• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.35 no.4
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• pp.537-548
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• 2015

This study aims to identify and compare the patterns of scientific questions generation among elementary science-gifted and general students when conducting observational tasks. The pattern in generating scientific questions, which is distinguished from other types of scientific questions, is the manner that students generate a variety of types of questions in an inquiry process. To analyze the patterns in generating scientific questions, the task of observing dry grapes in soda pop, candlelight, and dyed celery were selected as suitable tasks. The subjects were 26 science-gifted students participating in a gifted education program and 27 general students in an elementary school in the same city. They were all sixth graders. The results of this study are as follows: First, the patterns of scientific questions generation among gifted students and general students during observational tasks were classified into five patterns: [Pattern 1] single, [Pattern 2] sequential, [Pattern 3] repetitive, [Pattern 4] circulative, [Pattern 5] repetitive, and circulative. Second, gifted students and general students presented all of the five patterns, but the frequency of the patterns indicated differences between the two groups. The gifted students primarily presented [Pattern 3] and [Pattern 5]. On the other hand, the general students mainly presented [Pattern 1], [Pattern 2], and [Pattern 3]. These results suggest that the ways of generating scientific questions are very much as important as the types of questions. Teachers can establish teaching-learning strategies for generating scientific questions appropriate to learner's characteristics.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.415-429
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• 2014

The purpose of this study was to develop the 'airplane' science program based on Renzulli's Enrichment Triad Model for the gifted elementary students and investigate the effects of the program on attitude toward self-directed learning attitude, attitude toward laboratory work, and creative personality. Participants were 37 gifted students of local elementary school gifted classrooms. The results of this study were as follows: First, self-directed learning attitude was improved significantly including all sub-areas. Second, the attitude toward laboratory work was improved significantly including all sub-areas. Third, creative personality was improved significantly including all sub-areas. Finally, students' satisfaction about program had an average of 4.52 out of 5 points. Boys showed higher satisfaction on 'program management' and 'teacher's activities' than girls.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.625-636
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• 2010

Scientifically gifted students' argumentation characteristics in science instruction using the internet messenger was investigated. Participants in this study were five 9th grader in middle school in Seoul. They attended a program offered by the Science-Gifted Education Center, Seoul National University. Internet messenger (instant messenger) was used for instruction, and data were collected by saved messages. Toulmin's argument model was used as a tool for analyzing students' argumentation, and the argumentation patterns were categorized by sequence of argument operations. The results showed that in case of learner-centered instructions, there were lots of relatively higher-level argumentations appeared. On the contrary, teacher-centered instruction ended up with few or lower-level argumentation. Also there were four types of argumentation patterns emerged throughout the whole instructions. Findings suggest that the development of an instruction models and the selection of an appropriate topic be necessary for promoting the interaction between teacher and students as well as enhancing the students' ability of argument.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.8
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• pp.1017-1030
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• 2010

In this study, an enriched in-service program for teaching scientific creativity was developed and implemented using the scientific creativity activities developed by Park, Park, & Lee (2008). In this program, science teachers performed scientific creativity activities by themselves and practiced the development of actual teaching materials. As a result, science teachers mentioned that they could achieve their goals by learning about various actual teaching materials and teaching strategies for gifted education. They also mentioned that the in-service program was interesting, had appropriate levels of learning difficulty, and that they would apply the teaching programs and teaching strategies to actual gifted education. Observing teachers' actual learning processes during the in-service training course, it was found that they actually participated in the in-service program for a long time intensively and could improve conceptual understanding in depth, but it was necessary to long-term creative thinking practice for being beyond the level of students' creative activities. Finally, from the analysis of teaching materials developed by teachers at the final step of the in-service program, it was found which aspects were developed well or were unsatisfactory, therefore, these findings could be applied for more improved in-service programs.

• Proceedings of the Korea Contents Association Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.74-87
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• 2003

A model of STS (Science-Technology-Society) creativity education program for the gifted and talented children has been developed, based on GENEPLORE thinking process and Knowledge development theory. The GENEPLORE creative thinking process, developed by Finke et al. (1990, 1992), has two phases such as generative phase and exploratory phase. And The knowledge development theories of Piaget (1977) and Gallagher(1981) assume that knowledge-bases are developed on the basis of empirical as well as reflective abstraction, which could imply that knowledge-bases are crucial in creative thinking process. The creativity education model for the gifted and talented of the present study attempted to integrate 'the individual, creative thinking process, and social/scientific technology' by employing topics of the science-technology-society such as computer, network, biotech, robot, e-business, e-education, e-health, nanotech and entertainment and the structure and contents of the program are proposed

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.29-46
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• 2004

This study investigated a 7-week summer science research apprenticeship program for gifted high school students in U.S. The purpose of the study was to examine the reasons why the high school student participated in the program, the students' perceptions on the benefits of the apprenticeship program, and to investigate mentors' perceptions on assessment and mentorship of the students' projects. For this study, laboratory works and group meetings were observed, students' journal and research products were analyzed, and interviews were administrated with student apprentices and some mentors. The result revealed that the main reasons of students' participation were to perform research with university professionals, to understand the scientific research, and to explore their college/career decisions. Students' participation was strongly associated with their internal motivation and interests. The students perceived the benefits of the apprenticeship program as providing them with the experience of the nature of real scientific research, of learning of scientific knowledge on the focus area, and wiser college/career decisions. Students' projects were assessed and guided through on-going interactions and cognitive apprenticeship between mentors and student apprentices.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.249-260
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• 2010

The main purpose of this study is to examine the effects of explicit instructions on the nature of science (NOS) on the understanding of science-gifted students. Participants were engaged in 8 explicit NOS instructions spanning 6 months. Data were collected before and after the instructions from 20 science-gifted students using student worksheets, open-ended questionnaires (Views of Nature Of Science, VNOS), and in-depth interviews. The results of this study showed that explicit instructions were helpful in improving the understanding of the tentativeness in science and socially and culturally embedded aspects of science. However, participants not only still possess naive views on the nature of science about the distinction of law and theory and the empirical aspects of science, but also had conflicting views and misconceptions in some areas. The study has implication for development of science-gifted program that the explicit instructions on NOS and science inquiry should be provided concurrently, given the complementary relationship of the two activities.

• Journal of the Korea Computer Industry Society
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.197-206
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• 2008

Gifted education has drawn much attention in education in recent years and gifted education in computers in elementary education has been emerged as well throughout the country. Now computer algorithm education is considered as a core subject in the area because computer algorithm is the essence of computer technology on which information society relies technically, and also it provides theoretical basis for problem solving using computers. And we observe that fostering learner's creativity is crucial in learning computer algorithms because problem solving requires creativity in general. In the paper, we discuss the procedure to foster learner's creative problem solving ability which would greatly help students learn computer algorithms, and then we discuss how we can make algorithmic ideas into reality. Furthermore, we note that an appropriate level education is necessary for better results for outstanding students in the program, and lastly we propose ideas to improve current gifted elementary education in computers. The content of the paper is largely originated from experiences of teaching gifted elementary students conducted by a local university and sponsored by its municipal government for six years.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.679-701
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• 2014

As the validity issue of teacher nominations for the identification of gifted students has been raised recently, this study purports to test the validity of teacher nominations for selecting scientifically gifted students. As the criterion variables, domain specific traits such as science creative problem solving skills and science attitudes and domain general characteristics such as divergent thinking skills, creative attitudes, intrinsic motivation, and leadership were analyzed. Scientifically gifted students, potentially gifted students who had never been enrolled in gifted programs but were nominated as the scientifically gifted by teachers, and general class students participated in the study. The results of ANOVA showed that there were significant differences in all variables but originality factors of the TTCT and science creative problem solving skill test between gifted/nominated students and general class students; gifted/nominated students were significantly superior in these variables to general class students. The discriminant functions analysis yielded a discriminant function that significantly discriminated between gifted/nominated and general class students. Variables loaded on the discriminant function were science creative problem solving skills except for the originality subfactor, and science efficacy. These results imply that while teachers are likely to consider adaptation-oriented academic excellency related to logical thinking skills, problem solving skills, and science performance when nominating students, they may ignore the innovation-oriented property which is indicated as the fluency and originality factors of TTCT. Also, the criteria of teacher nominations are presumed to be congruent with the selection criteria of the gifted education program which pursued academic excellency as the educational goal. This suggests that with such criteria, high performing students in the science area can be sufficiently identified by teachers with no further identification procedures or/and tests.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.125-149
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to provide basic information on the current status of elementary school teachers' perception of gifted education. For this purpose, this study wi1l analyze elementary school teachers' perception of the gifted education (i.e., general perception of gifted education, characteristics of gifted children, identification of gifted children, programs for gifted education, and teachers of gifted education). A questionnaire survey was used for the purpose and research questions of this study. The questionnaire used in this study was constructed by taking into account the results of surveys conducted in previous studies and the literature on gifted education. Before conducting the research, a preliminary inquiry was made to identify problems that may occur while the subjects were participating in the survey, as well as to determine the appropriateness of the questionnaire and the amount of time needed. The preliminary inquiry was conducted with ten randomly selected elementary school teachers who did not participate as subjects in the actual research. The results were later used as initial data for the actual research. The subjects of this study were teachers who were teaching in8 elementary schools under each office of education in Seoul. This process was conducted for 180 elementary school teachers from April to May 2004. The results were analyzed using SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Science) Ver. 10.1, a software program for statistical research. After the data were analyzed, the following conclusions were arrived at: 1. The result of the genera1 perception of gifted education by elementary school teachers were positive and reasonably high. The level of their perception of detailed information or knowledge, however, was relatively low. 2. As for their perceptions of the emotional characteristics of gifted children, t11e results showed a low level of understanding of the characteristics of gifted children. 3. As for their perceptions of identification of gifted children, the results showed a high level of understanding of the appropriate time to provide special education to gifted children and of the methods to identify such. On the other hand, their understanding of the identification of gifted children in an actual class was poor. 4. The respondents' level of perceptions of programs for gifted education was very low since many subjects did not have any experiences with such programs. 5. The results showed a very positive response to receiving training on gifted education, though they were very reluctant to be assigned as teachers of gifted education because of the excessive work that is associated with such and their lack of capability in handling gifted children.