• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.759-767
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• 2008

This article arose from the previous studies, which suggested a synthetic list for the nature of science (NOS), discussed the relationship between the NOS and scientific inquiry and the development of the NOS in the context of scientific inquiry. In this article, for teaching scientific inquiry through the NOS, I proposed three teaching models - reflection, interaction, and the direct model -. Within these teaching models, understanding the NOS is viewed as a prerequisite condition for the improved performance of scientific inquiry. In the reflection model, the NOS is embedded and reflected in scientific inquiry without explicit introduction or direct explanation of the NOS. In the interaction model, concrete interaction between scientific inquiry and the NOS is encouraged during the process of scientific inquiry. In the direct model, subsequent to directly comprehending the NOS at the first stage of activity, students conduct scientific inquiry based on their understanding of the NOS. The intention of this present article is to facilitate the use of these models to develop teaching materials for more authentic scientific inquiry.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.27 no.4
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• pp.401-415
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• 2006

The science education reforms put the emphasis of scientific literacy, so that students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through scientific inquiry at schools. However, scientific inquiry at schools has a problem as a cookbook system without the opportunity of developing argumentation, where students could understand how they use evidence to support their theory or vice versa. Teachers are supposed to understand the basic elements, purpose, and definition of scientific inquiry to implement authentic scientific inquiry at schools, then develop the instructional strategies of providing the opportunity of scientific argumentation to meet its needs.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.749-758
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• 2008

Even though the importance of the nature of science (NOS) and scientific inquiry in science learning have been emphasized by many science educators and science curriculums, the link between the NOS and scientific inquiry has not been discussed sufficiently. In this article, I discussed that various aspects of NOS are already embedded in defining and characterizing the authentic scientific inquiry and that we need to have special concern about how the NOS should be treated and interpreted when introducing it into scientific inquiry. And I summarized two approaches to teach the NOS and scientific inquiry; teaching the NOS through scientific inquiry and teaching scientific inquiry through the NOS. Finally, some next studies based on this article are introduced.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.930-943
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate if students may actually experience scientific reasoning based on an epistemology of authentic science during authentic open inquiry. The samples were 86 10th graders in a science-high school in Seoul. The experimental group practiced authentic open inquiry and the control group practiced traditional school science inquiry in five weeks. Then, the questions students asked while performing inquiry tasks were analyzed. The frequency of the questions asked by students was almost same between two groups, however, the types of questions were different. The frequency of thinking questions in experimental group was higher than the control, and the difference was statistically significant (P<.01). Particularly, the frequency of expansive thinking questions and anomaly detection questions was much higher in experimental than the control group. Judging from the result, with the students from the experimental group asking questions reflecting on the epistemology of authentic science such as scientific methods, anomalous data, and uncertainty about reasoning, students may understand authentic science features during the activities of open authentic inquiry. The result from comparing questions according to the inquiry subject showed that more openness caused the higher frequency of anomaly detection questions and strategy questions, but that inductive thinking questions and analogical thinking questions were connected to inquiry subject rather than the openness of the inquiry.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.153-167
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• 2007

In this study, it is assumed that understanding the nature of science (NOS) would enhance students' performance of scientific inquiry in more authentic ways. The ultimate goal of this study is to suggest new models for developing scientific inquiry activities through understanding the NOS by linking the NOS with scientific inquiry. First, the various definitions and statements of the NOS are summarized, then the features of the developmental nature of scientific knowledge and the nature of scientific thinking based on the philosophy of science are reviewed, and finally a synthetic list of the elements of the NOS is proposed, consisting of three categories: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the nature of scientific thinking. This suggested synthetic list of the NOS is used to suggest a model of scientific inquiry through the understanding of the NOS. This list was designed to provide basic standards regarding the NOS as well as practical guidance for designing activities to improve students' understanding of the NOS.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.211-226
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate science teachers' understandings about scientific argumentation in the classroom. Seven structured interview protocols were developed, asking the definition of scientific inquiry, the differentiation between scientific inquiry and hands-on activity, the opportunity of student argumentation, explicit teaching strategies for scientific argumentation, the critical example of argumentation, the criteria of successful argumentation, and the barrier of developing argumentation. The results indicate that there are differences and similarities in understandings about scientific argumentation between two groups of middle school teachers and upper elementary. Basically, teachers at middle school define scientific inquiry as the opportunity of practicing reasoning skills through argumentation, while teachers at upper elementary define it as the more opportunities of practicing procedural skills through experiments rather than of developing argumentation. Teachers in both groups have implemented a teaching strategy called "Claim-Evidence Approach," for the purpose of providing students with more opportunities to develop arguments. Students' misconception, limited scientific knowledge and perception about inquiry as a cycle without the opportunity of using reasoning skills were considered as barriers for implementing authentic scientific inquiry in the classroom.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.7
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• pp.547-558
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• 2007

The purpose of this study is to compare inquiry activities in science textbooks' physics contents for Korean secondary schools with those of Singapore in order to provide a reference for further improvement of inquiry activities in Korean science textbooks. We analyzed inquiry activities using the framework of Millar et al.(1998) and Chinn & Malhotra (2002). The results of this study are as follows: There are differences between Korean and Singaporean inquiry activities in the area of 'learning objectives', 'students' thinking activities' and 'degree of openness'. In the area of 'learning objectives', the Korean textbooks have more activities associated with the learning of science content than those in Singaporean, whereas the Singaporean textbooks have more activities associated with the processes of scientific inquiry than in Korean textbooks. In the area of 'students' thinking activities', the Singaporean textbooks have activities like 'test a prediction', which Korean textbooks lack. The 'degree of openness' is higher in Singaporean textbooks than in Korean textbooks. And some differences in the area of 'authentic scientific inquiry' between Korean and Singaporean textbooks were also found. While the Korean textbooks do not have any activities associated with 'generating research questions', the Singaporean ones feature such activities. In the area of 'designing studies', the Singaporean textbooks have activities corresponding to 'selecting variables' and 'controlling variables', while the Korean ones never have such activities. The results of this study imply that it is necessary to balance inquiry activities in the area of 'learning objectives', 'students' thinking activities' and 'degree of openness', and to present activities close to authentic scientific inquiry in inquiry activities in textbooks.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.169-179
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• 2008

In this study, 46 teaching materials for understanding the nature of science (NOS) were developed based on the 42 statements describing the NOS. Each teaching material involves scientific knowledge and scientific inquiry skills as well as NOS statements. Teaching materials consist of students' learning worksheets and teachers' guides. Among the materials, 11 materials for understanding the nature of scientific thinking (NOST) were applied to 3 scientifically gifted students. As results, the degree of difficulty was appropriate and students showed interests in scientific thinking rather than new concepts or inquiry activities involved in the materials. It was expected that understating the NOST would be helpful for conducting scientific inquiry in more authentic way. And similarly to the Park's (2007) theoretical discussions about the relationship between the NOS and scientific creativity, students actually responded that undertrading the NOST could help their creativity. Therefore, it was expected that teaching the NOST would be plausible elements for teaching scientific creativity.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.6
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• pp.565-578
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• 2008

The purpose of this study is to search for the factors that influence students' understanding of the nature of science through the experience of the cognitive processes of authentic open inquiries. The freshmen of a science high school practiced authentic open inquiries reflecting epistemological characteristics of authentic science. The case study was conducted with four focus students who were successful or unsuccessful at learning the nature of science during the authentic open inquiry activity. Questions that the focus students asked during the inquiries as well as students' answers to pre- and post-VNOS (C type) were analysed, and then elaborated in the semi-structured interview. The findings suggest that open inquiry activities provide the inquiry contexts that help science high school students to understand the nature of science, and that the characteristics of students' cognition influence the understanding of the nature of science. For instance, designing experiments with their own research questions had an influence on the students' understanding about the scientific methods and the diversity of research types, and drawing conclusions from their own data made students experience scientific reasoning. In addition, the experience of collecting anomalous data helped students to understand the role of inferences in generating scientific knowledge and the creative nature of scientific knowledge. In this inquiry context, the reflective thinking that came from proactive discussion among students, made students think about the validity of the designing experiments and interpreting data, and helped them to understand the uncertain nature of reasoning and the diverse nature of scientific methods. Moreover, divergent thinking linked to analogical thinking helped students to understand the creative nature of science.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.194-204
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• 2004

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate what kinds of research have been done about scientific inquiry in terms of scientific argumentation in the classroom context from the upper elementary to the high school levels. First, science educators argued that there had not been differentiation between authentic scientific inquiry by scientists and school scientific inquiry by students in the classroom. This uncertainty of goals or definition of scientific inquiry has led to the problem or limitation of implementing scientific inquiry in the classroom. It was also pointed out that students' learning science as inquiry has been done without opportunities of argumentation to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Second, what is scientific argumentation, then? Researchers stated that scientific inquiry in the classroom cannot be guaranteed only through hands-on experimentation. Students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through their reasoning skills using opportunities of argumentation based on their procedural skills using opportunities of experimentation. Third, many researchers emphasized the social practices of small or whole group work for enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills through argumentations. Different role of leadership in groups and existence of teachers' roles are found to have potential in enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand science as inquiry. Fourth, what is scientific reasoning? Scientific reasoning is defined as an ability to differentiate evidence or data from theory and coordinate them to construct their scientific knowledge based on their collection of data (Kuhn, 1989, 1992; Dunbar & Klahr, 1988, 1989; Reif & Larkin, 1991). Those researchers found that students skills in scientific reasoning are different from scientists. Fifth, for the purpose of enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed, other researchers suggested that teachers' roles in scaffolding could help students develop those skills. Based on this literature review, it is important to find what kinds of generalizable teaching strategies teachers use for students scientific reasoning skills through scientific argumentation and investigate teachers' knowledge of scientific argumentation in the context of scientific inquiry. The relationship between teachers' knowledge and their teaching strategies and between teachers teaching strategies and students scientific reasoning skills can be found out if there is any.