• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.1017-1030
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• 2010

In this study, an enriched in-service program for teaching scientific creativity was developed and implemented using the scientific creativity activities developed by Park, Park, & Lee (2008). In this program, science teachers performed scientific creativity activities by themselves and practiced the development of actual teaching materials. As a result, science teachers mentioned that they could achieve their goals by learning about various actual teaching materials and teaching strategies for gifted education. They also mentioned that the in-service program was interesting, had appropriate levels of learning difficulty, and that they would apply the teaching programs and teaching strategies to actual gifted education. Observing teachers' actual learning processes during the in-service training course, it was found that they actually participated in the in-service program for a long time intensively and could improve conceptual understanding in depth, but it was necessary to long-term creative thinking practice for being beyond the level of students' creative activities. Finally, from the analysis of teaching materials developed by teachers at the final step of the in-service program, it was found which aspects were developed well or were unsatisfactory, therefore, these findings could be applied for more improved in-service programs.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.69-89
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to develop a test which can be used in identification of the gifted students in the area of mathematics. This study was carried out for two years from 1996. Mathematical giftedness is, in this study, regarded as a result of interaction of mathematical thinking ability, mathematical creativity, mathematical task committment, background knowledge. This study presumed that mathematical thinking ability is composed of seven thinking abilities: intuitive insights, ability for information organization, ability for visualization, ability for mathematical abstraction, inferential thinking ability(both inductive and deductive thinking abilities), generalization and application ability, and reflective thinking. This study also presupposed that mathematical creativity is composed of 3 characteristics: fluency, flexibility, originality. The test for mathematical creative problem solving ability was developed for primary, middle, and high school students. The test is composed of two parts: the first part is concentrated more on divergent thinking, while the second part is more on convergent thinking. The major targets of the test were the students whose achievement level in mathematics belong to top 15~20% in each school. The goodness of the test was examined in the aspects of reliability, validity, difficulty, and discrimination power. Cronbach $\alpha$ was in the range of .60~.75, suggesting that the test is fairly reliable. The validity of the test was examined through the correlation among the test results for mathematical creative problem solving ability, I. Q., and academic achievement scores in mathematics and through the correlation between the scores in the first part and the scores in the second part of the test for mathematical creative problem solving ability. The test was found to be very difficult for the subjects. However, the discrimination power of the test was at the acceptable level.

• 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 of Information Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2011

Recently, STEM education and improvement in creativity took a lot of attention in local and foreign educational programs, and the robot education is regarded as one of the answers which can achieve the objectives. The robot education is quite active locally in various ways including robot classes for after school program in elementary schools, a number of robot competitions, and education for the gifted. Under these circumstances, the qualification test for robot technology is developed to provide a standard for evaluating professional knowledge on robotics and is currently under consideration to be one of the government-approved qualification tests. However, compared to the robot classes for after school program, this test is not well recognized by most teachers in elementary and middle schools. This paper addresses and analyzes the current status of the test, in particular, backgrounds, qualification standards, organizing committee, intention of presenting questions, examples of problems used in the test, and demands raised by applicants, etc. Base on the analysis, some suggestions are made to establish a solid standard for evaluating robot technologies. It is suggested that the level of difficulty and contents covered should be properly adjusted considering the level of applicants. In addition, it is essential to provide well organized supplementary material for students and wide range of contents on robot technology. Finally, some efforts including cooperating with the robot classes for after school program should be made to invigorate the test.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.26-44
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• 2002

We have developed a tool and solution to test creativity level for science field. This test tool was considered 7 creativity elements. In development process, it was verified for contents validity, clarity of the item etc. The test developed in this study was analyzed item analysis after applying for 332 middle school students. As a results of item analysis, it showed meaningful(validity: 92%, item difficulty: $42%{\sim}73%$, reliability: 0.84, item discriminating power: $0.22{\sim}0.70$)over the level of a standard basis. This means that the test tool was useful in the test process of creativity level for science.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.699-719
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• 2016

Alternate pictures that are proven to be equivalent are in high demand to assess creative thinking and language skills. This study aimed to investigate the equivalence of three pictures ('Dog owners,' 'Lost Dog,' and 'Overslept') recently developed for use in a creative writing task. Middle school students (N=183) wrote a story in English based on one of the three prompts distributed randomly. Four writing features (fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, and temporality) were analyzed with Coh-Metrix and MANCOVA. The three prompts were largely equivalent in their capacity to detect differences among writers in all the features of writing. The difficulty levels of the three prompts, however, were not necessarily the same. Two prompts, Dog Owners and Lost Dog, were verified as equivalent prompts, and therefore, they are recommended as alternate forms to assess creative language skills in repeated measurements. The Overslept prompt had greater facility in eliciting diverse words and more temporal connectives in composing stories. The differential difficulty shown among the prompts suggests that the validity of using different picture versions in repeated assessment remains questionable unless those versions undergo equivalence verification.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.717-754
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• 2015

As a design research, this study aims to identify students' collaborative problems solving patterns using the Wiki and design factors triggering MKB(mathematical knowledge building) in virtual environment. For 70 days, 14 Korean secondary gifted students, who enrolled in calculus II courses in one of gifted institutions in Korea, solved 10 math problems together using the Wiki. In this study, I considered five design factors; motivation, practice of LaTeX, norms of participation, epistemic agency, and two types of educational settings. The primary pattern emergent in students' collaborative problem solving process is identified as 'solutions and refutations' along the double helix consisting of the constructive line and the critical line, which is very similar to the pattern of 'Conjectures and Refutations'(Lakatos, 1976). Despite that most participants had difficulty in using LaTeX for mathematical expressions, this study shows that Wikis are valuable tools for providing Korean secondary students opportunities to learn social virtue such as humility and courage (Lampert, 1990), which is considered to be have been neglected in Korean educational environment but is emphasized as precious for doing mathematics in the field of mathematics education.

• Journal of Creative Information Culture
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.237-243
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• 2019

The ability of problem-solving, communicating, and collaborating with computing technology is considered as core competencies for future society. In order to improve those competences, the algorithm and programming ability was set as the important goal of the Information curriculum of Korea. Algorithmic thinking is a key component of computing thinking, and it is known to play a very important role in designing and programming algorithms. It is used to set goals of Information curriculum and to measure student achievement. Therefore, in this study, developed a test to measure algorithmic thinking of students in elementary, middle and high schools, and applied the test to measure the levels of algorithmic thinking. As a result of the analysis, the higher the school level, the better the algorithmic thinking. And no difference was found between genders. This study is expected to provide a guide for constructing measures or setting the difficulty level for algorithmic thinking.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.425-443
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• 2013

We developed problem-solving type inquiry learning programs reflecting scientists' research process and analyzed the activities of science-gifted high school students, and the understanding and the effects of the programs after implementation in class. For this study, twelve science-gifted students in the 10th grade participated in the program, which consisted of three different modules - making a cycloidal pendulum, surface growth, and synchronization using metronomes. Diet Cola Test (DCT) was used to find out the effect on the improvement of the ability to design experiments by comparing pre/post scores, with a survey and an interview being conducted after the class. Each module consisted of a series of processes such as questioning the phenomenon scientifically, designing experiments to find solutions, and doing activities to solve the problems. These enable students to experience problem-solving type research process through the program class. According to this analysis, most students were likely to understand the characteristics of problem-solving type inquiry learning programs reflecting the scientists' research process. According to the students, there are some differences between this program class and existing school class. The differences are: 'explaining phenomenon scientifically,' 'designing experiments for themselves,' and 'repeating the experiments several times.' During the class students have to think continuously, design several experiments, and carry them out to solve the problems they found at first. Then finally, they were able to solve the problems. While repeating this kind of activities they have been able to experience the scientists' research process. Also, they showed a positive attitude toward the scientists' research by understanding problem-solving type research process. These problem-solving type inquiry learning programs seem to have positive effects on students in designing experiments and offering the opportunity for critical argumentation on the causes of the phenomena. The results of comparing pre/post scores for DCT revealed that almost every student has improved his/her ability to design experiments. Students who were accustomed to following teacher's instructions have had difficulty in designing the experiments for themselves at the beginning of the class, but gradually, they become used to doing it through the class and finally were able to do it systematically.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.212-224
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• 2007

Metabolism is one of the pivotal biology concepts, but many students have difficulty understanding it. The purposes of this study were (1) to explore 8th graders' conceptual change of an enzyme after classes of experimenting enzyme reaction and interpreting data using systematic analogies, (2) to discover the role of systematic analogies to enhance students' understanding, and (3) to explain students' difficulty understanding concepts as the ontological features. Systematic analogies were designed to encourage students to interpret their lab activities on enzyme reaction rates. Data were collected by using the pre-test and the post-test of open-ended form, students' worksheets, and interviews with students. After classes, the number of students to engender scientific conceptions about the function of enzyme, its structure, and its mechanism has increased. But more students failed to understand the reaction mechanisms having ontological features of equilibration processes than to understand the function of enzyme having ontological features of event-like processes. Even though the concepts of enzymes are hard to grasp owing to their ontological attributes of equilibration processes, a part of students' conceptions successfully progressed from the idea belonging to event-like processes to one belonging to equilibration processes. And systematic analogies were found to contribute in enhancing students' conceptual change of the enzyme reaction.