• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.160-175
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• 2004

This study examined the knowledge and practices of scientific inquiry displayed by three student teachers and two beginning teachers at secondary levels. Observations using the instrument of OTOP designed by the research team of OCEPT (Oregon Collaborative for Excellent in the Preparation of Teachers) generalized similar teaching strategies of scientific inquiry between student and beginning teachers, such as using group work for students' first hand experience, using concrete materials for experimentation or visual tools for demonstration, using questions for factual knowledge mainly without opportunities to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Those scientific inquiry activities were very confirmative ones to follow the steps without opportunities of understanding nature of science or nature of scientific inquiry. However, all participants in this study hold knowledge of scientific inquiry envisioned by the National Science Education Standards [NSES] (NRC, 1996), where students identify their hypothesis, use critical and logical thinking, and consider alternative explanations through argumentation as well as experimentation. An inconsistent relationship between participating teachers knowledge and practices about scientific inquiry resulted from their lack of pedagogy skills of implementing it in the classroom. Providing opportunities for these teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices about scientific inquiry was recommended for the future study. Furthermore, increasing college faculty interest in new teaching approaches for upgrading the content knowledge of student teachers and beginning teachers was recommended as a solution, since those teachers showed evidence of influence by college faculties at universities in their pedagogy skills.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.426-441
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was getting the information for successful application to the national curriculum and students' core competencies enhancement, through investigation about competencies discussed in 2015 revised national curriculum development process and analysis about perception of 150 elementary school teachers in study. The results were as follows : Communication skill is considered to be the most important. Thinking ability what has been important traditionally is the middle of the rankings. Elementary school teachers think that a competency is specific to a subject. From this point of view, Creative/Scientific Problem-Solving Ability is the most important in science. They think that the enhancing of the ability of inquiry performance is highlighted in current science class. On elementary school teachers' awareness, inquiry model is the most effective in enhancing of scientific thinking and the ability of inquiry performance. And STS instruction model is in the other. PBL learning model and experimental inquiry model is the most effective in enhancing a competency has the highest feasibility like scientific thinking or the ability of inquiry performance.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.161-177
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• 2009

This study aims to explore how teachers construct scientific explanation during instructional practices to help students' scientific inquiry. Before investigating teachers' classroom practices, elementary school science curriculum was examined to identify scientific concepts, particularly in earth science. Then, a total of six teachers' scientific explanation in actual teaching practices was analysed focusing on a) explanation of scientific concepts; b) rationale for scientific explanation; c) connection between scientific explanation and everyday explanation. The findings are as follows. First, the science curriculum provides $1{\sim}2$ main scientific concepts per unit, which are mostly appeared in the unit title. Those concepts and sub-concepts are not explicitly described but embedded in students' inquiry activities. Second, the teachers explain scientific concepts and discuss the rationale behind the scientific explanation, but rarely connect scientific explanation to everyday explanation. Also, the level of scientific explanations is low remaining level 1 or 2, not reaching 3, the highest level. Based on the results, the study suggests a) teachers need to provide explicit and clear explanations about scientific concepts; b) teachers are required to connect scientific explanation and everyday explanation; c) the level of teachers scientific explanation should be elevated by using an evidence, reasoning and claim, the components of scientific explanation as well as introducing new scientific concepts and inquiry activities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.132-140
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• 2010

The purpose of this research is to explore the effects of the POE(Prediction-Observation-Explanation) teaching-learning model on the academic achievement and the capability of scientific inquiry of elementary school students. POE teaching-learning model is a three stage process modeling scientific inquiry : Prediction, Observation, and Explanation. This research is to see the effectiveness of the POE method in earth science class by applying this simple practical strategy out of various methods in science teaching with the purpose of improving the capability of scientific inquiry and the academic achievement of learners. The findings of the study are as follows: First, the POE strategy in science teaching-learning was found effective for the improvement of learners' scientific inquiry capability. Second, the POE strategy in science teaching-learning is effective for the improvement of learners' academic achievement in science. The findings mentioned above suggest that using the POE strategy in science class of elementary science education has significant effects on improvement of scientific academic achievement and scientific inquiry capability of learners compared with the general science teaching-learning strategy. It also shows to be highly recommendable for use in science class.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.133-148
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• 1995

This study has been performed in order to achieve three objectives. They are as follows: To analyze, based on the research literatures, the nature of scientific inquiry ability and the characteristics of its constitutive elements. To identify inquiry skills and techniques essential to such areas as physics, chemistry, biology. and earth science. To develop instructional models and materials for enhancing inquiry ability on the part of high school students. It was found in the study that the scientific inquiry was interpreted in terms of different meanings according to the viewpoint of the person who are interested in the nature of science. The scientific inquiry has been viewed as the process of knowledge formation, scientific method, inquiry process or process skills depending on the epistemological, methodological, educational perspectives, respectively. It was also identified that certain kind of skills or techniques would be used for inquiry in only one specific area of the science. This study drew a conclusion based on the findings that the skills and techniques will effectively be learned when those are taught with specific knowledge in each area of the science. Reported in this paper are the materials developed, for fostering scienctific inquiry skills on the part of the high school students. The materials were developed, using two themes of a theoretical-abstract chemistry topic and a conceptual-concrete biology topic. Those materals were designed for an experiment and an observation, respectively.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.96-108
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to investigate how prospective elementary school teachers perceived teacher's inquiryoriented teaching practice, with an emphasis on students' scientific explanations based on scientific evidence. For this study, 94 prospective elementary school teachers were participated. 14 among 94 participants had chances to intensively experience this particular teaching methods for 15 weeks. All of the 94 participants observed the intended science teaching practice for 4th graders in two different elementary schools, which utilized the science talks emphasizing students' scientific explanation activity. For quantitative data analysis, they were asked to provide their reaction to the science teaching methods after their classroom observation. For qualitative data analysis, 5 among the participants, who had relatively long term experience with this teaching practice, were chosen to interview in order to understand their individual reasons of the ways they perceived about the inquiry-oriented teaching methods boosting students' scientific explanation. The results show that the prospective elementary teachers generally thought the emphasis of students' scientific explanation based on scientific evidence could enhance young elementary students' science content understanding, stimulate their curiosity/interests, and further develop their ability to engage actively in scientific discussions. However, some prospective teachers tended to think that the science teaching. methods would not be effective in terms of managing science classes, though. This study concludes that the prospective teachers tended to hold an endemic dilemma. On the one hand, they had their clear preference to the inquiry-oriented teaching practice as the most ideal teaching methods. On the other hand, they also had their persistent hesitance in using these methods due to their fear that elementary students might not adequately grasp the important science content when engaged in scientific discourse through an inquiry-oriented class.

• 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 Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.243-254
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• 2020

This study analyzed the characteristics of "free inquiry" products for scientifically-gifted elementary school students. To do this, 5~6 graders (n=99) at a gifted science education institutes in Seoul were selected. The products (n=82) of "free inquiry" submitted by the students in 2018 and 2019 were analyzed according to their contents and method types. The analysis of the results showed that the free inquiry outputs of scientifically-gifted students tended to not include the scientific knowledge of the upper grades than the corresponding students. In the outputs, the scientific knowledge in different grades were often not linked. There were relatively many cases of convergence of knowledge in various science and/or non-science subjects and knowledge of 'physics', whereas knowledge of 'earth science' were the least. The outputs were more often aimed at "finding scientific facts" than "development and invention" and tended to target non-living things rather than living things. The scientifically-gifted students tended to conduct free inquiry using 'experimental-centered inquiry' by themselves rather than by group. They were also most likely to conduct experiments only once, and did not clearly write down the period of their inquiry. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.54-67
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• 1995

This study has been performed in order to achieve three objectives. They are as follows: To analyze, based on the research literatures, the nature of scientific inquiry ability and the characteristics of its constitutive elements. To identify inquiry skills and techniques essential to such areas as physics, chemistry, biology, and earth science. To develop instructional models and materials for enhancing inquiry ability on the part of high school students. It was found in the study that the scientific inquiry was interpreted in terms of different meanings according to the viewpoint of the person who are interested in the nature of science. The scientific inquiry has been viewed as the process of knowledge formation, scientific method, inquiry process or process skills depending on the epistemological, methodological, educational perspectives, respectively. It was also identified that certain kind of skills or techniques would be used for inquiry in only one specific area of the science. The skills and techniques are effectively learned when those are taught with specific knowledge in each area of the science. The model and materials for fostering scientific inquiry skills will be presented on the second part of the report.

• 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.