• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.21 no.4
• /
• pp.677-688
• /
• 2001

The purposes of this study are to investigate the school science high achievers' achievements in enrichment physics, logical thinking level, and to analyze the relationship between logical thinking level and the achievement in enrichment physics of high achievers in science. The subjects were 357th and 8th graders who achieved highly in school science. To assess their achievements in enrichment physics, we developed a new test consisting of descriptive problems which were based on middle school curriculum. Those problems require one or two steps of thinking process, not simple knowledge of science. To assess logical thinking level, we used the instrument called GALT(Group Assessment of Logical Thinking) developed by Roadranka et al. The results showed that the school science high achievers' average achievement in enrichment physics was low, 56.3 out of 150, which indicated that they had not done much of enrichment learning beyond middle school science curriculum. Just only 54% of the school science high achievers are in formal logical thinking level. From the analysis of relationship between their logical thinking level and the achievement in enrichment physics, the value of the correlation coefficient was 0.174, which means that they are not almost correlated. Therefore, it is not desirable to judge science gifted children just from achievement in school science or enrichment physics, so both(logical thinking and the achievement in enrichment physics) tests should be taken for selecting gifted student.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
• /
• v.20 no.2
• /
• pp.527-546
• /
• 2010

As research results, male schoolchildren were found to solve problems more easily in the area of basic process skills while female schoolchildren were found to solve problems in the area of integrated process skills. Schoolboys showed the high tendency to solve problems in a planning pattern by memory, or solving pattern in which they are fully aware of the contents of both questions and choices in answer sheets, or the pattern which they are fully aware of distracters in answer sheets; in contrast, schoolgirls showed a high tendency to get a good result by analyzing both questions & choices in answer sheets or analyzing a chart, graph and illustration, which explains that female schoolchildren tend to solve problems in more diverse ways than male schoolchildren. In case of a poor achiever, male schoolchildren tend to make a failure while trying to find answers in an inadequately understood state or trying to solve on mistaken memories while doing questions immediately while female schoolchildren showed a lot of solving patterns based on mistaken memories or wrong analyses of a chart, illustration, or graph. Such results are believed to offer the implications on the understanding of male/female schoolchildren in their problem-solving pattern of their exploratory ability in elementary science and on its subsequent program development.