• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.851-861
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• 2002

In this paper, two modes of thought are assumed, which are known as the paradigmatic and the narrative mode of thought by Bruner(1985; 1986). The former leads to well-formed argument, but the latter to good story; each providing distinctive ways of ordering experience, of constructing reality. Though the two are complementary, but not reducible to one another. However modern schooling has focused on the paradigmatic mode. It has come to its peak in science education. Recently some educators began to gaze at the narrative mode in other humanities, but not science. Narrative is commonly considered to be foreign to science. But many scientists are convinced that modern science depends on speculation much more than observation. The speculation is conducted by intrapersonal or interpersonal narrative, which was called "science-making" by Bruner(1996). The purpose of this paper is to introduce the narrative mode of thought compared to paradigmatic mode as the new concepts and to discuss its implications on the science education. Three implications will be suggested. The first holds that science class should improve student's narrative sensibility throughout the live science-making. The second holds that the narrative mode of thought should be used with the support of the paradigmatic mode in science classroom. Exactly narrative interpretations are adjuncts to scientific explanations. The third holds that the evaluation method should be developed for the narrative work in science education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.735-750
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to draw an educational implication by analyzing the context of narrative texts, students' narrative thinking, and their academic achievement. We investigated text types in students' geological field trip reports, the reason why students favors narrative texts, the relationship between narrative texts and their scientific knowledge recall, and the relationship between narrative thought and academic achievement. All students used expository texts, 82% of them expressed argumentative texts, and 36% of them used narrative texts. It is likely that students use more narrative texts because students were in the context of outdoor activity and so, their emotional feelings were more activated than when they are doing lab activities. The academic characteristics of earth science seemed to contribute more narrative texts in students' reports. The post-test revealed that students with narrative texts recalled better than the others. On the other hand, there were no statistically meaningful differences in academic achievement between the two groups. However, we have noted that female students whose reports contain narrative texts achieved significantly higher scores than female students whose reports are without narrative texts. From in-depth interviews, we found that students who properly used both paradigmatic and narrative mode of thought were in a more advantageous position than those who used narrative thought only. It was also found that some narratively thinking students tended to feel uncomfortable with the way of learning or evaluating questions about science. In the future, a complementary approach of narrative and paradigmatic mode of thoughts would be encouraged by understanding students' tendency of thinking.