• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.783-790
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• 2016

The 'Integrated Inquiry' unit is a new addition in the 5th~6th grade science textbooks, and was developed for the 2009 revised national curriculum. The unit deals with six integrated inquiry process skills: problem cognition, formulating hypotheses, controlling variables, transforming and interpreting data, drawing results, and generalization. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceptions and the teaching practices of elementary school teachers on this unit in their school curriculum and where improvements can be made. Data was collected from questionnaires filled out by 92 elementary school teachers. The results are as follows: First, teachers do have a positive perception on the importance of teaching integrated process skills. Second, with that being true, this unit ended up receiving both positive and negative reviews by teachers. This research found that there were good and bad responses on the educational aspects of this unit in three particular areas: dealing with the development of integrated inquiry process skills, facilitating science learning in other units, and implementing open inquiry. Third, teachers have difficulties particularly in problem cognition, formulating hypotheses, controlling variables, transforming and interpreting data, generalization, and drawing results. There is a lack of student understanding as well as a lack of professionalism for teachers on this unit, and many issues related to the composition of the textbook. This study may have important implications for making improvements in this unit and teaching integrated process skills.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of integrated science inquiry teaming method through literature materials on the learner's science concept formation, inquiry ability, and attitude related to science when it was applied to the unit 'The temperature of atmosphere and winds', 'The journey of water' in the 5th grade, and to find out the effect on science learning according to teaming styles. To study these subjects, 4 classes of 5th grade in J elementary school in Busan were selected. The result of this study were as follows: First, Integrated science inquiry learning method through literature materials was more effective for concept formation than conventional teaching method. In science inquiry ability, there was not significant difference at all between the comparison group and the experimental group. In attitude related to science, the experimental group showed significant difference only in the interest in occupation related to science. The visual modality learners within the experimental group showed significantly higher statistics than the other modality learners in the post-investigation into the science concept and there was significant difference between the visual and the kinesthetic modality learners in the result of post-test on science inquiry ability.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.35-48
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to analyze inquiry activities in the middle school science textbooks focused on the unit 'Nutrition of Plants' of the 2007 revision curriculum and the corresponding unit 'The Structure and Function of Plants' of the 7th curriculum in terms of content, process and contexts of inquiries. The average number of the inquiry activities in the unit 'Nutrition of Plants' was 9.2, which was a 3.8 decrease than in the unit 'Structure and Function of Plants'. In the respective of process of the inquiry activities, 'observation' was most prevailing in the basic inquiry process and 'data interpretation' was most prevailing in the integrated inquiry process in both of the units. In the respective of the types and contexts of the inquiry activities, 'experiment/observation' was most prevailing and the percentage of the natural scientific contexts was larger in both of the units. In the unit 'Nutrition of Plants', the components of the integrated inquiry process and the percentage of personal contexts were larger than in the unit 'Structure and Function of Plants'. And simulation activities were newly presented and technical contexts and natural environmental contexts were included in the unit 'Nutrition of Plants'. This study makes a suggestion that a wider variety of inquiry activities should be included when new science textbooks are developed.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.501-510
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• 2005

An analysis was done on the “inquiry sections” of Earth Science chapters of 10th grade science textbooks. The Inquiry sections were classified into different types and the frequencies of basic process skills, integrated process skills, and inquiry activities were measured in section to find out whether they sufficiently satisfy the requirements based on the 7th National Curriculum. The number of selected science textbooks that have been used in high school for this study were eleven. The number of inquiry tasks were on an average of 24.0. The types of inquiry sections and the elements of basic and integrated process skills were different in every textbooks. The number of inquiry activities were also different and analyzed more than those presented. They were not integrated activities but presented as scientific process skills. The basic process skills and integrated process skills presented in textbooks were $16\%\;and\;77.2\%$, respectively. However, the distribution of two kinds of process skills were analyzed to be $45.6\%\;and\;55.4\%$, respectively. In the process skills, the frequencies of inferring $(49.5\%)$ and data interpretation (68.7%) were the highest; however, the other process skills including recognizing problem, formulating hypothesis and generalization were not even presented in any of the text books. Due to the lack of the definitions of Science process skills and inquiry activities in the 7th National Curriculum, each text book defined these terms differently. It suggests that the meaning of inquiry, science process skills, and inquiry activities should be operationally defined in the national curriculum and the criteria for construction of inquiry activities are required.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.1
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• pp.26-38
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to grasp the characteristics of composition regarding the material-centered integrated unit of environmental and natural studies, a science subject in Finland, to investigate a need for applying the material-centered integrated unit to the science curriculum of Korea. For the purpose, the study made an analysis on contents, inquiry activities, and visual materials (the most important in the elementary science curriculum and textbook composition), and it brought following results: First, as a result of analyzing the area of contents, the bicycle material-centered integrated unit comprised a large proportion of 44 pages (25.3%) of the whole 174 pages from the environmental and natural studies textbook for the third grade. The contents included such various concepts as traffic rules, safety, environmental protection and pollution, recycling and separate collection, tubes and triangular structures, wedges and screws, leverage, wheels, axles, gears, elasticity (spring), friction, and so on. Second, as a result of analyzing contents related to the thinking ability of inquiry activities, "expecting or confirming expectations" and "application" are included in every lesson, and one lesson is composed in such a way that students can study on bicycles as a practical material for their daily life and they can improve various thinking abilities. Third, as a result of analyzing the circumstances of inquiry activities, daily circumstances made up eight lessons (80.0%) and technical and social circumstances made up two lessons (20.0%) by focusing on bicycles, a material related to students' daily life. Fourth, as a result of analyzing visual materials, the percentage of pictures and photos was high at 53.4% and 45.2% respectively. As a result of analyzing the role of visual materials, the percentage of the illustrative role and explanatory-complementary role was high at 52.1% and 47.9% respectively. Lastly, as a result of analyzing from the epistemological view to interpret the relation between visual materials and students and the position of visual materials, the visual textbook materials were provided toward a way that students can decrease their feeling of epistemological separation in the three fields of ideational metafunction, interpersonal metafunction, and textual metafunction.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.47-65
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• 2006

For the purpose of analysis, the supporting methods for inquiry process is divided into 3 types; when CSILE supports low-level of basic inquiry process, when CSILE supports high-level of integrated inquiry process and when CSILE supports both low-level and high-level of inquiry process. Strauss and Corbin's(1998) grounded theory was used to analyze inquiry process of learning groups. 48 elementary school students in 6th grade participated in this study. Those participants were assigned into 3 groups and each group consisted of 16 students. Then, participants studied a retarded unit in science subject cooperatively for 4 weeks using CSILE program. Through this extensive experiment, 3 types of inquiry model was revealed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.200-213
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• 2000

This study is to examine how common science, which was selected as a required subject in high schools with the reorganization of the 6th national science curriculum by the Ministry of Education, is taught in high schools these days. The results show that only one teacher is teaching common science in 3.2% of schools or the teachers divide and teach units according to their majors. In this situation, there are many problems because there are too many integrated contents in each unit and they are too short to solve the study subject during the unit time of 50 minutes. Another problem is that there is no special laboratory for common science. For the knowledge part of common science, lecture-learning is used as a method of teaching and for the inquiry part, inquiry-learning is used. Evaluation is conducted using subjective or objective paper-tests for the knowledge part, and reports are used for evaluation in the inquiry part. Therefore, this study shows that students' response to common science is below the general level and this subject missed the original intent introduced to raise students' interests about science.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.225-238
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• 2013

The purpose of this study is to find out The Effects of the Learning Motive, Interest and Science Process Skills using the 'Light' Unit on Science-based STEAM. As the subject, 2 classes in the 6th grade of G elementary school located in Busan were selected. Through the pre/post inspection design between experiment and comparison class, the units of science courses in the first semester of 6th grade '1. Light' were applied. The results were as follows: Firstly, it was observed that it would have a meaningful effect to improve the learning motive of students who performed STEAM education. Secondly, it was observed that it would have a meaningful effect to improve the interest of students who performed STEAM education. Especially, the results of 'attention', 'relevance', 'confidence' and 'satisfaction' in the experimental class were higher than those of students in the comparative class. The experimental class gave a positive effect on the 'attention', 'confidence' and 'satisfaction'. According to statistical analysis, this result is meaning. Thirdly, the test on science processing skills showed that there was not statistic meaningful differences between the two groups. But, in the sub-parts, there was statistic meaningful differences between the two groups on the 'integrated inquiry ability'.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.250-262
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• 1995

Investigation on the appendices was carried out to acquire teaching materials about improvement of a appendices and development of teaching-learning activities for science textbooks in Korean middle schools. We analysed the appendices for 30 kinds of science textbooks used in Korean middle schools during $1969{\sim}1994$ years. In the results there were three kinds of pattern for the appendices, such as appendix, non-appendix, and similar appendix without appendix title. The content of appendices were summarized as six categories. such as list of science and scientist history, SI unit-constants and symbols, handling methods of instruments for basic experiments, measuring methods and inquiry activity, safety and precautions, and supplementary data with figures and tables. The appendices of six categories were mostly a content of general and integrated science, and were concentrated in the first grader's textbooks. There were many appendices about the methods for basic experiments such as 'How to Use of Experimental Appliances' in the first grader's science textbooks, but there was no or lack of them in the second and the third grader's science textbooks in the middle school. By the ratio to the pages of appendices which were included according to curriculum changes. the ratio was found to be 4.47% which was the highest in middle school science textbooks at the second curriculum and to be 3.47% which was the highest in high school biology textbooks at the second curriculum. The results of this study indicated that the science textbooks should include as many appendices as possible, because teachers could utilize them in teaching activities and students should be able to be given much help in self-learning.