• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.63 no.4
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• pp.280-288
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to draw implication for scientific inquiry study by investigating level of understanding and actual state regarding the elementary school teachers' scientific inquiry. The survey was conducted toward 42 elementary school teachers who work at the D city by using questionnaire of Views About Scientific Inquiry. Actual state of understanding of scientific inquiry was investigated by categorized the responses to the level of understanding of the eight aspects of scientific inquiry in three levels (informed, mixed, naive) based on analysis criteria. And analyze whether the characteristic of the subjects affect to level of understanding about aspect of scientific inquiry. As a result of the analysis, the two aspects among the eights aspects of scientific inquiry; 'Inquiry procedures are guided by the question asked' and 'Research conclusions must be consistent with the data collected' were appeared to have high rates of informed level of understanding. In the remaining six perspectives, most of elementary school teachers had naive and mixed level of understanding, so informed level of understanding took a relatively low proportion. It implies that elementary school teachers who teach inquiry in the field have limit to understand about scientific inquiry. These results indicated that experiences that have taught students and science related training courses that open sofar have a little influence to increase comprehension about scientific inquiry. Therefore, it is required to reinforce the teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry and to formulate different form of plan unlike existing way of teaching for teaching scientific inquiry.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.58 no.6
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• pp.658-666
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• 2014

This study was designed to explore pre-service secondary science teachers' understanding and views of argument-based inquiry approach. Participants were 17 pre-service secondary science teachers enrolled in chemistry curricular materials and teaching methods course for majors in the college of education at a university in Seoul. Main data sources included each student responses to an open ended survey and individual interviews. Data analyses indicated that the pre-service teachers had very limited and biased understanding on scientific inquiry at the beginning of the semester. While the pre-service teachers understood that scientific inquiry should be an essential component of science teaching, a few pre-service teachers mentioned 'argumentation' or 'discussions' when they defined what scientific inquiry is. The majority of the pre-service teachers mentioned that science should be taught through scientific inquiry since science is inquiry itself. However, the pre-service teachers expressed several potential barriers and their concerns on implementing argumentation in scientific inquiry. While they concerned about students' lack of participation at the beginning of the semester, they concerned more about the teachers' ability of leading student argumentation at the end of the semester.

• Education of Primary School Mathematics
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.71-94
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• 2001

The purposes of this study were to design small group collaborative learning models for developing the creativity and to analyze the effects on applying the models in mathematics teaching and loaming. The meaning of open education in mathematics learning, the relation of creativity and inquiry learning, the relation of small group collaborative learning and creativity, and the relation of assessment and creativity were reviewed. And to investigate the relation small group collaborative learning and creativity, we developed three types of small group collaborative learning model- inquiry model, situation model, tradition model, and then conducted in elementary school and middle school. As a conclusion, this study suggested; (1) Small group collaborative learning can be conducted when the teacher understands the small group collaborative learning practice in the mathematics classroom and have desirable belief about mathematics instruction. (2) Students' mathematical anxiety can be reduced and students' involvement in mathematics learning can be facilitated, when mathematical tasks are provided through inquiry model and situation model. (3) Students' mathematical creativity can be enhanced when the teacher make classroom culture that students' thinking is valued and teacher's authority is reduced. (4) To develop students' mathematical creativity, the interaction between students in small group should be encouraged, and assessment of creativity development should be conduced systematically and continuously.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.573-584
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• 2015

Inquiry has been consistently emphasized in science education as a crucial element for learning. Although many researchers came to agree on the importance of scientific inquiry, authentic inquiry activities are hard to be actualized in an educational context. Therefore it is required to critically examine what teachers have difficulty in teaching inquiry. In this article, we looked into inquiry-based science activities in a small group setting where pre-service science teachers faced dilemmas between cognition and practice of inquiry. A case study was conducted on eight undergraduate students who are majoring in science education. The participants attended a weekly science program for middle school students in low SES as teaching assistants and mentors, and took full care of his/her mentees during open-inquiry activities. The results were drawn by analyzing participants' personal and group interviews, participant observations, self-reports, and others. The pre-service teachers viewed the knowledge and procedure of science as an essential factor in inquiry activities along with student's spontaneous attitude. However, in the process of performing inquiry, they faced several dilemmas between ideal cognition and real activities. The aspects of dilemmas could be summarized in three pairs of opposing concepts: 'diverging inquiry or converging science', 'interest-centered inquiry or learning-centered inquiry', and 'student as the subject or student with the insufficient expertise.' We discussed ways of resolving dilemmas and alternative perspectives on scientific inquiry.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.267-277
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• 2015

This study explored elementary school teachers' perspectives on science inquiry teaching. First, an open-ended questionnaire was administered to elicit teachers' experiences of their approach to inquiry teaching. These self-reported approaches revealed three conceptions of teaching for inquiry learning in science: 'science process skills-centered' category focused on observing, classifying, measuring, and fair testing; 'generating scientific questions' category focused on students' question-generating; and 'illustrate concept and/or content' category focused on science content demonstration by making use of experimental procedures to obtain expected results. Second, teachers were asked to place 18 activity cards either close to or further from an 'inquiry-based science classroom' card. The relative distances from the activity card to the central classroom card were measured. The teachers perceived that students' activity of 'designing and implementing appropriate procedures' was the most important in supporting an inquiry-based science classroom. Understanding teachers' views has implications for both the enactment of inquiry teaching in the classroom as well as the uptake of new teaching behaviors during professional development.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.731-738
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• 2004

Secondary school science teachers' preception on inquiry learning was investigated by using questionnaires. According to these results, science teachers, who are participants of the current Korea National Science Curriculum, responded that raising the 'interest in science' was the most important objective of science education, and using practical scientific subject matters in class will do such. More than 72% of science teachers have used reconstructed materials. When reconstructed textbook contents were used, teachers through that the most important object is the 'acquirement of scientific knowledge'. Most science teachers perceived inquiry leaning as a student centered open investigation. Among factors that disturb inquiry leaning, critical ones were 'entrance examination', 'lake of teaching-leaning materials', 'little understanding of inquiry leaning', and 'lake of student's will to inquiry'.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.221-232
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• 2019

Despite the continuing emphasis on the importance of scientific inquiry, research studies have commented that authentic scientific inquiry is not implemented in school science classroom due to a lack of understanding of scientific inquiry by the teacher. The purpose of this study is to investigate understanding of scientific inquiry developed by beginning teachers through open-ended questionnaire and semi-structured interview. They voluntarily set up the goal of inquiry-based classes, planned inquiry-based classes, shared and reflected their teaching experience in professional learning community for more than a year. It appeared that participant teachers understood scientific inquiry as 'what scientists do', 'process how students do science' and 'science teaching methods.' All teacher participants described scientific inquiry as 'what scientists do', and understood 'the process of doing scientific investigation to solve problems related to natural phenomenon' and 'the process of constructing scientific knowledge using scientific practice.' Two participant teachers seemed to understand scientific inquiry as a 'teaching method' based on the understanding of the process how scientists or students do science. Participant teachers had a limited understanding of scientific inquiry that it is the same as laboratory works or hands-on activities prior to engaging the professional learning community, but they developed an understanding of scientific inquiry that there are various ways to conduct scientific inquiry after engaging in professional learning community.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.62 no.1
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• pp.52-63
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• 2018

The purpose of this study was to observe and analyze how pre-service secondary chemistry teachers conduct open-ended, free style, exploratory chemistry experiments. The study examined common difficulties and tendencies that teachers showed in the chemistry labs. The study also investigated how these teachers deal with their difficulties and obstacles, such as unexpected results and device errors. Next, the study explored how students' epistemic goals and considerations have been shaped and changed as they interacted with one another and participated in their experiments over time. The study suggests that it could be more effective to gradually decrease guided-features of the experiment by providing appropriate scaffolding, than to start with completely open-ended inquiry labs. The study also suggests that the establishment of epistemic agency among group members influences the way they conduct experiments. Consequently, it is necessary to consider how instructional design for open-ended inquiry labs may provide students with scaffolds to encourage their active participation and to build responsibility in group discussions.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.1
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• pp.140-156
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• 2010

This study aimed to investigate how science teachers perceived major features of the 2007 revised science curriculum and implementing them in classes. The 2007 revised science curriculum included critical features such as creativity, open inquiry, science writing, discussion and STS. In terms of necessity, clarity and complexity of those features for curriculum implementation, teacher perceptions were examined. Particularly with regard to open inquiry assigned 6 class periods per semester as one of the critical features of 2007 revised science curriculum, we asked teachers how they would prepare and implement the technique in their teaching. In results of this study, science teachers agreed on the necessity and importance of those major features of the 2007 revised science curriculum, including creativity, open inquiry, science writing, discussion, and STS. However, they were not clear on how those would work in their classrooms and expected various impediments. Open inquiry was specifically perceived as most negative in its implementation with the mention of various complex reasons. Based on findings in this study, we proposed the 'Dual Action Research Model' for curriculum implementation. It tries to explain how curriculum is implemented in classrooms and diminish the gaps between curriculum developers and teacher users by means of leading teachers to understand the curriculum meaningfully and implement their teaching based on this understanding.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.37 no.2
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• pp.261-277
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• 2013

This study aims to investigate the effect of a scientific inquiry worksheet-making class program on pre-service elementary school teachers' attitudes toward science and scientific inquiry in the class of elementary school science educational theory at education university. As for research subjects, this study selected 141 pre-service elementary school teachers who were in the third year of education university. The results of this study can be summarized as below. First, it was found that the scientific inquiry worksheet-making class program improved pre-service elementary school teachers' attitudes toward science and helped them realize it important to have knowledge about science, further making them find it more enjoyable to teach science at school in the future. Second, it was found that the scientific inquiry worksheet-making class program had positive effect on pre-service elementary school teachers' attitudes toward scientific inquiry. In other words, they came to think of inquiry-based learning styles as an important course of science class. Third, as a result of carrying out open-ended questions about what would be helpful in an actual education site through the scientific inquiry worksheet-making class program, this study found out that most of the research subjects responded it would be helpful when applying a class model, and thought it would be helpful for elementary school students to have scientific knowledge and understand the process of inquiry.