• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.82-92
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• 2023

In this study, we analyzed the perceptions of elementary school students about science learning and lab safety in the affective, behavioral, and cognitive domains. With respect to science learning, students indicated liking science classes more than average, being good at scientific inquiry more than average, and having more scientific knowledge than average. Compared with before the COVID-19 pandemic, student confidence in retaining scientific knowledge had decreased markedly. Of the eight student types in the students' awareness levels about affective·behavioral·cognitive domain, the HHH type-the most ideal-was also the most distributed. Students' preferred science class methods were experimental (72.7%) and nature inquiry classes (23.2%); science knowledge classes were ranked a distant third (4.1%). Preferred class locations were the science lab (58.1%) and different places from time to time (34.4%); the classroom was ranked last (7.5%). With respect to lab safety, most elementary school students did not have experimental classes, but more than half reported understanding how to use experimental equipment. Most students recognized the need to wear safety equipment in the lab. They were not only well aware of the associated physical protection functions, but also of the affective and psychological effects. Most students also recognized that first aid education is necessary, but only 31.5% reported understanding first aid methods. Based on those results, the implications for science learning and lab safety in school are discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.173-186
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to design and apply a pilot inquiry experiment focusing on the epistemological issues of scientific activities, and derive educational implications by analyzing experimental activities and reflective discussions. Three graduate students who major in science education participated in the study voluntarily. Participants showed the characteristics of stable enquiry in Experiment 1. However, the small but continuous changes in Experiment 2 led the experiment to a phase of fluid enquiry seeking new theories. Participants mobilized various resources, proposed new hypotheses, and models and requested additional experiments to verify them. In the process of reflective discussions, the participants led to the following three epistemological issues. First, at the beginning of the experiment, their observations were theoretically dependent. Second, when the observations were no longer coherent with theory, they face a crisis, and the adjustment of observation and theory proceeds. Third, stable enquiry and fluid enquiry are performed according to the relationship between observation and theory. The educational implications of school science inquiry based on the above process and results are as follows: First, this study shows that fluid enquiry can follow stable enquiry naturally, and examples of the activities are presented together. Second, in this study, it was confirmed that participants could draw up epistemological issues based on their experiences through reflective discussions following inquiry.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.128-142
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• 2011

The goal of this study was to investigate how hypotheses were elaborated after their initial appearances in the context of scientific problem solving. Data were collected from a class in which preservice elementary school teachers in groups carried out abductive inquiry of earth science. The analysis revealed two major processes of hypothesis elaboration: theory-driven and evidence-driven. The theory-driven process was in turn distinguished into two kinds of subprocesses: one is in pursuit of internal coherence and the other external coherence. The evidencedriven elaboration also had two subprocesses, which were triggered by direct evidence and indirect or analogical evidence, respectively. In addition, hypotheses were more often than not modified by a wrong theory or evidence whether it was driven by a theory or evidence. Implications for science education and related research were discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.69-81
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to find out the validation of instructional strategies using the Advanced Laboratory Equipment (ALE class) by investigating science high school students’ perception on ALE in chemistry classrooms and to consider the need for development of teaching materials on ALE class. 7 sessions of ALE including experiments with innovative equipment were developed and applied to 21 students in D Science High School. At the end of the sessions, questionnaire was given to the students. We also collected qualitative data by interviewing 9 students who participated in the questionnaire. We analyzed the data collected by In-depth interviews and students’ experimental reports. The result showed that ALE class was effective to enhance students’ understanding of learning concepts because the experimental time was shortened in real time data processing. Some students showed creative performance on solving scientific problems by using everyday materials in experimental process and developed perceptions of practical inquiry. Through this process, students’ positive attitudes and interests in science and heuristic inquiry skills were also enhanced. Developing ALE lesson materials will be helpful for students to understand science and technology and the domain of science in broader contexts.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.626-639
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• 2008

To present the suggestions for improvement in science textbooks of high school, scientific inquiry activities in geology of earth science textbooks of Korea and the U.S. were assessed in the areas of the contents, processes and contexts. Regarding the contents of inquiry activities, Korean textbooks contain more number of inquiry activities (5.8 per section) than the U.S. curriculums (4 per section). Inquiry activities of Korean textbooks mostly fall on the interpretation of diagrams and graphs whereas those of the U.S. textbooks more hands-on experiment, data transformation and self designing. As for the number of inquiry process skills per inquiry activity, Korean curriculums contain an average of 1.8 whereas the American ones 3. It suggests that the U.S. textbooks require more integrated process skills than the Korean earth science curriculums. In the process skills of all textbooks studied, the highest frequent elements were inferring and data interpretation; the percentage of these two elements was an average of 73.3% in Korean textbooks and 46.2% in the U.S. This suggests that the Korean textbooks emphasize the process skill on particular area, and uneven distribution of elements of process skills may hinder the development of integration ability of students. particularly in the integrated process skills, the U.S. textbooks presented all 7 elements, while Korean ones presented only 2 to 4 elements, indicating that the Korean textbooks may have weak points in providing various inquiry activities for students compared to the American textbooks. In inquiry context analysis, Korean curriculums provide simplistic inquiry contexts and low applicability to real life whereas the U.S. curriculums provide more integrated inquiry contexts and high applicability to real life.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.401-413
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• 2010

This study analyzed the kinds and frequencies of descriptors in 154 articles in ERIC data base on the 4th day of January in 2010. The titles of the articles includes the words, 'scientific literacy'. As each descriptor is constituted of two words and over, in this study the first word in the descriptor was defined as 'restrictive word' and the rest word(s) as 'target word(s)'. The results are as follows. First, the descriptors which show high frequencies of target words are the traditionally important themes of scientific literacy education. Target words which show relatively high frequency are 'education', 'literacy', 'instruction' and 'countries'. Low frequency word is 'curriculum', which has various restrictive words and represents wide differentiation. Second, among the descriptors which show low frequencies of target words, relatively high frequency descriptors are '(and)society', 'change', 'secondary education', 'concepts', and 'biology', which have been given more attention in scientific literacy research than the rest descriptors. Third, the number of the descriptors that shows largely distributed pattern A, which happens over 15 years continuously, is over the half of all analyzed descriptors, which shows that they have been the major objectives in researches about scientific literacy. Most descriptors of pattern A shows normal distribution of frequency or the trends of increasing frequency as the time is nearer. Fourth, The descriptors are divided into four groups according to the time span. Each research trends are as follows. In later 80s, the research which emphasizes the importance of the sociality and technology in all level school science curriculum. In later 90s the research for educational change of inquiry-centered science curriculum which considers technological literacy in social contexts. In earlier 2000s the research that scientists and science teachers develop science curricula mostly related to scientific principles and thinking in chemistry and biology especially. In later 2000s case studies which relates teaching methods and science process activities to students' attitudes, scientific concepts and curricula.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.184-192
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• 2009

Understanding about the Nature of Science (NOS) is element of scientific literacy. Its importance is emphasized, especially understanding about NOS was presented as goal of science education on the fifth curriculum in Korea. Attempt of teaching NOS has been continuous in school, that was limited by method of using History of Science. Except method of using History of Science, Experimenting is appropriate for method of teaching NOS. We expected that is effective to apply reflective approach method for understanding the NOS and composite lesson to emphasize reflection and discussion to general experiment class in the school. We applied experiment class to emphasize reflection and discussion to second grade students in the middle school and researched whether positive reflection and discussion is helpful understanding the NOS in science experiment class or not, through questionnaire about NOS and analysis of observation and interview. As a result, experiment class to emphasize reflection and discussion was effective for scientific inquiry skills and sociality of scientific inquiry, particularly for relation observation with deduction and possibility of variable analysis to experiment result. Therefore, experiment class to emphasize reflection and discussion is effective for understanding the NOS.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.475-493
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• 2020

In Korea, the lower elementary grades are applying a topic-oriented integrated curriculum. It causes a lack of science content and inquiry experience for young children. The purpose of this study is to understand the scientific experiences and perceptions of the lower elementary graders and to inquire about the meaning of those experiences in their science learning. Four students (male 2, female 2), their parents, and their first-year homeroom teachers participated in the study. The data collection was mainly conducted through in-depth interview of them. Results showed that the 'experiments' were the student's the main perception of science, and the epistemic emotion that students mainly feel about science was 'curiousness'. Since most experiences were dependent on non-formal educational experience, the parents were an important factor to determine their experiences about science. Various factors, such as students' scientific experiences, their epistemic emotions, and the parents, interacted to form children's perception of science. The positive perception of science affected the level of motivation and expectation for science learning as the third grade. It is suggested that improvement of curriculum and textbooks should emphasize scientific exploration for the lower graders of elementary school, which provides them meaningful scientific experience in school.

• The Journal of Korean Association of Computer Education
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• v.17 no.2
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• pp.77-86
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• 2014

By PISA 2007, TIMSS 2011, Korean high school students had high academic achievement to science and mathematics, while they had low attitude. Prospective college students are increasingly avoiding natural science and engineering. Moreover, the opportunities to learn to computer science in middle and high school are disappeared rapidly. The necessity of STEAM program based on Physical computing arise under these situation. Therefore, we developed STEAM program and studied the effects of the program in 2012. The result showed that students' scientific interests and attitude, scientific problem solving ability, scientific creative problem solving ability, personality test for children, and satisfaction of school life were enhanced. This study is follow-up study for the same students who improved every domain of the measurements. They were administerd pre-test at start of 2012, post-test at end of 2012, and delayed post-test at the end of 2013, on same test. The result of the study showed that only attitude to Scientific Inquiry was enhanced, but there was no significant result on the other domain of the test in comparison with start of 2012. But this result demonstrate the effect of STEAM education conversely.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.38 no.4
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• pp.541-553
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• 2018

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between epistemic goals, epistemic considerations and complexity of reasoning of science high school students in an open inquiry and to explore the context on how open inquiry compares with the characteristics of an authentic scientific inquiry. Two teams were selected as focus groups and a case study was conducted. The findings are as follows: First, the contexts, such as 'sharing the value for the phenomenon understanding, reflection on the value of the research, task characteristics that require collaboration and consensus, and sufficient communication opportunities,' promote epistemic goals and considerations. On the other hand, contexts such as 'lack of opportunity for critical review of related literature and environmental constraints' lowered epistemic sides. Second, epistemic goals and considerations influenced the reasoning complexity. The goal of 'scientific sense making' led to reasoning that pose testable hypotheses based on students' own questions. The high justification considerations led to purposely focusing attention to the control designs and developing creative experimental know-how. The high audience considerations led to defending their findings through argumentation and suggesting future research. On the other hand, the goal of 'doing the lesson' and the low justification considerations led to reasoning that did not interpret the meaning of the data and did not control the limit of experiment. The low audience considerations led to reasoning that did not actively defend their findings and not suggest future research. The results of this study suggest that guidance should provide communication and critical review opportunities.