• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.29-40
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• 2020

The purpose of this study is to explore how a high school science teacher (Teacher E) shifted her understanding and facilitation of scientific modeling through participation in a professional learning community (PLC) for over a year. Based on socially situated theory of learning, I focused on examining Teacher E's frames about scientific modeling from her social interactions. Teacher E participated in her school-based PLC over a year and collaborated with other science teachers, coaches, and researchers to improve science instruction. I qualitatively explored her participation in 6 full-day professional learning opportunities-studios-where the PLC members collectively planned, implemented, and debriefed modeling-based lessons. Especially, I focused on two Studios (Studio 2, 6) where Teacher E became the host teacher and implemented the lessons. I also examined her classroom teaching in those Studios. To understand how the PLC inquiry affected the shifts observed in Teacher E's understanding and practice, I explored how the inquiry evolved over the 6 Studios. Findings suggest that in Studio 2, Teacher E viewed students' role in scientific modeling as to fill out the worksheet with "correct" answers. Meanwhile, in Studio 6, she focused on helping students collaborate to construct explanatory models of phenomena using evidence. The PLC inquiry, focused on supporting students' construction of evidence-based explanations and collaboration in scientific modeling, seemed to promote the shifts observed in Teacher E's understanding and facilitation of scientific modeling. These findings can inform educational researchers and practitioners who aim to promote teachers' professional learning to support students' epistemic practices.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.225-234
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• 2012

The Purpose of this study is searching the effect of the flow level increasing by using flow learning on scientific achievement and attitude toward science in 4rd grade elementary school student's scientific learning factors, and the better way to approach scientific institude than now in used. Participants included 52 elementary school students. For this study, two classes were divided into experimental class and control class. The control class takes a regular instructions and the experimental class takes a flow learning instructions. Two chapter were selected, 'Plant's World' and 'Fossil and Rock', for this study. Students were treated for 18 hours. The results were as follows: First, flow learning related program about plant's world, fossil and rock is increasing 4rd grade elementary school students' flow level in science class. Second, students are not increasing their scientific achievement according to increasing their flow level. Third, students are not increasing their attitude toward science according to increasing their flow level. But in attitude toward scientific inquiry, adoption of attitude toward science and preference of job related science subordinated, students are increasing subordinate factors of attitude toward science.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.385-394
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• 2007

In order to investigate elementary school students' readiness to write on scientific subject, we analyzed the participants' draft in elementary student section [National Student Science Writing Contest] which is sponsored by a daily press. As a first step, we designed an assessment framework to analyze the students' writing. It is composed of three domains: scientific thinking, logical validity, creativeness. Each domain has three sub-domains. By using the framework, seven raters scored the students' inquiry reports. The findings reveal that the students needed the training for scientific writing. Especially they had great difficulty in the sub-domain of 'suggestion of rational alternative solution' in scientific thinking domain, the sub-domains of 'clearness' and 'coherence' in logical validity domain, and in the sub-domains of 'creative problem solving' and 'creative presentation' in creative domain.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.92-111
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• 2020

The 2015 revised science curriculum and NGSS (Next Generation Science Standard) suggest computational thinking as an inquiry skill or competency. Particularly, concern in computational thinking has increased since the Ministry of Education has required software education since 2014. However, there is still insufficient discussion on how to integrate computational thinking in science education. Therefore, this study aims to prepare a way to integrate computational thinking elements into scientific inquiry by analyzing the related literature. In order to achieve this goal, we summarized various definitions of the elements of computational thinking and analyzed general problem solving process and scientific inquiry process to develop and suggest the model. We also considered integrated problem solving cases from the computer science field and summarized the elements of the Computational Thinking-Scientific Inquiry (CT-SI) model. We asked scientists to explain their research process based on the elements. Based on these explanations from the scientists, we developed 'Problem-finding' CT-SI model and 'Problem solving' CT-SI model. These two models were reviewed by scientists. 'Problem-finding' model is relevant for selecting information and analyzing problems in the theoretical research. 'Problem solving' is suitable for engineering problem solving process using a general research process and engineering design. In addition, two teachers evaluated whether these models could be used in the secondary school curriculum. The models we developed in this study linked with the scientific inquiry and this will help enhance the practices of 'collecting, analyzing and interpreting data,' 'use of mathematical thinking and computer' suggested in the 2015 revised curriculum.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.60 no.4
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• pp.267-275
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• 2016

Experiment is recognized as an important part in science and science education. Scientists do experiments for verifying or refuting theory and they take many forms to do experiments. One of the central goals of science education is to improve inquiry ability. So we have taken for granted that students engage in authentic inquiry and experiment which scientists carry out to research. But it is not always positive about discussions and opinions what school experiment and its role is in learning science and understanding about science. There is certainly a gap between experiments which scientists and students do even though there is a theoretical basis of school science experiment. In this study, we discussed how scientific inquiry and school inquiry are different, and what it means to use instrument in school science experiment. And as a case, we analyzed chemistry experiments in science textbook and manipulation level of instruments which were handled in chemistry experiments, we shed light on the meanings of experiments and instruments in school science inquiry based on the result of experiments and instruments analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.1-12
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• 2013

20 preservice teachers at college level participated in this study and interacted with students at elementary and middle school levels during science camp offered by science center in Taiwan. Preservice teachers displayed moderate (above the average, 4 point out of 5) understandings about scientific literacy and scientific views in all aspects of the nature of science before the camp. Then, the researchers designed science camp programs which were expected to promote students' scientific literacy; scientific knowledge, inquiry skills for experimentation as well as for argumentation, affective domain such as the attitude toward science and the understandings about nature of science and the relationship among STS (Science-Technology-Society), all of which were embedded in the programs. Preservice teachers seemed to perceive scientific literacy pretty well (over 4 point) before the camp, however, preservice teachers' understandings about scientific literacy were not much scored (around 3 point, but still moderate scores of average) as expected after concrete inquiry activities. The reasons why this happened could be that preservice teachers were not trained to employ theory into the context to be more practical or the researchers did not develop camp program which included the aspect of scientific literacy successfully. The discussion and implication were made in teacher education in that preservice teachers must be prepared how to bridge theory into practice, and informal science education in that educators at science centers must be trained to be experts in providing the envisioned educational programs to meet the goal of science education, scientific literacy.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.545-562
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to develop cognitive scaffolding tools and to explore their effects on integrated science process skills of high school students. For this purpose, we developed cognitive scaffolding tools including one kind of classroom instruction for training integrated process skills and two kinds of individual learning materials that students can selectively study according to their level of inquiry ability. In addition, we developed hypothetico-deductive inquiry tasks as a tool to investigate the level of students on the integrated process skills for pre-test and post-test respectively. In order to verify the effectiveness of the cognitive scaffolding tools, we conducted inferential statistics on the pre-and post-tests of the experimental group and control group to examine statistical significance of students' inquiry level change depending on the usage of the cognitive scaffolding tools. We also produced Wrightmaps based on Rasch model to compare the change of inquiry ability depending on usage of the cognitive scaffolding tools. As a result, the experimental group using the cognitive scaffolding tools showed a significantly higher scores in all the components of integrated process skills namely, designing inquiry, collecting data, analyzing data, and forming conclusion than the control group. In addition, students who used cognitive scaffolding tools improved their inquiry ability and showed a distinct transition to higher level in each component of the integrated process skills. The results of this study suggest that high school students need cognitive scaffolding to alleviate or eliminate the functional barriers they face in conducting scientific inquiries.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.116-125
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• 1995

This study is to consider hypotheses with integral view on the respect of creative thinking. Subjects of this study are Korean students in the 5th grade who participated in the Field Trip Contest of the second Korean Youth Science Festival, an openended inquiry investigation. Objectives of this study are as follows: 1) to measure the inquiry level of the Field Trip Contest activity 2) to find how many hypotheses were made on different types in the inquiry investigation 3) to measure the quality level of hypotheses made in the scientific inquiry investigation 4) to find out the correlation between the 1st and 2nd hypotheses and the final activity score in the two staged scientific investigation In the consequence of it, inquiry level of the Field Trip Contest was very high with good activity topics and openended way of investigation. Hypotheses were made in the prediction, plan, and conclusion parts in the field trip activity report. They used hypothesis-as-prediction typed statements(3.41/team) more than hypothesis-as-explanation(1.28/team) and descriptive hypothesis(0.03/team) types. Content-related hypothesis(5.03/team) and process-related hypothesis(6.16/team) were usually coupled each other. Most of them had difficulties in hypothesis-from-evidence(0.31/team, 10/32 teams) in the comparison of hypothesis-from-simple conjecture(10.62/team). The quality level of content-related hypotheses(0.74point/statement) and process-related hypotheses(1.98point/statement) were very low by the hypothesis-quality scale(Quinn and George, 1975) for the content-related hypotheses and the process-related hypothesis quality scale developed in this study. There was considerable correlation between the activity score and the 1st and 2nd hypothesis in the 2 staged inquiry investigations with the 2nd and 3rd topics($0.41{\ast}$, $0.59{\ast}{\ast}$ repectively).

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.9
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• pp.870-880
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to understand the change and characteristics of interactions in a heterogeneous group in scientific inquiry experiments. For this purpose, the process of students' interactions in small group activities were analyzed. This study focused on two, small heterogeneous groups of eighth graders. Students were involved in 13 scientific inquiry experiments for one year and students' interactions in each experiments were observed and recorded using video/audio and the data recorded were transcribed. The analysis of data was based on the method of making a note by looking and listening to the data repeatedly. Students' interactions in heterogeneous group changed toward that 3A (early formal operation student solved the problems by oneself and other students only listened to 3A student's explanation or copied the answer. The least able student was alienated from peers' interactions. In the meantime, new interactions of two middle level students were shaped. Educational implications of the progression of activities emphasizing interactions and the organization of grouping were drawn.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.1199-1213
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• 2011

The purpose of this study was to investigate the difficulties in engaging in open-inquiry activities - especially finding inquiry topics for student themselves. Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 11 middle school students and their open-inquiry worksheets from 4 months of activities. The investigation tools were composed of three domains for topic choice: selecting subjects, making 10 questions, and choosing a topic with the 10 questions. The study revealed that middle school students have difficulties in the domain of 'object selection' and 'finding inquiry topic.' Under the object selection domain, they showed burden of selection of unlimited subject, lack of knowledge on the science object, and lack of interest in object. Under the domain of finding inquiry topic, they have difficulties from their selected topics that were non-scientific, focus only on interest, lack of background information or those that could be resolved by short answers. Each student has difficulty in doing open-inquiry with relatively different seriousness. The findings suggested that an open inquiry program should be provided along with a systematic guide program on finding inquiry topic for open-inquiry activities to be a successful and continual performance gauge.