• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.391-401
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• 2018

This study investigated elementary students' perception of the suitability of inquiry activities related to the science inquiry, essential features of the inquiry and essential features of the inquiry by science inquiry activities. First, 5-6th grade elementary students' perception of the suitability of inquiry activities to the science inquiry was positive in this study and especially the score of experiment and field trip was high. The lowest score was on the discussion and elementary students thought that discussion might be wrong, because they just talked when they participated in the discussion. Second, perception of the essential features of science inquiry was positive. Especially, engaging students in evaluating their explanations in the light of alternative explanations was the highest. Students thought that explanation is important, but it is too hard to perform the science inquiry with only the explanation. Third, the score of research and experiment was high in essential features of science inquiry by science inquiry activities. The score of the field trip was low, so a more meaningful field trip should be carried out in the school.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.163-172
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• 2019

This study explored elementary teachers' perceptions on the essential features of science inquiry, the appropriateness of inquiry activities to science inquiry, and the essential features of inquiry by inquiry activities. 85 elementary teachers' perceptions were investigated using Likert scale survey, and 7 teachers were interviewed. The results are as follows. First, the features that elementary teachers perceived the most essential were 'Engaging students in evaluating their explanations in light of alternative explanations' and 'Engaging students in communicating and justifying their explanations'. Second, The inquiry activities that teachers thought the most appropriate to science inquiry were 'experiment' and 'project'. On the other hand, the perceptions on 'discussion' and 'field trip' were relatively low. Third, the inquiry activity that showed the highest mean score of five essential features of inquiry was 'experiment' while the mean score of 'field trip' was the lowest. Educational implications about the science inquiry were discussed.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.44 no.2
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• pp.167-182
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• 2020

The active participation and active interaction of learners in small group science inquiry activities are the main factors that determine the effectiveness of science learning. Roles can be assigned to members of a small group to facilitate interaction between members within the small group. The purpose of this study is to analyze the effect of role assignment on the types and patterns of verbal interactions in middle school students' small group science inquiry activities. For this, 172 students from middle schools located in metropolitan cities were surveyed. We analyzed 18 small groups with assigned roles and 15 small groups without assigned roles. The change in verbal interaction type in small group science inquiry activity according to role assignment was largely divided into alienation and participation. In the case of small groups with assigned roles, the participation type occupied a higher proportion than the alienation type. The change in verbal interaction patterns did not show much significant differences when the role was assigned in terms of cognitive and affective. Based on this, further research is needed on how role assignment affects verbal interactions depending on the type of scientific inquiry and the stage of inquiry. In addition, further research on the composition of small groups and role assignment is required.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.39 no.4
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• pp.349-360
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• 2018

This study analyzed variations of learning stress by comparing the salivary cortisol levels of students who participated in Earth Science inquiry activities. The cortisol concentrations between the pre- and post-inquiries of the sample of 34 university students, who had taken the course of 'Basic Earth Science and Experiments', were analyzed. The Earth Science inquiries consisted of geology and astronomy activities. The observational geology activities consisted of a session of 'structure contours and map patterns' and the cognitive astronomy activities consisted of a session of 'representations of horizontal and equatorial coordinates'. These Earth Science inquiry activities were found to cause students to have anxiety, and the thought processes that these activities involved were found to cause learning stress. The variations in cortisol concentrations of students increased by $1.6{\pm}5.9ng\;mL^{-1}$ after conducting observational activities in geology compared with $2.1{\pm}6.2ng\;mL^{-1}$ after doing cognitive activities in astronomy. The analysis of the observational activities in the geology inquiry activities indicated that they were consistent with low levels of learning stress. Conversely, the analysis of the cognitive activities in the astronomy inquiry activities showed significant individual variations in cortisol concentrations. Furthermore, individual differences in cognitive ability were reflected in the astronomy inquiry activities. While students, who received high scores, exhibited low levels of stress in the geology inquiry activities, they showed high levels of stress in the astronomy inquiry activities. It was concluded that, in the case of students with high scores in the study, the level of learning stress increased due to the raised anxiety in cognitive inquiry activities. In contrast, students, who received low scores in the study, exhibited high levels of stress in the geology inquiry activities, and low levels of stress in the astronomy inquiry activities.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.109-122
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• 2015

In National Curriculum of Science revised in 2007, free inquiry was newly introduced to increase student's interest in science and to foster creativity by having students make their own curiosity questions and find answers by themselves. The purpose of this study is to analyze elementary school students' perceptions on free science inquiry activities applying a brain-based evolutionary approach. For this study, 106 the fifth grade students participated, and then completed a questionnaire on free inquiry activities according to a brain-based evolutionary science teaching and learning principles. The students performed a series of steps of the Diversifying, Estimating-Evaluating-Executing, and Furthering activities in each of Affective, Behavioral, and Cognitive domains (ABC-DEF approach) and constructed their own free inquiry diary, then the observations by the researcher and interviews with the students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The major results of the study were as follows: First, the majority of the students perceived the each domain and step positively although a few of them perceived negatively. The reasons perceived as negatively were categorized into two; preference dimension of like or dislike and ability dimension of metacognitive or self-reflective capacity. Also, they perceived the free inquiry experience in the form of ABC-DEF as helpful to understand the nature of scientists' scientific activities. Based on these findings, implications for supporting authentic inquiry in school science are discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.60 no.1
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• pp.59-68
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• 2016

The cultivation of scientific literacy in recent science education can be improved by experiencing and understanding scientific inquiry by which scientific knowledge is formed. The National Research Council(NRC) released the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) including 8 practices of science that help students experience scientists' inquiry and subdividing achievement standards to perform 8 practices of science into by grade clusters. This study was intended to examine science inquiry activities included in 4 high school chemistry II textbooks developed by the 2009 revised curriculum using the 8 scientific practices and their achievement standards for 9th-12th grade. The science inquiry activities and the science practices included in the 4 textbooks were 173 and 678. The science practices included in the inquiry activities of 4 textbooks included the most ‘analyzing and interpreting data.’ The ‘engaging in argument from evidence’, ‘Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information’ were less than other practices. The ‘asking questions and defining problem’ and ‘developing and using models’ were not nearly included in the 4 high school chemistry II textbooks.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.84-91
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• 2020

In this study, we investigated the elements of knowledge and information processing competence of science inquiry activities in grades 3-6 science textbooks. For this purpose, the elements of knowledge and information processing competence were extracted and a framework for analysis was created. Analysis of eight science textbooks for grades 3-6 in elementary school was carried out using the analysis framework. The following results were obtained by the analysis framework: First, we divided the knowledge and information processing competence into five elements: 'collection,' 'analysis,' 'expression,' 'selection,' and 'evaluation.' Second, the elements of knowledge and information processing competence of science inquiry activity of elementary science textbooks were not evenly composed. The science inquiry activities of elementary science textbooks focused on 'collection' and 'analysis' among the five elements of the knowledge and information processing competence, followed by 'expression,' 'selection,' and 'evaluation.' As a result, we found that a science inquiry model or a science instruction model is needed to develop the knowledge and information processing competence in elementary school science curriculum.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.132-143
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of inquiry activities proposed in high school physics textbooks that were developed based on the 2009 science curriculum in Korea. The inquiry activities were analyzed using the notion of scientific practices introduced in the Science Education Framework (NRC, 2012). The results showed that the inquiry activities in the textbooks emphasized two of eight types of scientific practices including "Analyzing and interpreting data" and "Constructing explanations". In contrast, the activities required students to "ask questions" only once in a total of 291 science inquiry activities. The other types of scientific practices appeared less than 10%. Also found was that the types of scientific practices were not relevant to the way inquiry activities were used for textbook content. Implications for the curriculum and science teacher education were discussed.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.3
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• pp.579-587
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• 2014

In National Curriculum of Science revised in 2007, 'Free Inquiry' was newly introduced to increase student's interest in science and to foster creativity by having students make their own questions and find answers by themselves. The purpose of the study was to analyze characteristics deployed in the processes of elementary school students' free inquiry activities applying a brain-based evolutionary science teaching and learning principles. For this study, 106 the fifth grade students participated, and they performed individually free inquiry activities according to a brain-based evolutionary approach. In order to characterize the diversifying, estimating-evaluating-executing, and extending-applying activities in behavioral domain, the free inquiry diary constructed by the students, observations by the researcher, and interviews with the students were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively. The major results of this study were as follows: First, the students preferred basic inquiry process skills and the majority of the students selected observation as a major approach of their inquiry. The reason was found to be that they were accustomed to only typical basic inquiry skills which is frequently presented at textbooks and regular instruction and didn't have appropriate experience for using relevant integrative inquiry skills. Second, most of the methods diversified and selected by the students were confined to descriptive explanation rather than causal one. Third, both of the science attitude and academic achievement were associated with the number of diversified methods and the selection of appropriate method. Based on these findings, implications for supporting domain novices in inquiry learning environments are advanced.

• 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.