• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.491-504
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• 2011

We investigated science-gifted students' conceptions on science learning. The inventory instruments used for our study were a questionnaire on the conceptions of learning science (COLS) and a questionnaire on the approaches to learning science (ALS). Our analysis of the questionnaires showed that there are differences in the conceptions of science learning between the science-gifted and ordinary students. Science-gifted students perceive science learning as storing up of scientific knowledge, expansion of knowledge structure and achievement of a new view. There are no differences in the conceptions of science learning between male and female science-gifted students. There are also no differences in the conceptions of science learning in terms of subject preference such as physics, chemistry, biology and earth science. Our analysis offer assistance to teaching material and teaching method for science courses.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.214-225
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• 2014

This study aimed to investigate the high school students' conceptions about the plate tectonics through visual representation. For this purpose, the subjects were 67 students in 11th-grade high schools in Chungbuk. In order to in-depth understand the students' conceptions about plate tectonics, so the investigator conducted a semi-structured interview. The conclusions were as in the following. After learning the plate tectonics, the students had the alternative conceptions associated with terminology, colors' meanings, plate-related melting, plate's movement, plates' boundaries, mantle's physical conditions, driving forces for plate movement, and they had the organic relations about colors' meanings, mantle's physical conditions, and driving forces of plate movement. Also, the visual representation used to teach plate tectonics influenced on the students' responses about terminology, plates' boundaries, plate-related melting and the mantle's physical features, also this study found the factors of visual representation causing the learners to create alternative conceptions. These results implicated the importance of teacher's role in identifying the students' interpretation process on visual representation, and it needed to improve the factors creating students' alternative conceptions about visual representation and to study the factors further.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.383-393
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• 1997

In order to study the effect of student's conceptions about force and motion into the graph construction in kinematics in college physics course, the tasks of constructing the qualitative graph in the similar problem context used in force conception was asked to the first 74 and third 97 student teacher in teachers' university. The frequencies analysis showed that student teachers had the naive conceptions that the throwing force was still acted to a upwarding ball. They also had the popular Aristotelian views about motion. These naive conceptions coexisted with the scientific conception about gravitational force. In a simple pendulum problem no one had the correct acceleration concepts which varies the direction in swing. This result suggest that student teacher had more difficulties in a acceleration problem than in a velocity problem In v-t and a-t graph construction tasks, the number of categories of a-t graphs were more than that of v-t graphs. There were many graph errors in a sign of velocity and acceleration. The acceleration conceptions without the relations of changes in velocity made the kinematics graphs more various shapes. The force and motion conceptions influenced the ability to construct the kinematics graphs.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.513-527
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• 2011

There have been studies about conceptual ecology making a profound study of conceptual changes in learners' cognitive structure. Because learners' cognitive structure have been compared to ecology, it is natural to think that conception in learner's cognitive structure have a niche as species in ecology have niches. Therefore, it is necessary to study niche approach about conception that learners recognize in their cognitive structure. The purposes of this study were to identify relationships among conceptions that 5th grade elementary school students recognize about photosynthesis and to identify how these relationships among conceptions about photosynthesis change before and after a class of photosynthesis in curriculum in terms of an approach of ecological niche which are composed of 3 domains - diversity of conceptions, relevance and frequency rate of conceptions, and competition among conceptions. Open ended questionnaire was developed by 4 fields: photosynthetic place, photosynthetic products, photosynthetic materials needed and environment factors of photosynthesis. The subjects sampled in this study were 310 5th grade elementary students in 5 cites. Before and after classes in photosynthesis in science curriculum, students were asked to write down conceptions that they knew about the 4 fields of photosynthesis of questionnaire and to write down scales of relevance from 1 to 30 about how they think the conceptions are related to the field of photosynthesis. The results of this study showed the following: First, most students have had a variety of conceptions and commonly recognized 'light' and 'water' as concepts in photosynthesis. Second, students still recognized their preconceptions like 'soil' and 'root,' etc. that were far from scientific conceptions of photosynthesis although they took classes in photosynthesis. Third, students needed to take the various strategies of teachers because they did not recognized scientific conceptions appropriately about photosynthetic fields. Fourth, it appeared that photosynthetic conceptions recognized by students had status in terms of relevance and frequency rate of conceptions, and competition among conceptions, and that they looked like the niche of conceptions in their conceptual ecologies.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.179-189
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• 1997

In this study, a conceptual change model for effective laboratories was developed and its instructional effect on students' achievement, the acquisition of scientific conceptions, and the attitudes toward science was investigated. Considering several conceptual change models in literature and Korean educational situations, the conceptual change model was developed. The model consists of 5 stages; preliminary, prediction, exploration, consolidation and reconstruction, and application. The treatment and control groups (2 classes) were selected from a middle school in Seoul, and taught about the changes of states, density, and dissolution for three weeks. Prior to instruction, the Group Assessment of Logical Thinking and the Learning Approach Questionnaire were administered, and their scores were used as covariate and / or blocking variable. To examine students' alternative conceptions before the instructions, a pre-conceptions test was also administered. After the instructions, students' achievement, the acquisition of scientific conceptions, and the attitudes toward science were measured with a researcher-made achievement test, a post-conceptions test, and the subtests of the Test of Science-Related Attitudes, respectively. The results indicated that the score of the treatment group was significantly higher than that of the control group in the post-conceptions test. The students in the treatment group had also less alternative conceptions than those in the control group. However, there were no significant differences for the achievement and the attitudes toward science. Educational implications are discussed.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.69-88
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• 2005

This study was to understand the components that influence preservice secondary teachers' conceptions about 'seasonal changes' We selected 74 university science education students among whom 23 were in the second, 23 in the third, and 28 in the fourth year. The data collected from the paper-pencil test and individual interview with students. The results of this study show that the students had considerable apparent alternative conceptions, and that the 'distance theory' had most important effects on their alternative conceptions. It can be said that preservice secondary teachers' initial models of the seasonal change have their origin in their belief sets (specific theory) related to 'seasonal change', on the basis of which they can interpret their observations and cultural information with the constraints of a naive frame-work of physics. The structures and possible sources of their alternative conceptions for overcoming these alternative conceptions were also discussed. Implications for preservice science teacher education related to the results were discussed.

• Journal of Convergence for Information Technology
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• v.10 no.10
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• pp.196-202
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• 2020

This study explores conceptions of learning management and examines the effects on study approach and critical thinking. Undergraduates majoring or minoring in management were gathered through convenient sampling and participated in the online survey. A total of 88 responses were analyzed. The results reveal that there is no significant gender or grade difference on conceptions of learning management. Conceptions of "test" and "seeing in a new way" are associated with deep study approach, whereas conceptions of 'test' is associated with surface study approach. Conceptions of "seeing in a new way" has a significant effect on critical thinking. The findings may inform redesign of instruction or curriculum especially focusing on improving high-quality thinking skills as the learning outcomes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.1295-1317
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• 2012

There has been disagreement on the importance of definitions in science education. Yager (1983) believes that one crisis in science education was due to the considerable emphasis upon the learning of definitions. Hobson (2004) disagrees with physics textbooks that do not provide general definition on energy. Some textbooks explain that "there is no completely satisfactory definition of energy" or they can only "struggle to define it." In general, imprecise definitions in textbooks (Bauman, 1992) and inaccuracies in definition provided by teachers (Galili & Lehavi, 2006) may cause alternative conceptions. Besides, there are at least four challenges in defining physical concepts: precision, circularity, context and completeness in knowledge. These definitional problems that have been discussed in The Feynman Lectures, may impede the learning of physical concepts. A meta-study approach is employed to examine about five hundreds journal papers that may discuss definitions in physics, problems in defining physical concepts and how they may result in alternative conceptions. These journal papers are mainly selected from journals such as American Journal of Physics, International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Physics Education, The Physics Teachers, and so on. There are also comparisons of definitions with definitions from textbooks, Dictionaries of Physics, and English Dictionaries. To understand the nature of alternative conception, Lee et al. (2010) have suggested a theoretical framework to describe the learning issues by synthesizing cognitive psychology and science education approaches. Taking it a step further, this study incorporates the challenges in semantics and epistemology, proposes that there are at least four variants of alternative conceptions. We may coin the term, 'alternative definitions', to refer to the commonly available definitions, which have these four problems in defining physics concepts. Based on this study, alternative definitions may result in at least four variants of alternative conceptions. Note that these four definitional problems or challenges in definitions cannot be easily resolved. Educators should be cognizant of the four variants of alternative conceptions which can arise from alternative definitions. The concepts of alternative definitions can be useful and possibly generalized to science education and beyond.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.341-359
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• 2003

The purpose of this research was to determine whether the present Korean teacher education programs for secondary science teachers are effective in improving the teacher conceptions of constructivism and STS. It is because the current Korean National Science Curriculum is consistent with both ideas as reforms. The teacher education programs sampled in the research included pre-service programs and two types of in-service programs. These two were the Qualifying In-service Program and the Iowa Korean Science Teachers Workshop. The Iowa Program was considered as an experimental program emphasized the constructivist perspective. Specially designed questionnaires for identifying teacher conceptions before and after the programs were administered. The conceptions about constructivism and STS improved as a result of the instruction in both of the pre-service and in-service teacher education programs. The pre-service program was more effective than the in-service programs in improving the teacher conceptions of both constructivism and STS. The Qualifying Inservice program was less effective than Iowa Korean Science Teachers Workshop. It was necessary for inservice programs for Korean secondary science teachers to be more emphasized on constructivism and STS. Iowa Korean Science Teachers Workshop provided a possible example to design a new special in-service program focused on constructivist perspectives as a way of aligning the Korean National Science Curriculum more quickly with recommended teaching practices in Korean schools.

• Korean Journal of Logic
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.71-109
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• 2014

Gila Sher believes that Tarskian definition of logical consequence is a conceptually and extensionally adequate explanation. She has tried to show this on the basis of Mostowskian conceptions of generalized quantifiers as being invariant under isomorphic structures and her own conceptions of models. In this paper I try to show that her attempt to justify the Tarskian definition is only partially successful. I admit that her conceptions of the logical as being invariant under isomorphic structures are enough to show the logical formality of logical consequence relations. But I think that since her conceptions of meanings of terms are quite inadequate for dealing with the problem of empty predicates, she fails to distinguish logically necessary truths from other kinds of truths.