• Research in Mathematical Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.137-173
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• 2021

Research and national standards, such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) in the United States, promote the development and implementation of K-12 interdisciplinary curricula integrating the disciplines of science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and computer science (STEM+CS). However, little research has explored how teachers provide epistemic support in interdisciplinary contexts or the factors that inform teachers' epistemic support in STEM+CS activities. The goal of this paper is to articulate how interdisciplinary instruction complicates epistemic knowledge and resources needed for teachers' instructional decision-making. Toward these ends, this paper builds upon existing models of teachers' instructional decision-making in individual STEM+CS disciplines to highlight specific challenges and opportunities of interdisciplinary approaches on classroom epistemic supports. First, we offer considerations as to how teachers can provide epistemic support for students to engage in disciplinary practices across mathematics, science, engineering, and computer science. We then support these considerations using examples from our studies in elementary classrooms using integrated STEM+CS curriculum materials. We focus on an elementary school context, as elementary teachers necessarily integrate disciplines as part of their teaching practice when enacting NGSS-aligned curricula. Further, we argue that as STEM+CS interdisciplinary curricula in the form of NGSS-aligned, project-based units become more prevalent in elementary settings, careful attention and support needs to be given to help teachers not only engage their students in disciplinary practices across STEM+CS disciplines, but also to understand why and how these disciplinary practices should be used. Implications include recommendations for the design of professional learning experiences and curriculum materials.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.45-61
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to explore students' epistemic goals and considerations in designing an experiment task and to investigate how a shift in the students' epistemology affected their argumentation. Four 7th grade students were selected as a focus group. According to the results, when they designed their own experiment, their epistemic goal was 'scientific sense-making' and their epistemic considerations - the perception of the nature of the knowledge product was 'this experiment should explain how something happened', the perception of the justification was 'we need to use our interpretation of the data' and the perception of the audience was 'constructor' - contributed to designing their experiment actively. When students tried to select one argument, their epistemic goal shifted to 'winning a debate', showing 'my experiment is better than the others' with the perception of the audience, 'competitor'. Consequently, students only deprecated the limits of different experiment so that they did not explore the meaning of each experiment design deeply. Eventually, student A's experiment design was selected due to time restrictions. When they elaborated upon their result, their epistemic goal shifted to 'scientific sensemaking', reviewing 'how this experiment design is scientifically valid' through scientific justification - we need justification to make members accept it - acting as 'cooperator'. Consequently, all members engaged in a productive argumentation that led to the development of the group result. This study lays the foundation for future work on understanding students' epistemic goals and considerations to prompt productive argumentation in science classrooms.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.47-57
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• 2021

This study aims to explore the epistemic goals that pre-service elementary teachers can construct in their biology-related knowledge construction activities, how these goals are constructed, and how the shaping of the knowledge construction activities around the goals was afforded or constrained. The research participants were 26 pre-service teachers, divided into 11 groups of two or three to engage in the activity. Their discussions and products were collected and used as data for this study. The analysis revealed that the teachers constructed three types of epistemic goals: making sense of natural phenomena, proposing the most effective course of action, and proposing solutions to problems based on their causes. Construction of different types of goals depended on the conclusions the pre-service teachers expected to draw based on the explored natural phenomena. It was found that the elicitation of the pre-service teachers' epistemic goals could facilitate their shaping of the knowledge construction activity as an evidence-based justification. The participants planned the construction of mechanistic explanations of natural phenomena with the epistemic goals of 'making sense of natural phenomena' or 'proposing solutions to problems based on their causes.' However, enacting their knowledge construction plans with sophisticated epistemic features was constrained due to the limited resources available. This study can contribute to developing instructional strategies that facilitate learners' epistemic agency and addressing epistemic agency in the development of pre-service teacher education methods.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.541-553
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between epistemic goals, epistemic considerations and complexity of reasoning of science high school students in an open inquiry and to explore the context on how open inquiry compares with the characteristics of an authentic scientific inquiry. Two teams were selected as focus groups and a case study was conducted. The findings are as follows: First, the contexts, such as 'sharing the value for the phenomenon understanding, reflection on the value of the research, task characteristics that require collaboration and consensus, and sufficient communication opportunities,' promote epistemic goals and considerations. On the other hand, contexts such as 'lack of opportunity for critical review of related literature and environmental constraints' lowered epistemic sides. Second, epistemic goals and considerations influenced the reasoning complexity. The goal of 'scientific sense making' led to reasoning that pose testable hypotheses based on students' own questions. The high justification considerations led to purposely focusing attention to the control designs and developing creative experimental know-how. The high audience considerations led to defending their findings through argumentation and suggesting future research. On the other hand, the goal of 'doing the lesson' and the low justification considerations led to reasoning that did not interpret the meaning of the data and did not control the limit of experiment. The low audience considerations led to reasoning that did not actively defend their findings and not suggest future research. The results of this study suggest that guidance should provide communication and critical review opportunities.

• Journal of the Computational Structural Engineering Institute of Korea
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• v.27 no.6
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• pp.605-613
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• 2014

Epistemic uncertainty, the lack of knowledge, is often more important than aleatory uncertainty, variability, in estimating reliability of a system. While the probability theory is widely used for modeling aleatory uncertainty, there is no dominant approach to model epistemic uncertainty. Different approaches have been developed to handle epistemic uncertainties using various theories, such as probability theory, fuzzy sets, evidence theory and possibility theory. However, since these methods are developed from different statistics theories, it is difficult to interpret the result from one method to the other. The goal of this paper is to compare different methods in handling epistemic uncertainty in the view point of calculating the probability of failure. In particular, four different methods are compared; the probability method, the combined distribution method, interval analysis method, and the evidence theory. Characteristics of individual methods are compared in the view point of reliability analysis.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.495-507
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• 2023

Teachers often encounter challenges in supporting students with question generation and the development of investigation plans in sensemaking activities. A primary challenge stems from the ambiguity surrounding how students apply their conceptual understandings in this process. This study aims to explore how students apply their conceptual understandings to generate questions and design investigation processes in a sensemaking activity. Two types of student group activities were identified and examined for comparison: One focused on designing a process to achieve the goal of sensemaking, and the other focused on following the step-by-step scientific inquiry procedures. The design of investigation process in each group was concretized with epistemic criteria used for evaluating the designs. The students' use of conceptual understandings in discussions around each was then examined. The findings reveal three epistemic criteria employed in generating questions and designing investigation processes. First, the students examined the interestingness of natural phenomena, using their conceptual understandings of the structure and function of entities within natural phenomena to identify a target phenomenon. This process involved verifying their existing knowledge to determine the need for new understanding. The second criterion was the feasibility of investigating specific variables with the given resources. Here, the students relied on their conceptual understandings of the structure and function of entities corresponding to each variable to assess whether each variable could be investigated. The third epistemic criterion involved examining whether the factors of target phenomena expressed in everyday terms could be translated into observable variables capable of explaining the phenomena. Conceptual understandings related to the function of entities were used to translate everyday expressions into observable variables and vice versa. The students' conceptual understanding of a comprehensive mechanism was used to connect the elements of the phenomenon and use the elements as potential factors to explain the target phenomenon. In the case where the students focused on carrying out step-by-step procedures, data collection feasibility was the sole epistemic criterion guiding the design. This study contributes to elucidating how the process of a sensemaking activity can be developed in the science classroom and developing conceptual supports for designing sensemaking activities that align with students' perspectives.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Systems Engineering
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.27-37
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• 2020

The Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011 revealed some vulnerabilities of existing Nuclear Power Plants (NPPs) under extended Station Blackout (SBO) accident conditions. One of the key Severe Accident Management (SAM) strategies developed post Fukushima accident is the In-Vessel Retention (IVR) Strategy which aims to retain the structural integrity of the Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV). RELAP/SCDAPSIM/MOD3.4 is selected to predict the thermal-hydraulic response of APR1400 undergoing an extended SBO. To assess the effectiveness of the IVR strategy, it is essential to quantify the underlying uncertainties. In this work, both the epistemic and aleatory uncertainties are considered to identify the success window of the IVR strategy. A set of in-vessel relevant phenomena were identified based on Phenomena Identification and Ranking Tables (PIRT) developed for severe accidents and propagated through the thermal-hydraulic model using Wilk's sampling method. For this work, a Systems Engineering (SE) approach is applied to facilitate the development process of assessing the reliability and robustness of the APR1400 IVR strategy. Specifically, the Kossiakoff SE method is used to identify the requirements, functions and physical architecture, and to develop a design verification and validation plan. Using the SE approach provides a systematic tool to successfully achieve the research goal by linking each requirement to a verification or validation test with predefined success criteria at each stage of the model development. The developed model identified the conditions necessary for successful implementation of the IVR strategy which maintains the vessel integrity and prevents a melt-through.