• Title/Summary/Keyword: epistemology for science learning

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A Study of Philosophical Basis of Preconceptions and Relationship Between Misconceptions and Science Education (선입관(先入觀)의 철학적(哲學的) 배경(背景) 및 오인(誤認)과 과학학습(科學學習)의 관계(關係))

  • Cho, Hee-Hyung
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.34-43
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    • 1984
  • Since the study of student's preconceptions and their effects on the learning of relevant subjects became an influential research area with high significance, the research area bas mainly been concerned by science educators. However, it was not until the year of 1983 that the area received recognition of various fields other than science education. The recognition was given by the Scientific American when it published a paper reporting a misconceptions in mechanics. Studies concerning misconceptions primarily interested in the following questions: What kinds of theoretical bases do preconceptions or misconceptions have? What are the sources of those conceptions? How are the misconceptions changed into or improved to scientific concepts? What are the efficient teaching methods appropriate for reducing the number of the misconceptions after instruction? Those questions are partly answered by experimental psychology and by philosophy of science, especially epistemology. Therefore, the paper will examine the theoretical background for and the sources of the misconceptions through literature review. Then, a few learning and teaching theories currently carrying great prestige in educational practice will be interpreted in terms of the knowledge of preconceptions or misconceptions.

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News Consumption and Behavior of Young Adults and the Issue of Fake News

  • Nazari, Zeinab;Oruji, Mozhgan;Jamali, Hamid R.
    • Journal of Information Science Theory and Practice
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    • v.10 no.2
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    • pp.1-16
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    • 2022
  • This study aimed to understand young adults' attitudes concerning news and news resources they consumed, and how they encounter the fake news phenomenon. A qualitative approach was used with semi-structured interviews with 41 young adults (aged 20-30) in Tehran, Iran. Findings revealed that about half of the participants favored social media, and a smaller group used traditional media and only a few maintained that traditional and modern media should be used together. News quality was considered to be lower on social media than in traditional news sources. Furthermore, young adults usually followed the news related to the issues which had impact on their daily life, and they typically tended to share news. To detect fake news, they checked several media to compare the information; and profiteering and attracting audiences' attention were the most important reasons for the existence of fake news. This is the first qualitative study for understanding news consumption behavior of young adults in a politicized society.

Theoretical Background of Constructivist Epistemology (구성주의 인식론의 이론적 배경)

  • Kwak, Young-Sun
    • Journal of the Korean earth science society
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    • v.22 no.5
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    • pp.427-447
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    • 2001
  • Science teachers need to understand what science is, how students learn, how to teach science effectively, and the rationale for their teaching methods. Along this line, this article discusses constructivist learning theory as an alternative to the traditional pedagogy and the origin of various versions of constructivism. Constructivism is defined and used in a variety of contexts including philosophical constructivism, constructivist research paradigm, sociological constructivism, and educational constructivism. Educational constructivism (or psychological constructivism) can be divided into three distinct versions (i.e., individual, radical, and social constructivism) depending on unique ontological and epistemological beliefs that underlie each version. Each version of educational constructivism supports different conceptions of science teaching and learning that are consistent with its specific ontological and epistemological beliefs. In this article, the main tenets of each version of educational constructivism are examined with regard to ontological beliefs, epistemological commitments, and pedagogical beliefs. In addition, two major criticisms on constructivist pedagogy as well as implications for research methods for each version are also discussed.

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Types and Themes of Mobile Application Contents in Primary Science Learning Derived From Teachers' Perspectives (교사의 관점에서 제안된 초등 과학 영역의 모바일 앱 콘텐츠 유형 및 주제)

  • So, Hyo-Jeong;Yoon, Hye-Gyoung;Choi, Hyungshin
    • The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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    • v.16 no.3
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    • pp.488-497
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    • 2016
  • Given the potential of mobile applications to create new learning opportunities beyond the prevalent use of digital textbooks and Internet lectures, this study aims to derive types and themes of mobile application content that can be effectively integrated with the school curricula. Twenty primary school teachers participated in this study that examines teachers' perceptions about the advantages and disadvantages of printed and digital textbooks' modality, the advantages and disadvantages of mobile learning, and the themes relevant to develop mobile applications. Findings indicate that it is necessary to develop activity-centered applications for vertical use rather than theme-centered applications for horizontal use. In addition, while most ideas derived from teachers center on multimedia access, there was lack of ideas that leverage the affordances of mobile devices for collaborative interaction and location-awareness. Lastly, to promote the diffusion of mobile learning in school environments, this study suggests the need to overcome teachers' epistemology that perceives mobilization against inquiry activities.

Can Definitions Contribute to Alternative Conceptions?: A Meta-Study Approach

  • Wong, Chee Leong;Yap, Kueh Chin
    • 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.

A Study on Development of Instructional Models for Secondary School Science (중등 과학교과의 수업모형 개발에 관한 연구)

  • Cho, Hee-Hyung;Lee, Moon-Won;Cho, Yung-Shin;Kang, Soon-Hee;Park, Jong-Yoon;Hur, Myung;Kim, Chan-Jong;Song, Jin-Woong
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.14 no.1
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    • pp.1-11
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    • 1994
  • The primary goal of this study was to suggest the ways of developing various types of instructional models which could be effectively used for science lessons in secondary schools. In order to attain this goal this study used literature review as its main method. This study was carried out through the process of three steps as follows: The conceptual relationship among instruction. teaching, and learning was examined. Then the general instructional models built on the traditional epistemology and psychology were reviewed and analyzed in terms of their characteristics and limits. The nature of instructional models developed for science education in secondary schools were analyzed The essential features and limits of the models were discussed in relation to their theoretical background and applicabilities to actual practices of science education. The implications for science learning were drawn from modem philosophy of science, which were used for developing instructional model. The strategies for using the new instructional model was also suggested. One general model of science instruction was given as an example applicable for science classrooms. The model was composed of appropriate teaching strategies and processes.

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The World as Seen from Venice (1205-1533) as a Case Study of Scalable Web-Based Automatic Narratives for Interactive Global Histories

  • NANETTI, Andrea;CHEONG, Siew Ann
    • Asian review of World Histories
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    • v.4 no.1
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    • pp.3-34
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    • 2016
  • This introduction is both a statement of a research problem and an account of the first research results for its solution. As more historical databases come online and overlap in coverage, we need to discuss the two main issues that prevent 'big' results from emerging so far. Firstly, historical data are seen by computer science people as unstructured, that is, historical records cannot be easily decomposed into unambiguous fields, like in population (birth and death records) and taxation data. Secondly, machine-learning tools developed for structured data cannot be applied as they are for historical research. We propose a complex network, narrative-driven approach to mining historical databases. In such a time-integrated network obtained by overlaying records from historical databases, the nodes are actors, while thelinks are actions. In the case study that we present (the world as seen from Venice, 1205-1533), the actors are governments, while the actions are limited to war, trade, and treaty to keep the case study tractable. We then identify key periods, key events, and hence key actors, key locations through a time-resolved examination of the actions. This tool allows historians to deal with historical data issues (e.g., source provenance identification, event validation, trade-conflict-diplomacy relationships, etc.). On a higher level, this automatic extraction of key narratives from a historical database allows historians to formulate hypotheses on the courses of history, and also allow them to test these hypotheses in other actions or in additional data sets. Our vision is that this narrative-driven analysis of historical data can lead to the development of multiple scale agent-based models, which can be simulated on a computer to generate ensembles of counterfactual histories that would deepen our understanding of how our actual history developed the way it did. The generation of such narratives, automatically and in a scalable way, will revolutionize the practice of history as a discipline, because historical knowledge, that is the treasure of human experiences (i.e. the heritage of the world), will become what might be inherited by machine learning algorithms and used in smart cities to highlight and explain present ties and illustrate potential future scenarios and visionarios.

Science Teachers' Diagnoses of Cooperative Learning in the Field (과학교사들이 진단한 과학과 협동학습의 실태)

  • Kwak, Young-Sun
    • Journal of the Korean earth science society
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    • v.22 no.5
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    • pp.360-376
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    • 2001
  • This qualitative research investigated in-service science teachers' perceptions about cooperative learning and their perceived barriers in implementing cooperative learning in their classrooms. The underlying premise for cooperative learning is founded in constructivist epistemology. Cooperative learning (CL) is presented as an alternative frame to the current educational system which emphasizes content memorization and individual student performance through competition. An in-depth interview was conducted with 18 in-service science teachers who enrolled in the first-class teacher certification program during 2001 summer vacation. These secondary school teachers's interview data were analyzed and categorized into three areas: teachers' definition of cooperative learning, issues with implementing cooperative learning in classrooms, and teachers' and students' responses towards cooperative learning. Each of these areas are further subdivided into 10 themes: teachers' perceived meaning of cooperative learning, the importance of talk in learning, when to use cooperative learning, how to end a cooperative class, how to group students for cooperative learning, obstacles to implementing cooperative learning, students' reactions to cooperative learning, teachers' reasons for choosing (not choosing) student-centered approaches to learning/teaching, characteristics of teachers who use cooperative learning methods, and teachers' reasons for resisting cooperative learning. Detailed descriptions of the teachers' responses and discussion on each category are provided. For the development and implementation of CL in more classrooms, there should be changes and supports in the following five areas: (1) teachers have to examine their pedagogical beliefs toward constructivist perspectives, (2) teacher (re)education programs have to provide teachers with cooperative learning opportunities in methods courses, (3) students' understanding of their changed roles (4) supports in light of curriculum materials and instructional resources, (5) supports in terms of facilities and administrators. It's important to remember that cooperative learning is not a panacea for all instructional problems. It's only one way of teaching and learning, useful for specific kinds of teaching goals and especially relevant for classrooms with a wide mix of student academic skills. Suggestions for further research are also provided.

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Analysis of Enacted Curriculum through Classroom Observation of Integrated Science Teaching in 2015 Revised Curriculum (2015개정 통합과학 수업관찰을 통한 실행된 교육과정 분석)

  • Kwak, Youngsun;Shin, Youngjoon
    • Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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    • v.39 no.3
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    • pp.379-388
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    • 2019
  • The purpose of this study is to derive implications for support plans for the settlement of the Integrated Science subject based on observations and analyses of integrated science lessons implemented in schools since 2018. For this purpose, we observed and analyzed the lessons for the same achievement standard [10 Integrated Science 07-01] implemented by four science teachers with different science majors. The features of integrated science classes were analyzed in light of curriculum reconstruction, science competency development, learner-centered participatory instruction, and process-centered evaluation aspects. For example, in terms of curriculum reconstruction, science teachers have been reorganizing achievement standards into three/four lessons, optimizing learning contents based on core concepts, and helping students' understanding of cross-cutting concepts between science areas. Regarding science competency development, teachers focused their instruction on students' cultivation of diverse science competencies closely related to the achievement standard and development of the epistemology of science. In addition, teachers emphasized student activities and teachers' role as facilitator of learning to create learner-centered participatory classes, as well as assessment during lessons with feedbacks, etc. Based on the results, we suggested and discussed ways to support the settlement of the integrated science curriculum including the need for a teacher learning community, support for process-centered assessment, and the need to develop an authentic integrated science curriculum.

Development of the ENACT Model for Cultivating Social Responsibility of College Students in STEM Fields (이공계 대학생의 사회적 책임감 함양을 위한 ENACT 모형의 개발과 교육적 함의)

  • Lee, Hyunju;Choi, Yuhyun;Nam, Chang-Hoon;Ok, Seung-Yong;Shim, Sungok Serena;Hwang, Yohan;Kim, Gahyoung
    • Journal of Engineering Education Research
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    • v.23 no.6
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    • pp.3-16
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    • 2020
  • This study aims to introduce the ENACT model, which is a systematic teaching-learning model for cultivating social responsibility of science and engineering college students, and to discuss its educational implications. For the development of the ENACT model, we conducted extensive literature reviews on RRI, STEM education, and science and technology studies (STS). In addition, we examined exemplary overseas education programs emphasizing social responsibility of scientists/engineers and citizens. The ENACT model consists of five steps; 1) Engage in SSIs, 2) Navigate SSIs, 3) Anticipate consequences, 4) Conduct scientific and engineering practice, and 5) Take action. This model links Socioscientific Issues (SSI) education with engineering education, dividing the major elements of social responsibility education for scientists and engineers into the dimensions of epistemology and praxis, and reflected them in the model. This effort enables science and engineering college students to pursue more responsible and sustainable development by carrying out the responsible problem-solving process based on an understanding of the nature of science and technology. We plan to implement ENACT model based programs for science and engineering college students and to examine the effects.