• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.24 no.6
• /
• pp.1158-1172
• /
• 2004

This study searched secondary school students' epistemological views and ontological views about nature and the root causes of such their views. The subjects were 156 secondary school students and data were gathered by the questionnaire developed based on preceding researches. As a result, many secondary school students had epistemological views of unknowable nature. There were various root causes of their epistemological views such as regularity and harmony of nature, predictable and circular natural phenomenon, causation, the relation between human and nature. On the other hand, a lot of secondary school students had ontological view of supernatural nature. Their religious beliefs were very powerful influence their supernatural ontological views. The nature is the object of science and the physical world. Because those views supply science educators basic backgrounds how leaners understand science class, secondary school students' epistemological views and ontological views are precious information. From now on, it is necessary to study relations between students' epistemological views and ontological views and their science class processes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.35 no.1
• /
• pp.15-25
• /
• 2015

This study examined pre-service secondary physics teachers' epistemological beliefs about scientific knowledge, science learning, and science teaching in two different science content topics, Lamarckism and the impetus theory. Two sets of open-ended questionnaires, for each of the topics respectively, were developed in the same format. The pre-service teachers completed the questionnaires at one month intervals. The beliefs were analyzed in two dimensions, knowledge justification and knowledge change for each belief area. The findings show that the majority of pre-service teachers held sophisticated epistemological beliefs about scientific knowledge regardless of content topics. On the other hand, more pre-service teachers exhibited sophisticated beliefs about science learning in the context impetus theory than Lamarckism. In the area of science teaching, the majority of pre-service teachers demonstrated a sophisticated view in knowledge justification but a naive view in knowledge change. When consistency across science topics and belief areas were examined, few pre-service teachers held consistent epistemological beliefs across all topics and areas. The difference in the levels of sophistication in belief areas showed that the pre-service teachers did not connect their epistemological beliefs about science knowledge to their ideas about science teaching and learning. This disconnection seems to make the consistency across topics and areas complicated. The difference in epistemological beliefs about science learning and teaching between two science topics need further inquiry. Implications for teacher education are offered.

• Journal of Educational Research in Mathematics
• /
• v.23 no.2
• /
• pp.237-252
• /
• 2013

The philosophy of science of Bachelard is introduced mainly with epistemological obstacles in the discussions within mathematics education. In his philosophy, epistemological obstacles are connected with the dialectical developments of science. Science progresses through generalization of concepts and theories by negating things which were recognized as obvious. These processes start with ruptures against the existing knowledge. Epistemological obstacles are failure in keeping distance with the existing knowledge when reorganization is needed. This concept means that there are the inherent difficulties in the processes of concept formation. Finally I compare the view of Bachelard on the developments of science and the 'interiorization-condensation-objectification' scheme of reflexive abstraction in mathematics education and discuss the inherent difficulties in the learning mathematics.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.21 no.5
• /
• pp.795-821
• /
• 2001

This Qualitative study investigated a preservice teacher's developing views of learning with the influence of constructivist epistemology taught in the Math, Science, and Technology Education (MSAT) Master of Education (M. Ed.) preservice teacher education program. The MSAT teacher education program employs constructivist aspects of teacher education and generates applications of constructivism to the practice of teaching, as revealed by faculty interview data. It is important at this point to emphasize that there are significant epistemological and ontological differences between different versions of educational constructivism (i.e., individual, radical, and social constructivism) and that these differences imply different pedagogical practices. For the 16 preservice teachers included in a larger study, the epistemological and ontological characteristics for each teacher's developing views of learning were identified through four in-depth interviews. Data from interviews were used to construct a constructivist profile for each preservice teacher's views of learning (i.e., a profile containing ontological beliefs, epistemological commitments, and pedagogical beliefs). Of the sixteen participants in the larger study, five significantly changed ontological and epistemological beliefs and eleven did not. Profile changes for the five who did change also resulted in changes in their conceptions of science teaching and learning (CSTL). In this article, one of the five teachers case was presented with rich quotes. This case study documents how a preservice teacher transferred his ontological and epistemological beliefs to his pedagogical beliefs and maintained the consistency between his philosophical beliefs and CSTL. It also demonstrated implications that changes in components for an educational constructivist profile have for a preservice teacher's view of himself as teacher. Data indicated the possibility that a constructivist-oriented preservice teacher education program can influence students' conceptions of science teaching and learning by explicitly introducing constructivism as an epistemology rather than as a specific method of instruction. Implications for both instructional practices of teacher education programmes and research are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.54 no.5
• /
• pp.643-649
• /
• 2010

In this study, the relationships among high school students' epistemological views on theory and data, science process skills, the perceptions of the preferred laboratory learning environment and attitudes toward laboratory work were investigated. The results indicated that science process skills, all subcategories of the perceptions of the preferred laboratory learning environment (student cohesiveness, open-endedness, integration, rule clarity, and material environment) and attitudes toward laboratory work were significantly correlated with epistemological views on theory and data. The results of multiple regression analysis revealed that science process skills, open-endedness and material environment and attitudes toward laboratory work significantly predicted epistemological views on theory and data.

• Lingua Humanitatis
• /
• v.2 no.1
• /
• pp.7-42
• /
• 2002

This paper reexamines ideas about linguistic relativity in the light of new interest in the theoretical climate. The original idea is based on the incommensurability of the semantic structures of different languages. On this view, language, thought, culture are deeply interconnected, so that each language might be associated with it a distinctive world view. Throughout this work I utilize the historico-epistemological standpoint to dissect the conceptual structure of this principle. In the introduction I will of for a justification of choice of the theme. Section 1 will address some essential definition of the linguistic principle and insist on the necessity to elaborate a typological spectrum of relativism and universalism. In the second section some important landmarks of linguistic relativity were marked from Plato to Humboldt via Condillac and Herder. 1 will subdivide the relativity hypothesis into 3 theses which are interlated. In the final section the epistemological structure of the linguistic principle will be analysed in some detail by providing my exposition of Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. By way of conclusion I will present the works of Wierzbicka who demonstrated the lexicons of different languages suggest different conceptual universes. By rejecting analytical tools derived from the English language she proposed instead a natural semantic metalanguage based on lexical universals, which is made up of universal semantic primitives. In this paper we attempted to construct a general problematics of linguistic relativity, focolizing on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. We devided this very problematic question into its ontological and epistemological dimensions. In particular the ambivalance of Whorf's relativity is discussed in some detail. Also, an archeological survey of this subtle question on the relation between language, thinking and culture was provided. (from Aristotle to Humboldt, via Condillac and Nitzche). In conclusion this investigation underlines the necessity of preparing the cultural linguistics to enlarge the scope of contempory linguistics.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.37 no.2
• /
• pp.173-187
• /
• 2018

The purpose of this study is to clarify the specific terms of epistemic and epistemological by reviewing the literature on epistemological understanding of science learning, examine the necessity of epistemic discourse analysis based on the view of social epistemology, and provide an exemplar of practical epistemology analysis for elementary children's science learning. The review was conducted in terms of meaning and terminology about epistemic or epistemological approach to science learning, epistemology of/for science, and methodologies for epistemic discourse analysis. As an alternative way of epistemic discourse analysis in science classroom I employed practical epistemology analysis (by Wickman), evidence-explanation continuum (by Duschl), and DREEC diagram (by Maeng et al.). The methods were administered to an elementary science class for the third grade where children observed sedimentary rocks. Through the outcomes of analysis I sought to understand the processes how children collected data by observation, identified evidence, and constructed explanations about rocks. During the process of practical epistemology analysis the cases of four categories, such as encounter, stand-fast, gap, and relation, were identified. The sequence of encounter, stand fast, gap, and relation showed how children observed sedimentary rocks and how they came to learn the difference among the rocks. The epistemic features of children's observation discourse, although different from scientists' discourses during their own practices, showed data-only conversation, evidence-driven conversation, or explanation inducing conversation. Thus I argue even elementary children are able to construct their own knowledge and their epistemic practices are productive.

• Journal of Korean Society of Rural Planning
• /
• v.13 no.2
• /
• pp.39-49
• /
• 2007

The objective of this paper is to investigate the development of Silhak as a Korean epistemology, to investigate the implications of Silhak in Korean society, and to discover further environmental implications. The main discussion of this paper concerns with the epistemology of environmental philosophy. Epistemology is based on the justification of certain knowledge and social philosophy. Epistemology, from the Greek words episteme (knowledge) and logos (word/ speech) is the branch of philosophy concerned with theories of the sources, nature, and limits of knowledge. Since the seventeenth century, epistemology has been one of the fundamental themes of philosophers, who were necessarily obliged to coordinate the theory of knowledge with the development of scientific thought. It is a general belief that Western ideology is substantially embedded in Eastern ideology due to physical and metaphysical colonial involvement. We argue that ecological crisis may be resulted from western epistemological mechanical view, thus we suggests a Korean epistemology as an alternative. In this paper, we seek possibility of epistemological alternative of nature in the Korean traditional epistemology incorporating the epistemology of Sung confucianism and The Silhak.

• SUVANNABHUMI
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.7-33
• /
• 2021

With a view to contributing to the epistemological and methodological debates in Southeast Asian Studies, the aim of this paper is to examine critically the epistemic concepts and approaches in the social sciences and then to seek an epistemic reflexivity and its potential methodological applications to Southeast Asian Studies. Although the field of social sciences has attempted to search for a means of tackling the ontological and epistemological dilemmas in its major paradigms, Southeast Asian Studies still demands a more 'actor-centered' epistemic account of reflexive interaction between actors and social structures. Bearing in mind the need for a more 'actor-centered' epistemic approach, this paper continues to discuss the 'epistemic reflexivity' in the social sciences and its potential applications to Southeast Asian Studies. In this paper, I will consider 'epistemic reflexivity' as an alternative methodological orientation. It emerges as interlinked with the ontological standpoint of what is called 'reflexive approaches' and its application to the detailed 'reflexive methodology' which I am proposing in this paper. In doing so, this paper discusses the autobiographical experiences of the author arising from his ethnographic field research in North Sulawesi, Indonesia and their implication for a reflexive methodology in Southeast Asian Studies. In conclusion, the paper argues that we need a 'more actor-centered' epistemic framework to compensate for the epistemological and methodological dilemmas in the social sciences and the alternative framework will equip Southeast Asian Studies with a reflexive methodology relevant to the life-dynamics of the social world in the process of developing its inquiries, methodological technics, analysis, and validation.

• Lingua Humanitatis
• /
• v.5
• /
• pp.7-36
• /
• 2003

In this paper I am arguing in favour of more vigilance on the part of the Korean linguistics' melieu and, if deemed necessary, a more solid epistemological foundation of the Korean Linguistics. The purpose of this work consist in providing some epistemological inquiry on the major orientations and tendencies which are manifested in the reception of western linguistic theories. I might call this point of view as a critical approach to the philosophy and history of Korean linguistics. In the first section, I gave a short description of the model of the linguistic historiography which can be applied to the history of the Korean linguistics. In the second section, I am concerned with the comparative epistemology of the development of linguistic ideas produced in the West and East. In the final section, I made some critical reflections on the limits of Korean linguistics.