• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.3
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• pp.271-281
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• 2011

The environmental education is based on the assumption that accurate knowledge and attitude could be linked to real action, but those have no effect on changing the behavior. To effect the change in behavior, we need to consider the reflective thinking which can make people change their behavior. The strategies to accelerate the reflective thinking are five steps of the reflective thinking process and the interaction through the discussion of students. And also, it is more proper if the contents are based on the real experiences of the students. Thus, this study tried to know whether the improvement of reflective thinking was able to affect to the environmental behavior. The environment education program was applied to the 60 elementary school 6th grade students in Gyeonggi-do and the survey methods were presented in the general experimental curriculum. To study 6th subjects (energy, harmful chemical material, heavy metal and agricultural chemicals, food additive, environmental friendly consumption, and recycle) was developed. This study shows the effect of the program on the environment knowledge, the environment behavior, the level of reflective-thinking and communication ability.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.344-364
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• 2021

The study explored how two elementary school teachers perceived computational thinking, reflected them into curriculum revision, and taught them in the classroom during longitudinal professional developed program (PDP) for nine months. Computational thinking is a new direction in educational policy-making including science education; therefore we planned to investigate participating teachers' perception of computational thinking to provide their fundamental understandings. Nine meetings, lasting about two hours each, were held with the participating teachers and they developed 11 lesson plans for one unit each, as they formed new understandings about computational thinking. Data were collected through PDP program while two teachers started perceiving computational thinking, revising their curriculum, and implementing it into their class for nine months. The results were as follows; first, elementary school teachers' perception of computational thinking was that the definition of scientific literacy as the purpose of science education was extended, i.e., it refers to scientific literacy to prepare students to be creative problem solvers. Second, STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics) lessons were divided into two stages; concept formation stage where scientific thinking is emphasized, and concept application, where computational thinking is emphasized. Thirdly, computational thinking is a cognitive thinking process, and ICT (informational and communications technology) is a functional tool. Fourth, computational thinking components appear repeatedly and may not be sequential. Finally, STEAM education can be improved by utilizing computational thinking. Based on this study, we imply that STEAM education can be activated by computational thinking when teachers are equipped with competencies of understanding and implementing computational thinking within the systematic PDPs, which is very essential for newly policies.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.163-178
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• 1997

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of categorizing activities in lessons on improving critical thinking to meet energy environment issues in every day situation, supposing that there are not only scientific concepts but also critical thinking ability in scientific literacy to meet social controversies related with science intelligently. Categorizing Activity Program was developed and applied to the 10th grades(n=51) in Seoul for about one month. The program was consisted of two domains. They studied science concepts of various aspects of science, technology and society related with energy and environment in the first and second domain repectively, in the while, two critical tasks which include articles from newspapers and magazines were assigned to them for the development and evaluation of critical thinking abilities. The scores of critical thinking ability, the cognitive element, and critical thinking inclination, the affective element, were increased meaningfully(p<.05). In conclusion, categorizing activity as a strategy of concept attainment was effective in improving critical thinking for seeing various aspects with various view points needed in controversial issues related with energy and environment.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.604-616
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to analyze the development of the compensational thinking by the compensation activities of 'Thinking Science' program. The 138 students were sampled in elementary schools and were divided into two groups, the experimental group of 74 students and the control group of 64 students. Both the compensation activities of the 'Thinking Science' program and a regular science curriculum were implemented to the experimental group, while only a regular science curriculum to the control group. Both experimental and control group were pre-tested with Science Reasoning Task II and compensational thinking test I and were post-tested with compensational thinking test II. This study revealed that the types of strategies used in compensation problem solving were categorized as illogical explanation, rule automation, proportionality, explanation in qualitative terms, additive quantification, inverse proportionality and were related to the context of the items. It was found that compensation activities of the 'Thinking Science' program were effective on the development of the compensational thinking.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.977-986
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to investigate the general transfer effects of Thinking Science program on the problem solving with compensational reasoning of the elementary school students. For this study, 156 5th grade and 138 6th grade students were selected from four elementary schools. The students were tested with SRT(Science Reasoning Task) and compensational reasoning task. Statistically significant gains on the development of compensational reasoning were shown by the experimental group implemented with Thinking Science activities compared to the group implemented with compensation activity only. The achievement of the experimental group was higher than that of the compensation activity group in solving problem with compensational reasoning, specially for the boys and students in both the mature concrete and the concrete generalization stage. The results of this study implied that implementation of Thinking Science program related to several formal reasoning were effective for the development of reasoning ability as a general-transfer.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.415-434
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• 2020

The purpose of this study was to explore if, what kinds of, how much computational thinking (CT after this) practices could be included in STEAM programs, and what kinds of CT practices could be improved to make STEAM revitalized. The CT analyzing tool with operational definitions and its examples in science education was modified and employed for 5 science-focused and 5 engineering-focused STEAM programs. There was no discerning pattern of CT practices uses between science and engineering STEAM programs but CT practices were displayed depending on their topics. The patterns of CT practices uses from each STEAM program could be used to describe what CT practices were more explored, weakly exposed, or missing. On the basis of these prescription of CT practices from each STEAM program, the researchers could develop the weakly exposed or missing CT practices to be improved for the rich experience in CT practices during STEAM programs.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.422-431
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• 2002

Because of the gap between the cognitive levels of the students and the curricular materials for the students to understand, the secondary school students feel science difficult and they get to avoid science as they go up to the higher grade. So it is absolutely needed to take the active measures to improve the cognitive development of the students through some special programs stimulating their cognitive process. This study investigated the effects of thinking science activity program devised for cognitive acceleration of the students. After implementing thinking science program to 181 7th grade students, the effectiveness of this program was examined through the analysis of covariance of both experimental and control groups. The result of the study showed that the cognitive level of the students in experiment group dealt with thinking science program was more accelerated than that of the students in control group who were just taught regular science curriculum. Especially, the effect was clear to the students in stages 1 and 2B. It was also found that the percentage of the students who promoted from concrete operational stage to formal operational stage was higher in experimental group than in control group. The results of the study implied that cognitive acceleration of the students might be possible through the specially designed materials such as thinking science program.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.69-92
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• 1997

The purpose of the study was to evaluate the effects of the enrichment program for the gifted on gifted childrens development of the logical thinking and science process skills. The enrichment program consists of 200 enrichment courses in language arts, mathematics, sciences, social sciences and thinking for children at the age of 30 months to Grade 8. Enrichment programs are characterized as process-oriented, student-choice available, activities-oriented, open-ended, and interdisciplined. Subjects were 123 gifted children from Grade 1 to 3 at the Korean Academy of Gifted Education (KAGE), whose IQ scores were above 130 at their entry point to KAGE. Children were divided into two groups depending the duration of the program participation. Older Group participated in the program for longer than 13 months, while Newer Group did for shorter than 12 months. Mean of IQs of the two groups were not significantly different. They were tested on Logical Thinking Test and Integrated Process Skills Test revised by KEDI into Korean version in 1991. Descriptive statistics were calculated and group differences were analyzed with t-test, and scheffe test. The main finding were as follows: There were not significant differences between gender. Children in higher grades showed higher level of development. Older groups showed significantly higher level of logical thinking level of development. Older group showed significantly higher level of logical thinking and process skills than the Newer group inspite of the similar IQ levels to each other. The longer the gifted child participate in the enrichment program, the higher the development of childrens thinking skills.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.47 no.2
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• pp.165-174
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• 2003

The purposes of this study were to investigate the correlation between the cognitive level and the probabilistic thinking level and to analyze the effects of the probability activities in Thinking Science (TS) program on the development of probabilistic thinking. The 219 7th grade students were sampled in the middle school and were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The probability activities in TS program were implemented to the experimental group, while only normal curriculum was conducted in the control group. The results of this study showed that most of 7th grade students were in the concrete operational stage and used both subjective and quantitative strategy simultaneously in probability problem solving. It was also found that the higher the cognitive level of the students, the higher the probabilistic thinking level of them. The sample space and the probability of an event in the constructs of probability were first developed as compared to the probability comparisons and the conditional probability. The probability activities encouraged the students to use quantitative strategy in probability problem solving and to recognize probability of an event. Especially, the effectiveness was relatively higher for the students in the mid concrete operational stage than those in any other stage.

• Journal of Fisheries and Marine Sciences Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.528-542
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• 2012

In this study, we designed and applied the learning program of various algorithms about computer science, which were based on computational thinking, to prospective elementary school teachers who were non-majors of this field. While they were learning, they could understand two fundamental functions of computational thinking: abstraction and automation. This learning program made them change their perceptions about computer science positively. They had been interested in learning algorithms and computer science itself, and they felt confident about teaching it.