• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.302-316
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to devise a Small-Scale Chemistry (SSC) lab program for primary school learners and to examine its effects on science learning achievement. In addition, it will be examined whether the type of learning groups affects the achievement or not. The participants in the current study were 173 6th graders from 6 classes of Y elementary school in Changwon city, Gyeongnam. Three classes(86) were assigned to the experimental group and the other three, the comparative group after checking the pre-homogeneity between the two groups through t-test on the scores of the science mid-term exam. We conducted five experimental sessions on the Acid and Base in the science textbook for the sixth graders. The students of one experimental class worked in pairs and another class worked individually, but the students of the comparative classes were divided into groups of six(one group with pair, another group with individual work in the SSC program, and the other group conducting the traditional experiment with groups of six students). The data were analyzed by t-test and ANOVA. The results showed that experimental learning using individual work in the SSC program compared to traditional experimental learning was effective in improving science learning achievement. also it was indicated that the teachers could reduce their burden of preparing for classes and of school hours when they utilized the SSC laboratory learning program. Teachers could also actively support students' experimental activities in employing the program. Based on the results, we suggest that the development of the SSC laboratory learning program is meaningful in the sense that this program can help elementary schoolers to improve science learning achievements more than the existing traditional experimental methods.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.41 no.4
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• pp.658-672
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• 2022

The unique teaching and learning difficulties of speed-related units in elementary school science are mainly due to the student's lack of mathematical thinking ability and procedural knowledge on speed measurement, and curriculums and textbooks must be constructed with these in mind. To identify the implications of composing a new science curriculum and relevant textbooks, this study reviewed the structure and contents of the speed-related units of three curriculums from the 2007 revised curriculum to the 2015 revised curriculum and the resulting textbooks and examined their relevance in light of the literature. Results showed that the current content carries the risk of making students calculate only the speed of an object through a mechanical algorithm by memorization rather than grasp the multifaceted relation between traveled distance, duration time, and speed. Findings also highlighted the need to reorganize the curriculum and textbooks to offer students the opportunity to learn the meaning of speed step-by-step by visualizing materials such as double number lines and dealing with simple numbers that are easy to calculate and understand intuitively. In addition, this paper discussed the urgency of improving inquiry performance such as process skills by observing and measuring an actual object's movement, displaying it as a graph, and interpreting it rather than conducting data interpretation through investigation. Lastly, although the current curriculum and textbooks emphasize the connection with daily life in their application aspects, they also deal with dynamics-related content somewhat differently from kinematics, which is the main learning content of the unit. Hence, it is necessary to reorganize the contents focusing on cases related to speed so that students can grasp the concept of speed and use it in their everyday lives. With regard to the new curriculum and textbooks, this study proposes that students be provided the opportunity to systematically and deeply study core topics rather than exclude content that is difficult to learn and challenging to teach so that students realize the value of science and enjoy learning it.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.34 no.2
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• pp.291-305
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• 2010

The aim of this study was to survey the perceptions of the elementary school teachers on the smallscale chemistry(SSC) following its training session. The teachers participating in the survey were 266 teachers in the Gyeongnam province. They were given a questionnaire that focused on the nine areas of the SSC: Needs for the teacher training and its application, its benefits, issues of safety and danger as well as treatment of environmental pollution, its economic efficiency and the development of investigative skills. The designed questionnaire was checked by an authority, and the responses to each question were tallied and analyzed. The results are as follows. The biggest problems of the traditional experimental methods as rated by the teachers were, in the order of importance, the preparation time, the legal liability of teachers for the safety and accidents, financial issues, disposal of the experimental wastes and the lack of relevant data. Since most of the teachers had not experienced the SSC lab programs in the field, they responded positively to the questions of need for its introduction and training. The implementation of the experimental SSC lab programs should proceed in the following order: introduction into the textbook, teacher training program, after-school education and the invitation of instructors. The most useful materials for the SSC program were CDs, videos, books and various printed materials, in that order. The responses regarding benefits of the SSC program included its simplicity, convenience, time savings, diversity, qualitative and quantitative aspects, integration into the regular class and use of toys. In particular, the teachers mentioned the increased safety due to the small amount of experimental reagents needed and the durability of plastic instruments. The familarity from the use of everyday tools as well as easy access to and the low-cost of the instruments were other important benefits. The teachers in general rated the educational content of the program highly, but many also found it to be average. Some pointed out the lack of sufficient discussion due to the individual or pair groupings as a potential shortcoming. The potential for development of problem solving ability and improvement of skills was rated positively. The number of teacher who rated the development of creativity positively was just over the half. As for the area of improving investigative skills, many found its assessment difficult and confusing because of the lack of its systemic definition and categorization. Based on the findings of this study, I would like to recommend the application and a wider dissemination of the small-scale chemistry lab program into the elementary school science curriculum.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.3
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• pp.525-542
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• 2014

This study was performed to look into the difficulty of students in understanding science stories in 6th grade science textbooks and to analyze those factors. To do this, 6th grader (N=65) were selected from J Elementary School located in Gyeonggi-do Siheung-si as study subjects. 26 science stories in 6th grade science textbooks were classified by field and context (complement of knowledge, science history of scientists, science in life, cutting-edge science technology, environment issues) in which the characteristics were investigated and analyzed. Also, a survey about the difficulty in understanding science stories(26 items) was conducted(65 students) and a semi-structured interview was conducted for students to clarify the meaning of collected data from surveys(4 students). As result of analyzing surveys on science story context in science textbooks and interviews, 4 fields of 'energy,' 'matter,' 'life,' and 'earth' were evenly mentioned. Science in life and complement of science knowledge were mentions most for context and this had relation with the characteristic of science textbooks to provide many opportunities to apply learned knowledge in actual social issues. Reactions of students on science stories were mostly positive that they help studying science, but there was also difficulty in well understanding science stories. Difficulty of understanding context, problems of context suggesting methods, difficulty of science terminology, lack of interest, and etc. were analyzed as factors. Specific causes were mentioned to be description type class, unimportant context, lack of explanation on suggested context, problem of pictures by students.

• (The) Research of the performance art and culture
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• no.43
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• pp.203-228
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• 2021

This thesis examines the play education method shown in the elementary school textbook 'Enjoy Play'. If the educational methods of the curriculum other than plays were presented in the order of 'Understanding play - Appreciation of Works - Creation of Works', the method of drama education is presented sequentially in the order of 'Understanding play - Creation of Works - Appreciation of Works' in the order of 'Understanding play - Artwork - Appreciation' have. Even if such a curriculum considers the study linked to the subject of 'Plays', students may not feel the 'burden' of 'creation', and by simplifying the understanding of 'spoken language', it is rather the characteristic of 'Korean language'. It may also make it difficult for students to feel the attraction. In addition, empathy through the conflict situation of the play or comparison with the actual conflict is mainly presented through the translation of foreign works or the expression of a fairy tale and fantastic world that is far from reality, so the burden of inferring the right life problems can be confirmed. Theatrical expressions and plays and plays learned through textbooks are partially different depending on the educational goals to be achieved. The result of this study is that the course of textbooks for elementary and upper grades may correspond to the problem of expressing 'Plays', but it is regrettable in leading students to think about ways to solve life problems in detail through 'Plays'. It is also necessary to emphasize the importance of expression that makes students realize how to express themselves autonomously in the way of expressing their feelings, but on the other hand, on the other hand, it is necessary to share empathy with feelings first, understand these feelings, Therefore, it was suggested that training to infer expressions and emotions by learning individual expressions through methods of expressing emotions and a process of educating students to voluntarily accept shared emotions are also necessary. Sharing and expressing emotional emotions through 'play', and participation through cooperation and division of labor through the process of performing.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.327-344
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• 2011

This study is the first step for us toward improving high school students' capability of statistical inferences, such as obtaining and interpreting the confidence interval on the population mean that is currently learned in high school. We suggest 5 underlying concepts of 'discretion of contingency and inevitability', 'discretion of induction and deduction', 'likelihood principle', 'variability of a statistic' and 'statistical model', those are necessary to appreciate statistical inferences as a reliable arguing tools in spite of its occasional erroneous conclusions. We assume those 5 concepts above are to be gradually developing in their school periods and Korean mathematics textbooks of grades 1-12 were analyzed. Followings were found. For the right choice of solving methodology of the given problem, no elementary textbook but a few high school textbooks describe its difference between the contingent circumstance and the inevitable one. Formal definitions of population and sample are not introduced until high school grades, so that the developments of critical thoughts on the reliability of inductive reasoning could not be observed. On the contrary of it, strong emphasis lies on the calculation stuff of the sample data without any inference on the population prospective based upon the sample. Instead of the representative properties of a random sample, more emphasis lies on how to get a random sample. As a result of it, the fact that 'the random variability of the value of a statistic which is calculated from the sample ought to be inherited from the randomness of the sample' could neither be noticed nor be explained as well. No comparative descriptions on the statistical inferences against the mathematical(deductive) reasoning were found. Few explanations on the likelihood principle and its probabilistic applications in accordance with students' cognitive developmental growth were found. It was hard to find the explanation of a random variability of statistics and on the existence of its sampling distribution. It is worthwhile to explain it because, nevertheless obtaining the sampling distribution of a particular statistic, like a sample mean, is a very difficult job, mere noticing its existence may cause a drastic change of understanding in a statistical inference.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.139-152
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to provide some suggestions for future improvement of scientific inquiry activities in Korean elementary science textbook. The modified framework of Lee(2005) and Millar et al.(1998) was used to compare inquiry activities in the Korean and Singaporean science textbooks. The results of this study are as follows: Korean text books have more activities than Singapore's, but both countries have similar time allotment for science classes. In the area of 'inquiry process skill', Singapore is more balanced in 'Basic inquiry process skills' and 'Integrated inquiry process skills' than Korea. Singapore's integrated inquiry rate is also higher than Korea's. Next the results of comparing leaning objectives to scientific inquiry activities shows that Korean text books tend to focus on 'contents objectives', while Singapore's text books focus on balancing 'contents objectives' and 'process objectives'. Korean science textbooks encourage students to communicate the results of experiments but in most case these communication activities are actually not performed. Lastly Korea and Singapore have low degree of openness in inquiry activities. Remarkably 'Suggest questions' are totally conducted by teachers. This study implies that Korean science textbooks should have lower amounts of inquiry activities to accomodate enough time for communication about results. Next we need to make balance not only 'Basic inquiry process skills' and 'Integrated inquiry process skills' but also 'Content objectives' and 'Process objectives'. Lastly we need to make student to be the leader in science classes through encouraging them to plan procedures for experiments and to discover results by themselves.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.42 no.3
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• pp.371-389
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• 2018

This study focuses on the fact that students and teachers commonly have difficulty in 'selecting the topic' in many activities including student-led research that is conducted from topic selection to the drawing of conclusion. The purpose of this study is to develop a manual for science teaching research. The instructional manuals of 4 stages were developed based on practical knowledge that can be implemented in the actual class through previous research and literature. Each stage is composed of , , , and . In the third stage, students are expected to find scientific questions and develop them into research topics through detailed class research on newspaper articles, scientific magazines, traditional knowledge, proverbs, daily life, and textbook experiments. In the experimental group, the final research topic was selected through a variety of sources such as textbook experiments, proverbs, YouTube images, newspaper articles, individual WHY NOTEs, and understood the conditions of the scientific research topic and expressed the variables in the research title. However, in the control group, some students did not consider the research scope of the selected research subjects to be specific or not to be able to study at their level. As a result of giving the students as much autonomy as possible, many groups did not fully understand the previous research and submitted it. Based on the results of this study, it can be concluded that development and use of a 'topic selection stage' centered practice manual for general high school teachers would not only improve the students' abilities to discover solutions to scientific questions, but it will also help shift their attitudes towards science in a positive direction.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.42 no.4
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• pp.417-428
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• 2022

This study analyzed the frequency and level of scientific practices presented in secondary science textbooks. A total of 1,378 student activities presented in 14 middle school science textbooks and 5 high school integrated science textbooks were analyzed, using the definition and level of scientific practice suggested in the NGSS. Findings show that most student activities focus on three practices. Compared to the textbooks for the previous science curriculum, the practice of 'obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information' was more emphasized, reflecting societal changes due to ICT development. However, the practice of 'asking a question', which can be an important element of student-led science learning, was still rarely found in textbooks, and 'developing and using models', 'using math and computational thinking' and 'arguing based on evidence' were not addressed much. The practices were mostly elementary school level except for the practice of 'constructing explanations'. Such repeated exposures to a few and low level of practices mean that many future citizens would be led to a naïve understanding of science. The findings imply that it is necessary to emphasize various practices tailored to the level of students. In the upcoming revision of the science curriculum, it is necessary to provide the definition of practices that are not currently specified and the expected level of each practice so that the curriculum can provide sufficient guidance for textbook writing. These efforts should be supported by benchmarking of overseas science curriculum and research that explore students' ability and teachers' understanding of scientific practices.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.204-217
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• 2008

This study analyzed the inquiry activities appearing in the astronomy sections of elementary, middle and highschool level science textbooks according to the five essential features of inquiry in the classroom as proposed by the National Science Education Standards (NRC, 2000), and SAPA (Science-A Process Approach). On the basis of this analysis, it is clear that the science textbook inquiry activities released the limitation to meet the goal of science education, namely scientific literacy, as it has been laid out by the 7th Science Educational Curriculum. This study revealed that the features of scientific inquiry which are most frequently used in the astronomy sections of science textbooks are 'data collection' and 'form explanation', whereas the features of 'oriented-question', 'evaluate explanations' and 'communicate and justify' rarely appeared. The analysis of inquiry activities by SAPA showed that the basic inquiry skills of 'observing', 'communicating' and 'manipulating materials' were used with increasing frequency according to grade level, and the integrated skills of 'investigating', 'creating models', 'interpreting data' and 'experimenting' were more emphasized in the textbooks. Therefore, it is suggested that students be provided with more opportunities to experience all the features of scientific inquiry and scientific processes as envisioned by the 7th Science Educational Curriculum in order to achieve the stated goal of scientific literacy. Science educators should be required to develop new lesson modules which will allow students to experience authentic scientific inquiry. It is crucial for science teachers to reflect upon and develop their understanding and teaching strategies regarding scientific inquiry through professional development programs in teacher education.