• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.157-169
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• 2010

Scientific observation has been recognized as one of the fundamental aspects in scientific inquiry. However, more detailed discussions and practical guides for teachers' and students' understanding about the nature of scientific observation have not been conducted. Therefore, based on literature reviews, we described the nature of theory-laden scientific observation as 11 detailed statements. Using theses statements, we investigated science teachers' and students' recognition of each statement. According to results, certain aspects of theory-laden scientific observation were determined as important aspects to be considered for science teachers' in-service programs or for students' learning activities in understanding the nature of science.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.249-260
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• 2010

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of explicit instructions on the nature of science (NOS) on the understanding of science-gifted students. Participants were engaged in 8 explicit NOS instructions spanning 6 months. Data were collected before and after the instructions from 20 science-gifted students using student worksheets, open-ended questionnaires (Views of Nature Of Science, VNOS), and in-depth interviews. The results of this study showed that explicit instructions were helpful in improving the understanding of the tentativeness in science and socially and culturally embedded aspects of science. However, participants not only still possess naive views on the nature of science about the distinction of law and theory and the empirical aspects of science, but also had conflicting views and misconceptions in some areas. The study has implication for development of science-gifted program that the explicit instructions on NOS and science inquiry should be provided concurrently, given the complementary relationship of the two activities.

• Fire Science and Engineering
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.20-30
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• 2001

The science and technology of seismic hazard mitigation are increasingly being shared among scientists and policy makers around the world. Administrative expertise is also being shared. While there is still tremendous unevenness in technical and administrative capacities and resources, a global community of emergency managers is developing and there is a globalization of expertise. Hazards are better understood, tools for risk assessment are improving, techniques for hazard mitigation are being perfected, and communities and states are implementing more comprehensive disaster preparedness, response, and recovery programs. Priorities are also emerging and hazard mitigation has emerged as the priority of choice in North America and Europe. An increasingly important component of hazard mitigation is resilience, in terms of increased capacities for disaster mitigation and recovery at the community and even individual levels. Each year, more is known about the locations and natures of seismic hazards, although there are still unknown and poorly understood fault lines and limited understanding of related disasters such as tsunamis and landslides. More is known about the impact of earthquakes on the built environment, although nature still provides surprises to confound man's best extorts to reduce risk. More is known about human nature and how people respond to uncertain risk and when confronted by certain catastrophe. However, despite the increased understanding of seismic phenomena and how to protect people and property, there is much that needs to be done to reduce the risk, particularly in major metropolitan areas.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.184-192
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• 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.199-208
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• 2015

An enhanced understanding of the nature of scientific knowledge-what counts as a scientific argument and how scientists justify their claims with evidence-has been central in Korean science instruction. However, despite its importance, scholars are generally concerned about the difficulty of both addressing and improving students' epistemic understanding, especially for students of a young age. This study investigated Korean middle school students' epistemic ideas about claim, data, evidence, and argument when they engage in reading both text-based and data-inscription arguments. Compared to previous studies, Korean middle school students show a sophisticated understanding of the role of claim and evidence. Yet, these students think that there is only a single way of interpreting data. When comparing students' ideas from text-based and data-inscription arguments, the majority of Korean students barely perceive text description as evidence and recognize only measured data as evidence.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.89-99
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• 2008

In this study, we investigated the effects of explicit and reflective instruction about nature of science (NOS) using episodes from the history of science upon students' understanding about NOS, achievement, and enjoyment of science lessons. Four classes of ninth graders (N=129) at a coed middle school were divided into the control and the treatment groups. The students were taught about the composition of material for 11 classes. Before the instruction, most of the students in both the control and the treatment groups held naive views about NOS. After the instructions, the views about NOS of the control group students did not change, whereas the students in the treatment group held more adequate views about NOS. The high-level students in the treatment group showed more adequate views about NOS than the low-level students. However, there were no significant differences between the test scores of the two groups in the achievement and the enjoyment of science lessons.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.349-362
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• 1995

As science programs emphasize an understanding of the nature of science, it is needed to assess students' views on a wide range of science-technology-society topics. The purpose of this study is to investigate the views of high school students about some selected topics of the epistemology of science. The selected topics include the meaning of science, scientific assumptions, values in science, conceptual inventions in science, scientific method, consensus making in science, and characteristics of the knowledge produced in science. Identified preconceptions in the study are as follows: Science was seen as improving the world(20%), and technology was defined as the application of science(35%). Almost half of the sample(49%) subscribed to a view consistent with a creationist posture and large group of students(46%) expressed a purely ontological view. Only minority of the students(5%) discounted the role played by private science values, but one half of the sample denied the fact that gender-related values can influence the knowledge that scientist construct(53%). Only a small potion of the sample(5%) held a view contrasting to contemporary epistemology of science, but the majority(67%) expressed a simplistic hierarchical relationship in which hypotheses become theories and theories become laws. One third of the students(33%) held a preconception that the scientific method composed of questioning, hypothesizing, collecting data, and concluding. Students did not appreciate the role of consensus making in science(33%). An out-dated epistemic perspective describes the progress of science as simply an accumulation of knowledge(4%). In general, it was concluded that most high school students did not hold efficient understanding on the nature of science. It can be said that no adequate and consistent instruction took place to provide students with an authentic view of the nature of science.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.60-79
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• 2017

The purpose of this study was to develop a program for the history of science and technology in order for the technical high school students to understand the nature of science (NOS). The program was composed of the six topics based on the textbooks such as convergence science and physics I, and was taught to 290 10th graders at a technical high school located in the metropolitan area. The questionnaire about NOS was asked the students before and after the instruction, so as to investigate the effect of the program on improving their understandings of NOS. The analysis followed t-test and ANOVA using SPSS 23.0 for Windows program. The questionnaire based on the conceptual framework of the four themes of the NOS (Lee, 2014). The research findings were as follows. First, the program was effective in improving their understanding of NOS since the t-test result was significant statistically for the overall domains of NOS (p<.01). Second, there was no significant gender differences in the understanding of NOS among technical high school students (p<.05), neither did their majors (p<.05). Third, all domains in NOS were statistically correlated (p<.01), and in a particular, each domain was consistently correlated with the aspect of the nature of the interactions among science, technology, and society. Hence, the further studies should be conducted to examine how the history of science and technology effects the understanding of the NOS and how the domains in NOS affected each other.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.209-219
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• 1998

This study is the first part of the investigation of the students' and teachers' understanding of ideal conditions in physics. To do this, here, we provided the theoretical basis for the above study by discussing the meaning and characteristics of idealization. Idealization, introduced and elaborated by Galileo therefore characterized the nature of modem science, can be generated by four procedures: neglecting the minor variables, giving without any description about the minor variables, assuming the limit case, assuming constancy or uniformity. Idealization generated by these procedures can produce models and laws from the sensory informations about real world. And physics world is constructed by formalization or mathematization of these models and laws obtained through idealization about real world. Therefore, it can be said that idealization have a major role in the context of discovery. By this aspects, physics world can be viewed as the approximation of the real world, and this view, again, give rise the philosophical debate about the reality in nature. Idealization take an important role in the process of application of physics world and the understanding the real world. That is, physicists accept the discrepancies between real world, and physics world and make a great effort to explain, moreover, reduce these discrepancies by modifying or eliminating idealization involved in physics world. Continued from this study, we will proceed to obtain the implications of idealization on the physics learning and investigate the students' and teachers' understanding of the ideal condition involved in the theoretical explanation and the experiment in physics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.681-694
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• 2019

This study intends to delineate the characteristics of various perspectives on the nature of science (NOS) through the textbook analysis. Thus, centering on a science textbook called Science Laboratory Experiments, this study analyzes the elements of the NOS from three different perspectives: the consensus view, features of science (FOS), and family resemblance approach (FRA). While the consensus view highlights the similar elements of the NOS across the topics, the FOS is concerned about empirical ways for doing science. The FRA rather focuses on socio-cultural aspects of science activities. While the consensus view is useful to reify the features of the NOS, the FRA helps to understand science from various viewpoints. Regarding the philosophical account for three perspectives, all of them are ambiguous to some extent. The consensus view holds contradictory dispositions e.g., relativism vs. (post-)positivism, and critical realism and instrumentalism. The FOS supports empirical tradition but cannot effectively cope with the anomalous situation. The FRA is useful to show up the ways of science in both microscopic (personal) and macroscopic (social) viewpoints. However, the broader concept about science may mislead understanding of the NOS. Consequently, this study provides some implication for improving the framework of the NOS and teaching the NOS in the classroom.