• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.203-220
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to investigate how 'free inquiry' was implemented in middle school science classrooms. In order to do this, survey and interviews were administered. The subject of survey was 165 science teachers at 58 middle schools and interviewees were 4 teachers and 10 students. As a result, 49.6% of science teachers in school year 2010, and 34.1% in 2011 applied 'free inquiry'. Teachers applied 'free inquiry' during one semester, and they let the students select topic of 'free inquiry'. Teachers grouped students according to students' opinion or their gender and ability, and one group was consisted of 4 students. The effect of applying 'free inquiry' was that students improved the interest on science, science inquiry ability and self directed learning capability. Students were interested in doing 'free inquiry', and they wanted to do it again. Teachers claimed that it took much time and effort to apply 'free inquiry', and students lacked science inquiry skills and interest on science. The teachers who did not apply 'free inquiry' stated reasons such as the shortage of instructional time, and they didn't think that 'free inquiry' should be implemented. For the effective implementation of 'free inquiry', this study suggested that teachers should be recognized the intention of 'free inquiry', teaching-learning materials about 'free inquiry' be developed and provided, and laboratory assistants be employed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.210-224
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• 2011

The purpose of this study is to analyze students' recognition of the free inquiry activity and to investigate what effect the free inquiry activity of the 2007 Revised Educational curriculum revision has on the science inquiry ability of middle school students. To conduct the research we worked with 262 female students, 8 classes of first graders in a middle school. Among them, 4 classes were taught in free inquiry activity and the remaining 4 classes were taught in the traditional way. The results of Likert-questionnaire indicate that students were learning about cooperative spirit through group investigation activities and discussions and did not take the free inquiry activity as a hard activity. Also they showed positive reaction agreeing that this activity is both a helpful method in learning science and interesting. However, it seemed that the investigation tends to flow between the leading 1~2 members of the group and showed difficulty in carrying out the investigation as a group after school hours. It showed there are few problems and obstacles in operating the free inquiry activity. The free inquiry activity did not give any meaningful influence on the improvement of science inquiry ability of students. Integrative inquiry process skills did not give a relevant influence, however, it showed a meaningful influence on the improvement of basic inquiry process skills. Especially, among the low-ranking element of basic inquiry process skills, it enhanced the capacity for prediction.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.7
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• pp.843-855
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to understand the substance of the reflective inquiry of students and obtain educational suggestion to the inquiry class for the promotion of the reflective inquiry, by checking out which characteristics the reflective inquiry showed according to the modes of interaction of small group in highschool earth science inquiry class. The result of study is shown as follows. At the stage of developmentand conclusion, the reflective inquiry relating the task context to data context was often appeared on the group of the modes of comfort interaction, but it was very rare on the group of modes of confrontation interaction. And the reflective inquiry scale value of the latter was two times lower than the former, The comfort group showed much more reflective inquiry statements quantitatively and performed much more meaningful reflective inquiry relating the task context to the data context. The heterogeneous group in the inquiry ability and the cognitive style showed confrontation interaction modes in the affective domain, having the most negative influence on the reflective inquiry. The homogeneous group both in the cognitive style and the inquiry ability showed the comfort interaction mode, having positive int1uence on the reflective inquiry.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.80-91
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• 1993

The purpose of this study is to develop an reliable instrument for evaluating science inquiry skills through an R&D procedure. A total of ten seience inquiry skills were selected for the development of the instrument, ie, observation, classifying, recognizing problems, measuring, inferring, formulating hypothesis, controlling variables, experimenting, interpreting and drowing a conclusion. And three items were developed for each sceince inquiry skill, totaling up to thirty items. The content areas of developed items are divided into three categories, material and energy, life and environment, and the earth and the space. There are 10 items for each category. The content validity and the objectivity of developed items were checked, verified in the two field trials and revised according to the analysis of items by seven experienced specialists with the degree of doctors in science education and five teachers who were studying for their master's degree in science education. According to the results of the second field trial. the content validity of the instrument was 91.1%, reliablity(K-R 20) 0.78, defficulty index 49.13%, discrimination index 0.42, mean achivement 61.85%, standard deviation 5.11, and standard error 2.40. Considering the above results, the developed instrument in this study is regarded as a appropriate instrument for evaluating science inquiry skills of elementary school students.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.43 no.2
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• pp.227-238
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• 2019

In this study, we investigated the perception of elementary school students on inquiry activities and collaborative problem-solving ability in data-based scientific inquiry. For this purpose, 20 data-based scientific inquiry classes were conducted in 26 elementary school students in Gyeongnam City. After selecting the inquiry problem, students conducted an inquiry process to collect data using digital inquiry instruments. The following results were obtained through questionnaires and interviews after the classes: First, students perceived the step on 'inquiry design and execution' as the most useful in the data-based scientific inquiry. Second, students perceived that their scientific ability and cooperation improved through data-based scientific inquiry, with the selection of inquiry problems being the most difficult. Third, students perceived positively the improvement of cooperative problem-solving ability. From the above results, it was found that data-based scientific inquiry is necessary to improve the elementary school students' scientific inquiry ability and cooperative problem-solving ability. Based on this research, we hope that the development and research of various inquiry activities will provide opportunities for inquiry that can cultivate various abilities needed for students living in the future.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.211-226
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate science teachers' understandings about scientific argumentation in the classroom. Seven structured interview protocols were developed, asking the definition of scientific inquiry, the differentiation between scientific inquiry and hands-on activity, the opportunity of student argumentation, explicit teaching strategies for scientific argumentation, the critical example of argumentation, the criteria of successful argumentation, and the barrier of developing argumentation. The results indicate that there are differences and similarities in understandings about scientific argumentation between two groups of middle school teachers and upper elementary. Basically, teachers at middle school define scientific inquiry as the opportunity of practicing reasoning skills through argumentation, while teachers at upper elementary define it as the more opportunities of practicing procedural skills through experiments rather than of developing argumentation. Teachers in both groups have implemented a teaching strategy called "Claim-Evidence Approach," for the purpose of providing students with more opportunities to develop arguments. Students' misconception, limited scientific knowledge and perception about inquiry as a cycle without the opportunity of using reasoning skills were considered as barriers for implementing authentic scientific inquiry in the classroom.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.476-485
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of free inquiry lessons utilizing flipped learning with smart devices on digital literacy, $21^{st}$ century skills and scientific attitude of $5^{th}$ graders of elementary school. The subjects of this study were two different $5^{th}$ grade classes in J elementary school located in B metropolitan city. Free inquiry lessons utilizing flipped learning with smart devices were applied to experimental group, whereas comparison group was taught general free inquiry lessons using ordinary teaching materials. The results of this study were as follows: First, free inquiry lessons utilizing flipped learning with smart devices were statistically meaningful on students' digital literacy. Second, free inquiry lessons utilizing flipped learning with smart devices were not statistically meaningful on students' $21^{st}$ century skills. Third, free inquiry lessons utilizing flip teaching with smart devices were not statistically meaningful on students' scientific attitude. Fourth, free inquiry lessons utilizing flipped learning with smart devices caused an effectiveness on students' interests.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.59 no.5
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• pp.434-444
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• 2015

Inquiry-based experiments provide opportunities to understand scientific knowledge and acquire nature of science. In this study, the difficulties which pre-service teachers experienced in inquiry-based experiment class were investigated and analyzed. Twenty-two pre-service teachers attended course designed as ‘ill-structured inquiry’ for 13 weeks, and researchers investigated their difficulties by questionnaires and interview. They showed difficulties mostly in designing experiment and interpretation and also in understanding inquiry purpose, lack of prior knowledge, confidence in inquiry performance, and understanding of experimental instruments and facilities. As a result, it is necessary to provide opportunities to engage in inquiries and environments to properly instruct pre-service teachers the inquiry ability in college of education.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.773-783
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• 2014

In National Curriculum of Science revised in 2007, the Free Inquiry was newly introduced to increase students' interest in science and to foster creativity by having students make their own question and find answer by themselves. The purpose of the study was to analyze characteristics, in cognitive domain, appeared in the processes of performing the Free Inquiry activities applying a brain-based evolutionary science teaching and learning principles. For this study, 106 fifth grade students participated, and they performed individually Free Inquiry activities. In order to characterize of the diversifying, estimating-evaluating-executing, and extending-applying activities in cognitive domain (C-DEF), the Free Inquiry diary constructed by the students, observations by a researcher, and interviews with the students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The major results of this study were as follows: First, at C-D step, many students (71.5%) had difficulty in searching the meanings of their results and the contents of interpretations were at the level of simple description of their results. A few students (15.2%) derived interpretations based on causal relationships between specific variable and result. Also, the tendency that the numbers of interpretation about meaning of their results were increased as the scores of science attitude and achievement was appeared. Second, at C-E step, the students showed tendency of considering facts exactly explaining inquiry topic and being appliable to daily life rather than objectivity or accuracy of scientific knowledge. Third, at C-F step, there were three types of extension and application: simple repetition (8.2%), extension (64.0%), and upward application (17.6%) types. Based on these findings, implications for supporting appropriate interpretation, evaluation, and application of inquiry results are discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.476-486
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• 2009

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary gifted students' characteristics of observing and inferring in the inquiry activities. For this study, 40 students of the 4th and 5th grades participated in inquiry activities where the strata were developed well, Haenam Uhangri province. And we analyzed the outcomes of students' inquiry activities. The results are as follows. First, 119 units as observing results were obtained, but most of them showed that they were not focused on the portion of stratus, but that they were implicated in whole stratus as observing object. Second, 90 units were collected with reasoning results, but 4 units of them were wrong in constructing of inferring. Based on outcomes of students' inferring, elementary students preferred to apply deductive inferring method rather than use abductive inferring. Third, only 39 of 119 units acquired from observing were used for constructing inferring and 80 which were discovered from observing activities were discarded without applying of inquiry activities. Fourth, about 42% of students' inferring results were in accord with them of the geologists. But 58% views which didn't agree with geologists showed that they were applied to misconceptions among constructing inferring.