• Educational Technology International
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.19-46
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• 2011

The purpose of the study was to identify the characteristics of classroom inquiry features exhibited on a web-based discussion board, which is called the Message Board. Approximately 4,000 students from 80 schools with 60 on-line scientists were participated in the study. During the study, a total of 639 messages in the selected cluster and several patterns were identified and analyzed. Three main features of the classroom inquiry were analyzed in terms of: 1) learner gives priority to evidence in responding to questions; 2) learner formulates explanations from evidence; 3) learner communicates and justifies explanations. The results are as follow. First, once learners identified and understood the questions posed by the curriculum, they needed to collect evidence or information in responding to the questions. Depending on the question that students were given, types of evidence/data students needed to collect and how to collect the data could vary. Second, students' formulated descriptions, explanations, and predictions after summarizing evidence were observed on the Message Board. However, the extent to which students summarized evidence for descriptions, explanations, and predictions varied. In addition, students were able to make a better use of evidence over time when they formulate descriptions and explanations. Third, the Message Board was designed to allow the great amount of learner self-direction. Classroom teachers and on-line scientists played an important role in providing guidance in developing inquiry. At the same time, development of content understanding also contributed to inquiry development.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.27-71
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• 2010

Scientific creativity is defined as the production of novel scientific facts, methods, theories, explanations, and instruments, as well as the entire process by which these novel facts, theories, explanations and instruments are generated. There have been many studies on scientific creativity, but there were few studies on the scientific creativity of a research team collaborating in laboratory settings. This paper aims to find the elements that constitute the creativity of a laboratory through empirical participant observation and theoretical analysis of RNA Biology Lab in Seoul National University - a lab which is considered to be the most creative laboratory in Korea. Creative accomplishments demand not just a sudden inspiration but also a complicated and continuous evolutionary process which requires a systematic division of labor and a corporation between researchers who have diverse knowledges and capabilities. Also, this paper shows that laboratory culture and leadership are an important factor for vitalizing the corporative structure of the laboratory.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.201-208
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to analyze the structure and type of prospective elementary school teachers' scientific hypotheses generated on zoological tasks. The subjects were 18 prospective elementary school teachers. Four zoological hypothesis generation tasks were developed and administered to the subjects. After being presented with the zoological situations of the tasks, the subjects were asked to generate causal questions and scientific hypotheses. The scientific hypotheses were analyzed by the inductive approach. The results of this study showed that the hypotheses contained explicans and explicanda. The explicans were divided into two parts: 'what' and 'how'. In some cases, additional explanations were attached to the 'what' section. In addition, the hypotheses were classified into 9 types. The number of explicanda, the pattern of explicans, and the number of explicans were used as criteria for classification purposes. This study also discussed the implications of these findings for future directions in teaching and teaming in science education.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.509-520
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• 2023

Scientific explanation is the main goal of scientists' scientific practice, and the science curriculum also includes developing students' abilities to construct scientific explanations as a major goal. Thus, clarifying its meaning is an important issue in the science education community. In this paper, the researchers identified three perspectives on 'scientific explanation' based on the scoping review method (Deductive-Nomological, Probabilistic, and Pragmatic explanation models). We argued that it is important to clarify and distinguish the meanings of 'scientific explanation' from other concepts used in science education, such as 'description', 'prediction', 'hypothesis', and 'argument' based on a review of the literature. It is also pointed out that there is a difference between 'scientific explanation' as a product and 'explaining scientifically' as communication, and several ways to revise achievement standard statements in the science curriculum are suggested, to guide students to construct scientific explanations and to help students to explain scientifically. By adopting the three scientific explanation models, the important factors to be considered were classified and organized, and examples of science learning activities for scientific explanation considering such factors were suggested. It is hoped that the discussion in this study will help establish clearer learning goals in science learning related to scientific explanation and aid the design of more appropriate learning activities accordingly.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.242-257
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• 2014

Researchers have employed a diversity of definitions and measurement methods for creativity. As a result, creativity research is underrepresented in the literature and the findings of different studies often prove difficult to draw into a coherent body of understanding. With regard to assessment, there are some important problems both in creativity research and practice, such as originality bias and Big-C creativity bias in teachers' perceptions about creativity and creative thinking, and additive rather than multiplicative scoring systems of creativity assessment. Drawing upon most widely accepted conceptions of the creativity construct, I defined 'student's scientific creativity' as the ability to make a product both original and useful to the student in terms of little-c creativity, and 'scientist's scientific creativity' as the ability to come up with a product both original and useful to the science community in terms of Big-C creativity. In this study, an 'Assessment Formula for Scientific Creativity' was developed, which is consisted of the multiplication of originality and usefulness scores rather than the sum of the two scores, and then, with scores calculated from the assessment formula, the scientific explanations generated by children were categorized into four types: routine, useful, original, and creative types. The assessment formula was revealed to be both valid and reliable. The implications of the assessment formula for scientific creativity are examined. The new assessment formula may contribute to the comprehensive understanding of scientific creativity to guide future research and the appropriate interpretation of previous studies.

• Korean Journal of Acupuncture
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.87-101
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• 2009

Objectives : LI5 and SP6 have been used with a limit in ovary-related disease. But there is few study about the history, the reason, and the mechanism. So, this study was performed to review the literatures related with Eumyangyichonghyul and find the clinical usefulness of that. Methods : 1. The authors reviewed several literatures related with the Eumyangyichonghyul and some scientific studies. 2. We investigated the history and meaning of that, and the relation between the results of scientific studies and the function of that. 3. We found the usefulness based on ancient literatures and scientific studies. Results and Conclusions : 1. Eumyangyichonghyul has been prohibition of acupuncture since had been written on "Dong In Su Hyul Chim Gu Do Gyung". 2. Eumyangyichonghyul could suppress the fetus like as it promotes the delivery. 3. The explanations of ancient literatures and the scientific studies are very similar in viewpoint of whole body mechanism.

• Journal of the Speleological Society of Korea
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• no.87
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• pp.23-33
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• 2008

All types of tourists visit the cave. The names and explanations of cave formations give very useful information to them. Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of wrong and incorrect statements in the information. Thispaper has investigated this problem in considerations for the importance of information delivery. The problem has turned out as follows: 1) Most of the cave formation names are too abstract based on the shape instead of scientific names; 2) The names are mostly available with little scientific explanation; 3) In case of explanation, wrong, incorrect and controversial statement is found.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.132-139
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• 2002

One of the prime objectives of school science is to help the children learn science concepts and conceptual schemes that will help them understand and interpret their environment. One of the basic scientific concepts is 'Change -everything existing in universe is changing always'. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics of elementary and secondary students' conception of change. The subjects for this study were 489 students in Korea; 111 fourth graders, 95 sixth graders, 140 seventh graders and 143 ninth graders. Four items - mountain, river, ground, sea -were used for investigating students conception of change because representing the nature world in elementary and secondary level. The subjects were asked to check whether each item was changing and to explain each their check. Students' explanations were classified by whether they were sound understanding geologically, or not. The rate of responses that each item was changing was compared by grades and the rate of geological explanations was also compared by grades. Because students' conceptions of change might were effected by time scale, the additional questions that asked students whether the present status of four items were equivalent to the that of several points of time. As a result, the rate of scientific answers and patterns of explanations were similar by grade and the rate of geological understandings was relatively low. The frequencies of concept of change were more dropped as the point of time was closer to present.

• 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.375-383
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• 2014

The purpose of this study is to find out how middle school students evaluate scientific information in terms of hypothetico-deductive reasoning. A total of 66 middle school students completed a paper-and-pencil test on scientific information evaluation and 14 of them were individually interviewed for triangulation. The test includes six topics related to scientific or pseudoscientific information, and questions about each topic were sequenced based on a hypothetico-deductive reasoning. The hypothetico-deductive process consists of three steps: identifying predictions made by explanations in the information, identifying data actually obtained, and determining the fit between predictions and data to judge the validity of the explanations. Data analyses have focused on students' response types at each step, whether students used hypoethetico-deductive reasoning, and students' preference to evidence types in making decisions. The middle school students in this study answered the questions in various ways based on how they used the information given or personal knowledge and beliefs. A small portion of students evaluated information based on hypothetico-deductive reasoning. These students tended to give priority to scientific data in determining the validity of the information. On the other hand, students who did not use hypoethetico-deductive reasoning tended to prefer first-hand experience in the decision. The results provide implications for science lessons and the curriculum for scientific literacy. Further research should include student evaluation of the validity of data and other types of reasoning.