• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.249-258
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to identify the type of thinking and generating processes of causal questions which were generated in preservice elementary teachers' observing activities. To find the generating processes of causal questions, 4 observing tasks, the task of grapes in soda, the candlelight, the celery, and the rock tasks, were administered to 7 preservice elementary teachers majoring in science education. The results of this study were as follows: The types of thinking in generating explicans exploration questions were classified as 8 types and explicans verification questions were classified as 9 types. The generating processes of explicans exploration questions were classified as 6 steps and explicans verification questions were classified as 5 steps. The results of this study may be used as a teaching strategy for guiding the direction and the method of scientific questions and developing the teaching-teaming programs that help student to generate scientifc questions.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.201-208
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the structure and type of prospective elementary school teachers' scientific hypotheses generated on zoological tasks. The subjects were 18 prospective elementary school teachers. Four zoological hypothesis generation tasks were developed and administered to the subjects. After being presented with the zoological situations of the tasks, the subjects were asked to generate causal questions and scientific hypotheses. The scientific hypotheses were analyzed by the inductive approach. The results of this study showed that the hypotheses contained explicans and explicanda. The explicans were divided into two parts: 'what' and 'how'. In some cases, additional explanations were attached to the 'what' section. In addition, the hypotheses were classified into 9 types. The number of explicanda, the pattern of explicans, and the number of explicans were used as criteria for classification purposes. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for future directions in teaching and teaming in science education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.5
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• pp.458-469
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• 2003

Hypothesis is defined as a proposition intended as a possible explanation for an observed phenomenon. The purpose of this study was to generate a grounded theory on the process of undergraduate students' generating hypothesis-knowledge about scientific episodes. Three hypothesis-generating tasks were administered to four college students majored in science education. The present study showed that college students represented five types of intermediate knowledge in the process of hypothesis generation, such as question situation, hypothetical explicans, experienced situation, causal explicans, and final hypothetical knowledge. Furthermore, students used six types of thinking methods, such as searching knowledges, comparing a question situation and an experienced situation, borrowing explicans, combining explicans, selecting an explican, and confirming explicans. In addition, hypothesis-generating process involves inductive and deductive reasoning as well as abductive reasoning. This study also discusses the implications of these findings for teaching and evaluating in science education.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.250-257
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• 2003

The purpose of this study was to test the hypotheses that student's abductive reasoning ability plays an important role in hypothesis-generating about vapor condensation, and student's hypothesis-generating requires their causal explicans as well as experience. To test the hypotheses, the instruments of hypothesis-generation, prior knowledge, and experience with vapor condensation were developed and administered to 6th grade students. This study found that 72 subjects among 89 students who had prior knowledge about vapor condensation failed to apply their prior knowledge to hypothesis-generating about the vapor condensation. This result showed that the students' failure in hypothesis-generating was related to their deficiency in abductive reasoning ability. In addition, this study showed that 54 subjects among 56 students who had experience with vapor condensation also failed to generate hypotheses. This result supported that student's causal explanations were separated from their experience. Therefore, this study suggests that science education should include the teaching of abductive reasoning skills for developing student's hypothesis-generating skills.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.5
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• pp.1018-1027
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to identify and compare the types of scientific questions which were generated by elementary students and preservice teachers on the tasks of scientific observation. To identify the types of scientific questions, 4 observing tasks, dry grapes contained in soda pop, candlelight, celery, and a rock were administered to 40 sixth elementary students and 20 elementary preservice teachers. And then, the types and frequency of scientific questions generated by them were compared. The results showed that the types of scientific questions were classified into conjectural questions, causal questions, predictive questions, methodical questions and applicative questions. Further more, subordinate questions to the above questions were classified into object exploration questions and object verification questions, explicans exploration questions and explicans verification questions, result exploration questions and result verification questions, example exploration questions and example verification questions. Subordinate questions did not come out from the methodical questions. The types of scientific questions generated by elementary students and preservice teachers were identical, however, there were differences in frequency. This study supports that elementary students also have cognitive capability to generate various scientific questions. The results of this study may be used as a teaching strategy for the guidance of the direction and the method of scientific inquiry.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.215-228
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• 2003

The present study is to analyze the arguments about the generation of declarative scientific-knowledge in the philosophy of science and invent a structured model of the process of scientific-knowledge generation with the types of the generated scientific-knowledge. The invented model shows that scientific-knowledge generation is a distinctive process with the processes of inductive, abductive, and deductive thinking. Furthermore, inductive process is included with observation, which is consisted of simple observation and operative observation, and rule-discovery which is involved with the processes of commonness discovery, classification, pattern discovery, and hierarchical relationship. Also, abductive process has two components. One component generates question and second component generates hypothesis in which the process consists of representing question situation, identifying experienced situation, identifying causal explicans, and generating hypothetical explicans. Finally, deductive process is involved with logical inventing test method and evaluation criteria, concrete inventing test method and evaluation criteria, evaluating hypothesis, and making conclusion.