• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-13
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to understand characteristics of students' reflective inquiry disposition in the contexts of classroom and to find educational implications for the promotion of the reflective inquiry activity in the inquiry-based class. In this study, we determined a characteristic of the reflection inquiry by examining students' responses showed in response to the different class types in high school earth science inquiry class. The result of the study indicated that the difference between the newly developed class type to promote the reflective inquiry and the existing inquiry class type was found significant. The newly developed reflective inquiry class had a multitude of reflective inquiry statements related to various elements of data context in terms of the quantity and diversity of the reflective inquiry. In conclusion, we found that the newly developed class type had a positive impact on the students' reflective inquiry activity. We believe that the development of the inquiry activity to promote students' reflective inquiry is critical.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.459-466
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• 2012

This study aimed to investigate the characteristics of pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry in terms of designing exploration and reasoning that is used to formulate explanations based on evidence. The research context was an open inquiry with using the Science Writing Heuristic (SWH) template in which participant students were not provided with inquiry questions. As data, lab. 39 pre-service elementary teachers participated in this study while taking their science methods course. Analyses of the reports were framed by the cognitive processes of inquiry (Chinn and Malhotra, 2002) and each report was coded and analyzed by the framework of inquiry (Tytler and Peterson, 2004). Results showed that groups' works that utilized the SWH template encouraged the participants to interact each other about scientific inquiry. They came up with more relevant and testable questions for their scientific inquiry. It implicates that children will be able to have chances of testing their own questions more properly by using the SWH template in science classes just as the participants did in this study. The use of the SWH template would help pre-service teachers to teach appropriately how to test inquiry questions to their students in the future. Discussion was made to figure out the characteristics or Korean pre-service elementary teachers' understanding about scientific inquiry.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.275-286
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to investigate the features of inquiry activities using technology in the 2015 revised elementary science digital textbooks. For this, we analyzed the features of inquiry context and inquiry method presented in inquiry activities using three kinds of technology: Virtual experiment, virtual reality and augmented reality. As a result, firstly, the most common types of 77 inquiry activities were realistic type which shows the phenomenon actually and vividly as possible and realistic-abstract type which shows the phenomena with the abstract concepts. Second, the ways of using three technologies were different depending on the processes of inquiry and the sub-domains of science. For example, virtual experiment technologies were mostly used in the contents of physics and chemistry with the inquiry context of realistic-abstract type for investigating the relationship between variables of experiments and describing the phenomena mechanically. On the other hand, virtual reality and augmented reality techniques tended to be used more frequently in biology and earth science contents with the inquiry context of realistic type for observing and describing the phenomena. Finally, we discussed educational implications in terms of developing and applying technology-based inquiry activities.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.92-103
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• 1995

Since the late of 1960,s, the improvement of science inquiry skills has been one of the most important goals in secondary science education. To achieve this goal, it is essential to develop a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating science inquiry skills. The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating science inquiry skills for high school students. The instrument is developed through R & D procedure, which includes two field trials of the instrument. This study has formed a clear definition of the elements of science inquiry skills (formulating a hypothesis, controlling variables, designing an experiment, numeric calculation, graphing experimental data, inference, determining relationship, determining causalities, predicting experimental results , drawing a conclusion, formulating a generalization or model), and established the goals of assessment and developed the items of assessment. The instrument, Test of Earth Science Inquiry Skills, consists of 33 items which measure 11 science inquiry skills. There are content-free items for each science inquiry skills. This study has selected 11 science inquiry skills which are considered appropriate for being evaluated by paper-and-pencil test with SIEI (Hur,1984). The content validity of items, objectivity of the scoring keys and clarity of the items were checked by six experienced specialists in science education. At the same time, the two field trials has been executed and produced the reliability of the instrument, item difficulty index, and the effectiveness of distracters. The first field trial was performed using a sample of 304 high school students, and the second one using a sample of 872 high school students. Because the content validity is 84 % and the reliability (K-R 20) is 0.84, the developed instrument in this study is considered valid and reliable. The difficulty index is 49.4 %, answer ratio 59.1 %, the discrimination index 0.47 and the effectiveness of distracters evenly distributed, which also suffice the criteria of good instrument. The developed instrument in this study can diagnosis the well-developed science inquiry skills and the ill-developed science inquiry skills of the students, and trace the degree of the improvement of science inquiry skills.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.294-305
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• 2012

Scientific literacy has long been as one of the key goals of science education, and using scientific inquiry in school science has became an important objective to be achieved. The processes of scientific inquiry consist of proposing/developing inquiry question, designing and conducting investigation, collecting, analyzing and interpreting data, and communicating the results. However, most students experience mainly collecting and transforming data in inquiry processes in science class and they are barely exposed to the opportunities of proposing/developing inquiry questions. Middle school earth science preservice teachers participated in this study (N=36) and their abilities of developing inquiry questions were surveyed. Participants' abilities of developing inquiry questions were investigated whether they were enhanced with activities using the Inquiry Questions Development Guide (IQDG). Also, this study was interested in whether there was any relationship between abilities of developing inquiry questions and designing inquiry investigation. The results of this study were as follows; first, the level and preciseness of inquiry questions and its preciseness developed by participating teachers were enhanced after experiencing IQDG. In addition, teachers' dominating inquiry question-types were two: one is a 'relationship-inquiry question' in which students could discover the relationship between results found in the given experimental situations and the other one is a 'why-how inquiry problem' in which students could explore a cause or a process that results in the outcomes. Finally, the higher level of and preciseness the of inquiry questions were identified as an important factor the determined teachers' abilities of designing more logical investigation. A process of proposing/developing inquiry question was identified as one of the most important processes contributing to a success of scientific inquiry investigation.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.207-218
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• 2010

The revised curriculum in 2007 adds an open inquiry approach to increase students' creativity and interest in science. Because it is the first time for elementary students to perform the open inquiry due to the national curriculum, it is essential that teachers give students' successful experiences in order to build a positive impression about inquiry activity. The purpose of this research is to develop and apply the open inquiry program. The research findings are as follows: First, we analyzed the students' traits of open inquiry ability during the program. The third and fourth grade students showed weakness in operating and inquiring abilities. They also feared failure and were unable to concentrate in classes which were based on explanation or discussion. When students had unexpected results, however, their inquiring abilities and creativeness increased considerably. Additionally there were some students who were stressed during the science-inquiry activity, due to no interest in science and an inability to think scientifically. Second, we developed an open inquiry program for elementary students. The program was modified, reflected upon the students' traits during open inquiry in class. Through repeated feedback like this, we completed the program. Third, for those who studied in the lessons there was a meaningful change in students' science inquiry abilities and abilities to perform 'formulating a hypothesis' and 'the control of variables'. These students' level of self-inquiry performance improved steadily. Moreover, they obtained a strong attachment to their inquiry and understood the method of quantitative experiments.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.153-167
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• 2007

In this study, it is assumed that understanding the nature of science (NOS) would enhance students' performance of scientific inquiry in more authentic ways. The ultimate goal of this study is to suggest new models for developing scientific inquiry activities through understanding the NOS by linking the NOS with scientific inquiry. First, the various definitions and statements of the NOS are summarized, then the features of the developmental nature of scientific knowledge and the nature of scientific thinking based on the philosophy of science are reviewed, and finally a synthetic list of the elements of the NOS is proposed, consisting of three categories: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the nature of scientific thinking. This suggested synthetic list of the NOS is used to suggest a model of scientific inquiry through the understanding of the NOS. This list was designed to provide basic standards regarding the NOS as well as practical guidance for designing activities to improve students' understanding of the NOS.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.88-96
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• 2016

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Jigsaw small inquiry method on science academic achievement and scientific attitudes. For this study, two classes of six graders were divided into a research group and a comparative group. The classes were pre-tested in order to ensure the same standard. The research group had the science class with Jigsaw small inquiry method, and the comparative group had the class with a teacher centered lectures for 12 classes for 12 weeks. The Jigsaw small inquiry method was focused on the introduction stage, the whole group activities, professional group activities, restart the whole group activities, supplementary structured study guide, results announced, and excellent group rewards. To prove the effects of this study, science learning motivation was split up based on the attention power, relation, confidence, and sense of satisfaction. The results of this study are as follows. First, Jigsaw small inquiry method is effective in science academic achievement. Second, Jigsaw small inquiry method is effective in scientific attitudes. Also, Jigsaw small inquiry method was approved by students. Consequently, Jigsaw small inquiry method had the great effects on developing science academic achievement for the elementary science class. That means the science class with Jigsaw small inquiry method has potential to develop science academic achievement and scientific attitudes.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.56-65
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• 1993

The purpose of this study is to analyze the inquiry activities of SCIIS and Korea primary school science curricular meterials and to make suggestions for the improvement of inquiry learning based on the analysis The Scientific Inquiry Evaluation Inventory (SIEI: Myung Hur, 1984) was used to evaluate the inquiry activity content of the primary school "Science, Level-6" and "SCIIS, Level-6" textbooks. The results are as follows: 1) The inquiry activities of Korean science textbooks are stressing on gathering and organizing data, but rarely require students to formulate a hypothesis, to design an experiment. 2) The SCIIS textbooks relatively tended to put more weight on interpreting/ analysing data and hypothesizing/ designing experiments. 3)The Korean science textbooks had little concern about establishing hypothesis and designing experiments, interpreting / analysing data. 4) The SCIIS textbooks require students to perform a variety of inquiry skills when compare to Korean science textbooks. 5) Competition / Cooperation Scale checks the level of competition and cooperation among student teams inherent in science curricular materials. The result from each team is incorporated into the formation of a class result. The communication is required to formulate a synthesized class response, enhances cooperation among teams. The SCIIS(84%) is the higher than Korea(50%) in cooperation scale. 6) Korean science textbooks rarely require students to discuss about experiment when compare to SCIIS textbooks. 7) Korean science textbooks provide students with both inquiry problems and experimental procedure, or including answers SCIIS textbooks provide students with both inquiry problems and experimental procedure, or problems only. 8) The Korean textbooks emphasize demonstrating or verifying of the text while the SCIlS emphasize extending the content of the text in inquiry scope scsle. The inquiry pyramid which helps analysis the inquiry activity curriculum as a whole is one of type 1- the course is centered on gathering and organizing data. The SCIIS are better than the Korean science textbook in the light of proportion of interpreting / analysing data and hypothesizing / designing experiments.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.262-276
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• 2010

The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the elementary teachers' views and students' views about the difficulties in teaching and learning on open inquiry activities of elementary school science. Semi-structured interviews were conducted individually with three elementary teachers who have serviced more than three years, and with twenty four elementary students attending schools located in Cheongju City. And their anecdotes were collected and analyzed. The interview questions were developed through Seidman's steps to acquire the reliability in the interview data. From the interviews and anecdotes, we found that elementary teachers' views about the difficulties of teaching open inquiry activities: the difficulties of teaching in finding inquiry problem and planning inquiry, the difficulties of managing group activities, the difficulties of managing class hours for inquiry, the lack of the students' inquiry abilities, and problems on students' affective characteristics. And the students have the views about the difficulties in doing open inquiry activities: the difficulties of finding inquiry problem and planning inquiry, being unaccustomed to write reports, the troubles with investigating, problems on affective characteristics, the difficulties of joining in a group, and the lack of inquiry abilities. The teachers give suggestions for effective application of the open inquiry activities: first, the teachers must encourage students' emotion and will in doing open inquiry activities, second, there must be the steady inquiry teaching and learning in ordinary elementary science classes. Based on the results, this study suggested that elementary teachers should concern specially about students' being unaccustomed to write reports and the troubles in doing scientific investigation.