• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.88-98
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• 2019

As the 2015 revised curriculum is being implemented from 2018, efforts are being made to cultivate scientific literacy among students in the field of science. Scientific experiments help students to develop their interest in Science and their scientific attitudes. Learning through experimentation rather than learning scientific facts increases learners' understanding, and can be remembered longer. Therefore, experiments in Science subject are very important. However, in middle schools, scientific experiments are not performed due to the lack of time, budget and experimental material. In this research, we analyze middle school science textbooks, conduct questionnaires for students of science pre-service teachers, select the most important science experiments, and develop a mobile App to simulate and experience scientific experiments with the App. The proposed App is developed in a game format using quest-based learning methods to gain learning enhancement. It is also made using Unity. In this paper, after developing the app, we propose the direction of STEAM contents development through analyzing the difference from existing apps and the feedback from users.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.41 no.2
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• pp.267-280
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• 2017

The purpose of this study is to review the foundation of the representative early scientific societies and their major activities. The documents, books, and literature related to this study were collected through internet websites (e.g., google scholar, wikipedia) and analyzed by the qualitative content analysis method. The result of this study shows that requirement for the necessary resources to acquire or to prepare the instruments for the experiment is significantly increased with the rising importance of the experiments to conduct the scientific methods. As a consequence, scientists faced urgent necessities to conduct scientific experiments with cooperation and exchange of the newest information by establishing a community beyond the independent and individual research activity. Establishment of the scientific societies is the result of these necessities. At the beginning of the scientific societies, the resources are provided by either wealthy patron or member contribution or public through foundation of government organization. This study provides the implications for future scientific societies.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.583-595
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to identify whether the elementary school students force conceptions may influence on designing tools experiments. Four questions with multiple choices and reasons for those choices were asked to identify scientific/alternative force conception. Also four tasks for tools experiments matched to each force conceptions were developed into open questions in hypothesizing. controlling variables and methods of experiments. Forty elementary students were selected from 4 classes in sixth grade of a school in Daegu city. The major findings of this study were that the types of force conceptions can be classified into scientific and alternative conceptions. The patterns of designing experiments could be identified with types of hypothesis, controlling variables and methods of experiments in each four tools experiments. But students those who had scientific force conception did not better in hypothesis, methods of controlling variables and results for simple experiment than those who had alternative force conceptions. These results imply that students' force conception did not influence on designing tools experiments. The assumption that scientific conception could improve designing experiments was not guaranteed by this results.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.757-767
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• 2002

This study investigated the effects of scientific inquiry experiments emphasizing social interaction on the academic achievement, the ability for science inquiry and the learning motivation of the students. To examine the differences among the classes of scientific inquiry experiments according to the way of organizing small groups, the effects of the group in homogeneous cognitive level and the group in heterogeneous cognitive level were compared. 255 7th-graders were grouped into the treatment group and the control group. After the treatment group received the scientific inquiry experimental lessons emphasizing social interaction and the control group received traditional lessons for one year, academic achievement, ability for scientific inquiry, and learning motivation were examined. These inquiry experiments were composed of four steps which are eliciting, familiarizing, constructing and bridging. And students can interact with peers and teachers through the process of relating observed phenomena to concept, constructing experiment procedure, and eliciting results. The ANCOVA results revealed that there were significant effects of science inquiry experiments emphasizing social interaction on the academic achievement, the ability for scientific inquiry and the learning motivation of the students. The significant academic achievement of the students in most of the cognitive levels, if not all, was found and degree of improvement in the ability for scientific inquiry was lower than that in the academic achievement. Concerning the effects according to the way of organizing small groups, there were significant improvement in academic achievement and learning motivation of the group in homogeneous cognitive level compared to the group in heterogeneous cognitive level. These results indicate that social interaction in learning is important and it has positive influences on the improvement in academic achievement and ability for scientific inquiry of students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.28 no.3
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• pp.211-226
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was to investigate science teachers' understandings about scientific argumentation in the classroom. Seven structured interview protocols were developed, asking the definition of scientific inquiry, the differentiation between scientific inquiry and hands-on activity, the opportunity of student argumentation, explicit teaching strategies for scientific argumentation, the critical example of argumentation, the criteria of successful argumentation, and the barrier of developing argumentation. The results indicate that there are differences and similarities in understandings about scientific argumentation between two groups of middle school teachers and upper elementary. Basically, teachers at middle school define scientific inquiry as the opportunity of practicing reasoning skills through argumentation, while teachers at upper elementary define it as the more opportunities of practicing procedural skills through experiments rather than of developing argumentation. Teachers in both groups have implemented a teaching strategy called "Claim-Evidence Approach," for the purpose of providing students with more opportunities to develop arguments. Students' misconception, limited scientific knowledge and perception about inquiry as a cycle without the opportunity of using reasoning skills were considered as barriers for implementing authentic scientific inquiry in the classroom.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.253-264
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to investigate implications of self-directed learning experiments in elementary science education through understanding elementary school students' awareness of their experiences in self-directed learning experiments. Twenty students joined the school science club voluntarily and conducted self-directed learning experiments. We collected data through observation of the experiments, interviews, and questionnaires. The students who participated in the club showed high satisfaction with self-directed learning experiments. The participants were aware that their scientific interest and knowledge, and the confidence in conducting experiments were increased. The students felt positive about the inquiry process of conducting self-directed learning experiments with their own subjects. They also felt a sense of achievement in attempting their experiments in defiance of several failures. The participants realized that the self-directed inquires led to increased declarative and procedural knowledge of science. The students stated that they had some difficulties in coping with the different results contrary to expectations and preparing laboratory materials and instruments. Nonetheless, they showed the promotion of their scientific literacy during overcoming those difficulties. We suggest that self-directed learning experiments can be a more effective way in science learning to make students experience the nature of science than existing school experiments. This can be implemented through a creative experience activities such as science clubs.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.387-394
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• 2005

We have analyzed the science-gifted educational program (year 2002) at the Seoul National University in terms of its educational objectives, scientific models, and cognitive processes in scientific inquiry in order to provide insights into developing and improving science-gifted educational program. We assumed the following items as important factors for teaching scientifically gifted students: higher-order thinking skills involving synthesis domain in the educational objectives, highly abstract nature and complexity in the scientific models, cognitive processes of planning experiments in the cognitive processes in scientific inquiry. According to the analyzed results, the program has the following characteristics: (1) the rates of both higher and lower-order thinking skill domain in the educational objectives are similarly high, but the rate of synthesis domain is relatively low; (2) in the case of the scientific models, the rate of the multiple concepts and/or processes model is relatively low, while the level of the abstractness is relatively on average (3) cognitive processes of authentic scientific inquiry is not thoroughly reflected in the scientific inquiry activities, and very few cognitive processes of planning experiments factor is reflected. Therefore, we conclude in the synthesis domain in the educational objectives, multiple concepts and/or processes model, and cognitive processes of planning experiments should be especially reflected more on the science-gifted educational program in order to serve the needs of scientifically gifted students.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.346-356
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• 2015

The purpose of this study was to explore the characteristics of elementary science gifted students' modification of scientific explanations based on evidences. For this study, sixteen $6^{th}$ elementary students were participated. The subjects of this study were enrolled in the program for the science gifted. Students were asked to generate initial hypotheses before experiment, and to modify and revise their scientific explanations based on the experiments about water rising in burning candle(s). All the processes of small group discussion during the inquiry were audio-recorded. Students' modification of their scientific explanations were appeared in three types: 1) appropriate connections among evidences, reasoning, and claims, 2) disconnections among evidences, reasoning, and claims and/or use of inappropriate reasoning, 3) scientific explanations without their own understanding. Other problems that students encountered in the processes of modification of their explanations were also discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.51-60
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• 1996

The purpose of this study is to develope and analyze a test for the assessment of physics inquiry experiment. To do this, three experiments about 'analysis of motion', 'the relation of force and acceleration', and 'free fall motion' in high school physics textbooks were chosen, and 5 scientific inquiry domains and 16 science process skills have been specified. For each experiments, test sheet of $29{\sim}44$ questions for assessing students' ability about physics inquiry experiment were developed on the basis of the scientific inquiry processes developed earlier. After instruction about 3 experiments mentioned above, a test was administered to the students who took experiment. After the adminstration of a test, the ratio of correct answers, discrimination index, and reliability were analyzed. Using the ratio of correct answers, we can determine item difficulty. Through the D.I(discrimination index), we can find which items can discriminate the students who took experiment well from those who took experiment badly, and we can also find the stability of a test result by the reliability analysis. The test developed in this study were also administered to the students who did not take experiments, and the results were compared with the those of the students who took experiments. With the comparison by chi-square method, we could find which items can discriminate the students who took experiments from those who did not take experiments.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.39 no.3
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• pp.353-368
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• 2020

This study analyzed the teacher's perception for influence of behavioral characteristics of scientifically-gifted students on general students in elementary school science class. To do this, we selected the eight elementary school teachers who were conducting the regular science classes including scientifically-gifted students belonging to the gifted education institutes in Seoul and conducted individual in-depth interviews. The analysis of the results reveal that the teachers mentioned seven behavioral characteristics of scientifically-gifted students in general elementary school science classes.: 'excellent in designing and performing experiments', 'playing a leading role in experiments', 'expressing their abundant prior knowledge frequently', 'attempting their tasks with curiosity and persistence', 'displaying scientific creativity', 'often asking scientific questions in detail', and 'expressing their opinions logically'. These behavioral characteristics of scientifically-gifted students had positive effects on general students, such as 'providing them with a successful experience in conducting experiments', 'improving understanding of science class contents', 'developing scientific thinking and reflective thinking', and 'improving their students' positive experiences about science'. However, the excessive learning-driven behaviors of scientifically-gifted students had negative effects on general students, such as 'limiting opportunities for general students to participate in classes', 'conducting passive exploration centered on results', and 'causing conflicts with general students'. Educational implications of these findings are discussed.