• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.359-371
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school students' conceptions of gas and analyse the type of alternative conceptions of gas which students constructed. To appreciate the conceptions formed by elementary school students on this topic, 173 sixth grade students from an elementary school located in Suwon participated in this study. Additionally, their conceptions and their alternative conceptions of gas represented by the questionnaires were analyzed. The questionnaires consisted of 11 questions related to the conception of gas. To analyze the types of alternative conceptions which presented themselves, constructed prototypes were generated by interviewing the students themselves. From our results, we suggest that sixth grade elementary school students have various conceptions of gas and tend to think that gas is weighty, and that gaseous volume decreases by pressure. However, their conceptions of gas melting in water were very low, as only about 16% of students were aware of this scientific conception. Students who did not understand precisely the conception of the nature of oxygen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen were over 20%. The results of the interviews showed that the construction of alternative conceptions of gas was affected by various and complex causes.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.253-268
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• 2012

The purpose of this study is to investigate the elementary pre-service teachers' conceptions of 'color of gases' focusing on the survey from freshmen at a National University of Education. For the study, the views about 'color of gases' were surveyed from the pre-service teachers. And the responses were analyzed based on the patterns. The results from the study are as follows: First, the conceptions about 'color of gases' were divided into 2 top-level, 5 mid-level and 7 sub-level categories. Second, the number of students who answered 'certain gas has color' was significantly greater than those who answered 'every gas has no color'. However, only a small number of students who answered former understand the scientific meaning of color and the color of gases correctly. Third, out of 5 misconception categories, greater number of students answered with 'inaccurate scientific knowledge (Ma1)', so the category was classified again into five detailed sub-categories. Fourth, most of the students, who answered 'every gas has no color', stated "they have not seen any color gases through their lives" based on their own experience. Fifth, the distribution percentage for scientific conceptions vs misconceptions was not related with the students' gender but highly related with students' academic area and their science courses taken at high school. Sixth, the pre-service teachers have various types of misconceptions regarding the 'color of gases' and when they have to explain visibility of gases to other people they tend to pass on their misconceptions. Based on the results from the study, some educational guidelines were suggested.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.491-504
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• 2011

We investigated science-gifted students' conceptions on science learning. The inventory instruments used for our study were a questionnaire on the conceptions of learning science (COLS) and a questionnaire on the approaches to learning science (ALS). Our analysis of the questionnaires showed that there are differences in the conceptions of science learning between the science-gifted and ordinary students. Science-gifted students perceive science learning as storing up of scientific knowledge, expansion of knowledge structure and achievement of a new view. There are no differences in the conceptions of science learning between male and female science-gifted students. There are also no differences in the conceptions of science learning in terms of subject preference such as physics, chemistry, biology and earth science. Our analysis offer assistance to teaching material and teaching method for science courses.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.383-393
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• 1997

In order to study the effect of student's conceptions about force and motion into the graph construction in kinematics in college physics course, the tasks of constructing the qualitative graph in the similar problem context used in force conception was asked to the first 74 and third 97 student teacher in teachers' university. The frequencies analysis showed that student teachers had the naive conceptions that the throwing force was still acted to a upwarding ball. They also had the popular Aristotelian views about motion. These naive conceptions coexisted with the scientific conception about gravitational force. In a simple pendulum problem no one had the correct acceleration concepts which varies the direction in swing. This result suggest that student teacher had more difficulties in a acceleration problem than in a velocity problem In v-t and a-t graph construction tasks, the number of categories of a-t graphs were more than that of v-t graphs. There were many graph errors in a sign of velocity and acceleration. The acceleration conceptions without the relations of changes in velocity made the kinematics graphs more various shapes. The force and motion conceptions influenced the ability to construct the kinematics graphs.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.524-534
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• 2011

This study is to ascertain pre-service teachers' conceptions for the causes of season change, to verify their conceptional mistakes, and to analyze how their conceptions are changed while presenting Disproof-Experiment Model where they cannot explain it with their current conceptions. 32 junior students of Education universities, pre-service elementary teachers, located at the middle of Korea participated in this research including two interviews and one experiment activity. As a result of analyzing of the data, the pre-service teachers held diverse conceptions for the causes of season change such as to mistake the phenomena, the distance between the earth and the sun, the tilting of the rotation axis and the revolving around the sun while changing the tilting direction of the rotation axis as the cause. After applying Disproof-Experiment Model designed by the researchers in order to change the current conception above, the conception changes of the pre-service teachers were investigated. Diverse Disproof-Experiment Models were used differently depending on the pre-service teachers' conceptions. As a result of the application of Disproof-Experiment Model, 26 out of 28 pre-service teachers were changed to scientific conceptions. It was determined that in order to modify pre-service teachers' conceptions, designing and presenting the Disproof-Experiment Model appropriate to their conceptions are effective after analyzing their conceptions. In case of conceptions that pre-service teachers feel difficult, it was established that unraveling experiment models prescribed after investigating the preconceptions and identifying the misconceptions are important.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.406-414
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• 2006

This study investigated 7th grade students' context dependency on explanations about propagating path of light in three different contextual problems: observation of an object, observation of an object's image in a mirror, and observation of one's own face reflection in a mirror. Researchers examined student response in each context through interviews. The students were classified into four groups according to their explanations for the three different contexts. Each group was redivided into two or three subgroups in accordance with their conceptual features. After that, researchers investigated the characteristics of each subgroup. Main findings of the study indicated that (1) group 1 students' conceptions differed in each context; (2) group 2 students showed scientific conceptions in C1 context but in C2 context they showed visual ray conceptions or image misconceptions; (3) group 3 students did not show scientific conceptions in C3 context by strong misconceptions about one's own face reflection in the mirror. Also, this paper discussed the educational implications of the results.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.923-943
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• 2002

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relation between the levels of cognitive conflict and students' conceptual change. In this study, 30 Korean high school students were selected from 450 10th graders by examining the pretest results. Two different strategies were used to induce cognitive conflicts in students, an anomalous or conflict situations; demonstrations and logical arguments against students' preconception. After arousing the students' cognitive conflict, the level of cognitive conflict was rated. Pretest, post-test and delayed post-test were administered to check the conceptual change. The tests consisted of 5 items in mechanics and electricity, respectively. Therefore, the demonstration method showed effective conceptual change, more than the logical argument method did. Students changed their conceptions more easily and frequently in the area of mechanics than in electricity. Students who showed higher levels of cognitive conflict indicated more positive conceptual change than those who showed lower conflict levels. 59 cases (56%) out of 105 who experienced high levels of cognitive conflict were changed into scientific conceptions one month later; however only 16 cases (35%) out of 46 who experienced low levels of cognitive conflict changed into scientific conceptions. Students who experienced higher levels of cognitive conflict showed higher rates of conceptual change. It could be concluded that designing instruction to induce cognitive conflict is a useful strategy to promote conceptual change.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.513-527
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• 2011

There have been studies about conceptual ecology making a profound study of conceptual changes in learners' cognitive structure. Because learners' cognitive structure have been compared to ecology, it is natural to think that conception in learner's cognitive structure have a niche as species in ecology have niches. Therefore, it is necessary to study niche approach about conception that learners recognize in their cognitive structure. The purposes of this study were to identify relationships among conceptions that 5th grade elementary school students recognize about photosynthesis and to identify how these relationships among conceptions about photosynthesis change before and after a class of photosynthesis in curriculum in terms of an approach of ecological niche which are composed of 3 domains - diversity of conceptions, relevance and frequency rate of conceptions, and competition among conceptions. Open ended questionnaire was developed by 4 fields: photosynthetic place, photosynthetic products, photosynthetic materials needed and environment factors of photosynthesis. The subjects sampled in this study were 310 5th grade elementary students in 5 cites. Before and after classes in photosynthesis in science curriculum, students were asked to write down conceptions that they knew about the 4 fields of photosynthesis of questionnaire and to write down scales of relevance from 1 to 30 about how they think the conceptions are related to the field of photosynthesis. The results of this study showed the following: First, most students have had a variety of conceptions and commonly recognized 'light' and 'water' as concepts in photosynthesis. Second, students still recognized their preconceptions like 'soil' and 'root,' etc. that were far from scientific conceptions of photosynthesis although they took classes in photosynthesis. Third, students needed to take the various strategies of teachers because they did not recognized scientific conceptions appropriately about photosynthetic fields. Fourth, it appeared that photosynthetic conceptions recognized by students had status in terms of relevance and frequency rate of conceptions, and competition among conceptions, and that they looked like the niche of conceptions in their conceptual ecologies.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.1-13
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• 2000

The purposes of this study were to survey the elementary students' conceptions of electric circuits and of electric currents, and to explore the relationships between them. The questionaire were developed into matched forms which corresponds to each conceptions of electric circuits and electric currents. The elementary students were selected from 4th and 5th grade in a elementary school in a large local city, which of the total numbers of students were 163. The student who have well-developed conception in electric circuits are superior in conceptions of electric currents to other student who have not in each items of questionnaire required to draw a simple basic electric circuits for lightening the bulb, to select the basic elements of circuits, to identify the arrangement of batteries and bulbs. So we concluded that the scientific conceptions of electric circuits could contribute to the scientific conceptions of electric currents, as expected in elementary science textbooks.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.571-587
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• 1998

This paper reviews and analyzes the conceptions of science achievement in the United States and Korean reform documents, including those on science content standards(NSES, Porject 2061, and Korean 7th science curriculum), performance standards(New Standards, and Survey of Ecucational Achievement in Korean Elementary and Secondary Schools), and large-scale assessment framworks(1996 NAEP, TIMSS, The National Assessment of Science Inqury Abilities, The National Assessment of Science Knowledge, and The National Assessment of Affective Characteristics related to Science). The analysis of these documents indicates that there is an overall agreement on the conceptions of science achievement. The documents consistently emphasize high achievement in terms of knowledge and abilities in scientific, technological, social, and environmental perspectives. In addition, these documents define science achievement at different developmental levels and at certain depths of knowledge and abilities for all students. Despite the overall agreement, there are also noticeable variations among the documents because of different contexts and purposes. There is a difference in the balance of representations or emphases among content and process standards in the documents. The conceptions of science achievement in the Korean documents are not as comprehensive or inclusive as those in the United States documents. There is no representation of the mathematical world, the nature of science, historical perspectives, unifying concepts, or scientific communication. From these results, two conclusions are drawn. First, more coherent conceptions of science achievement are needed for common understanding among educators and the public. Second, efforts are needed for developing more comprehensive and inclusive conceptions of science achievement in Korea.