change in the meaning of the term in purpose of trying to anchor the definition. In this study, the changing period was divided into before introducing the term and after. The after era was divided into the period of confusing and anchoring in the meaning, and the period of expanding the meaning. Especially, after science as intellectual ability was conceptualized in science education communities, the meaning of scientific literacy was partially confused. In current time, as the concepts of language in cognitive science influenced the use of language in science education, the trends of expending the meaning of scientific literacy has been grasped in science education community.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2018

Factors and causal structures of pre-service elementary teachers about the critical thinking and the scientific literacy competency were investigated in this study. The third grade university students and the first grade university students in the metropolitan city participated in this study. The factor analysis method and the structural equation modeling method were used for the data analysis, and the following results were obtained. First, the third grade university students and the first grade university students recognized 'inquisitive thinking' factor and 'reflective thinking' factor as factors of the critical thinking, and 'scientific explanation' factor and 'evidence-based conclusion' factor as factors of the scientific literacy competency respectively. Second, the third grade university students showed more the influence from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'scientific explanation' factor and from 'reflective thinking' factor to 'evidence-based conclusion' factor than the first grade university students.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.40 no.4
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• pp.340-352
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• 2019

The purpose of science education is scientific literacy, which is extended in its meaning in the $21^{st}$ century. Students must be equipped with the skills necessary to solve problems from the community beyond obtaining the knowledge from curiosity, which is called 'computational thinking'. In this paper, the authors tried to define computational thinking in science education from the view of scientific literacy in the $21^{st}$ century; (1) computational thinking is an explicit skill shown in the two steps of abstracting the problems and automating solutions, (2) computational thinking consists of concrete components and practices which are observable and measurable, (3) computational thinking is a catalyst for STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) education, and (4) computational thinking is a cognitive process to be learned. More implication about the necessity of including computational thinking and its emphasis in implementing in science teaching and learning for the envisioned scientific literacy is added.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.64-79
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• 2017

This study was to evaluate the suitability of scientific questions as qualification examination for high school graduation by content validity and item response with three examinees and two preliminary examinees. As a result, scientific questions were concentrated on two units of six units of total, and application appeared to be lacking problem area by 8% compared to understanding and application. Examinees and preliminary examinees chose correct answers most by hap or guess, sometimes by experience or common sense, and the least by scientific concept. In addition, they could chose correct answers by hap or guess because there were words that implied the correct answer in questions and answers, or because they could compared and/or analyzed questions and answers. With these results, two proposals were suggested as follows; (1) scientific questions of qualification examination for high school graduation should measure basic scientific literacy. (2) specific criteria for science literacy in qualification examination for high school graduation should be set.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.1
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• pp.29-36
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• 2023

This study investigates the effects of the operation of science activity program on scientific literacy focusing on science cultural literacy and core competencies for pre-service teachers. 255 pre-service teachers of K University participated, and the effects of the program were examined through a paired-sample t-test with one group pretest-posttest design for science cultural literacy. Only the post-test was conducted on core competency growth perception, and differences in growth perceptions by competency were compared using ANOVA. As a result of the study, the average of pre-service teachers was higher than the pre-test for science culture literacy, and this difference was statistically significant (p<.05). In the core competency growth perception, 70.6% of pre-service teachers reported growth in scientific communication ability, and as a result of the post-hoc test using LSD, it shows statistically significant growth compared to other competencies (p<.05). Through this, it was possible to confirm the educational value of the science activity program as a way to develop pre-service teachers' scientific literacy.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.413-422
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• 2016

There have been many discussions about scientific literacy (SL), which caused many science educators concern for many years. This paper focuses on three aspects about SL. First, there are various opinions, and components or types of SL. Second, it has been pointed out that the reconciliation between curriculum focusing on SL and curriculum focusing on scientific knowledge system is difficult. Third, the level of SL of citizens who learned science in schools is not so high. Related to these aspects, this paper suggests three recommendations. First, the paper suggests three dimensional model of SL and some examples of its application. Second, elementary and middle school focus on SL in their science curriculum and high school focuses on scientific knowledge system in the curriculum for preparing for future jobs. Third, we need to give efforts to lifelong science eduction for citizens' SL as well as school teachings for SL. In the conclusion section, it is described what aspects should be additionally considered for the discussions and recommendations about three aspects of SL.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.553-568
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• 2013

Although many researchers and science educators agree that understanding of the nature of science is essential in order for students to be a scientific literate person, it is not easy to compromise exactly what kind of understanding of the nature of science is required to achieve this goal (Smith & Scharmann, 1999). This study discusses a theoretical background about the nature of science (NOS) including some consensus views of the NOS that several important U.S. educational reform documents and science researchers have presented over the past several decades. Finally, this study proposes an inclusive framework of the nature of science based on the four categories of scientific literacy, which are (1) science as a body of knowledge, (2) science as a way of investigating, (3) science as a way of thinking, and (4) the interaction of science, technology, and society. Each category of the framework includes several statements about the nature of science to describe each theme of the NOS. This framework is comprehensive and inclusive because it is suggested by examining several major U.S. national-level documents and in the publications of science education researchers presented about the nature of science. Significantly, many of the key ideas were added into category (4) and category (3), which indicates that the current literature stresses the relationship among science, technology, and society as well as the work of scientists.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.206-217
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• 2015

The purpose on this study is to identify how effectively experiential learning involving eco-activities make changes in environmental literacy and scientific attitude of elementary students by categorizing those activities into 5 fields of "marine", "rivers", "ecosystem", "climate" and "recycling" and applying those scheme specifically to 5th graders in a elementary school. The conclusion of this study is following. Firstly, after scientific attitude are applied to subjects, a significant disparity was found between experiment group and control group throughout all parts of environmental literacy. In the cognitive category, each specialist concerning his or her own topic was invited to educate the students, and subsequently a positive impact was detected in the category of environmental issue knowledge. In behavioral category, having eco-activities made a significant disparity in all sub-categories of environmental function, active participation, saving activities, recycling activities and so forth. Secondly, experiential learning involving eco-activities made a significant disparity between the two groups in terms of Scientific Attitude, showing effectiveness in all sub-categories except curiosity.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.207-216
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• 2014

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) has been a major component of scientific literacy and an important learning goal in science education (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990, 1993; Millar & Osborne, 1998; National Research Council, 1996, 2013). To achieve this goal, it is necessary to include appropriate views of the nature of science in science curriculum such as a textbook. The aim of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the elementary science textbooks to examine the presentation of the nature of science (NOS) using the four themes of scientific literacy, which are (1) nature of scientific knowledge, (2) nature of scientific inquiry, (3) nature of scientific thinking, and (4) nature of interactions among science, technology, and society (STS). Findings show while $3^{rd}$ and $4^{th}$ grade levels of science textbooks heavily emphasize on the Theme I, nature of scientific knowledge and the Theme II, the nature of scientific inquiry, the upper grade levels such as $5^{th}$ and $6^{th}$ grades of science textbooks are well balanced with the four themes of the nature of science. In addition, most of elementary science textbooks little focus on the Theme IV, nature of interactions among science, technology, and society (STS) among the four themes of the nature of science. It might be a shortcoming because the understanding the nature of interacions among science, technology and society (STS) is one of the key components in order for students to be a scientific literate person.