• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.194-204
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• 2004

The purpose of this literature review is to investigate what kinds of research have been done about scientific inquiry in terms of scientific argumentation in the classroom context from the upper elementary to the high school levels. First, science educators argued that there had not been differentiation between authentic scientific inquiry by scientists and school scientific inquiry by students in the classroom. This uncertainty of goals or definition of scientific inquiry has led to the problem or limitation of implementing scientific inquiry in the classroom. It was also pointed out that students' learning science as inquiry has been done without opportunities of argumentation to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed. Second, what is scientific argumentation, then? Researchers stated that scientific inquiry in the classroom cannot be guaranteed only through hands-on experimentation. Students can understand how scientific knowledge is constructed through their reasoning skills using opportunities of argumentation based on their procedural skills using opportunities of experimentation. Third, many researchers emphasized the social practices of small or whole group work for enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills through argumentations. Different role of leadership in groups and existence of teachers' roles are found to have potential in enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand science as inquiry. Fourth, what is scientific reasoning? Scientific reasoning is defined as an ability to differentiate evidence or data from theory and coordinate them to construct their scientific knowledge based on their collection of data (Kuhn, 1989, 1992; Dunbar & Klahr, 1988, 1989; Reif & Larkin, 1991). Those researchers found that students skills in scientific reasoning are different from scientists. Fifth, for the purpose of enhancing students' scientific reasoning skills to understand how scientific knowledge is constructed, other researchers suggested that teachers' roles in scaffolding could help students develop those skills. Based on this literature review, it is important to find what kinds of generalizable teaching strategies teachers use for students scientific reasoning skills through scientific argumentation and investigate teachers' knowledge of scientific argumentation in the context of scientific inquiry. The relationship between teachers' knowledge and their teaching strategies and between teachers teaching strategies and students scientific reasoning skills can be found out if there is any.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.117-127
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• 1999

The present study investigated Korean and the US college students' scientific reasoning skills involving hypothesis-testing skills and tested the hypothesis that hypothesis-testing skills are more advanced ones than other scientific reasoning skills investigated in this study. Seven hundred and seventy-four(774) Korean and five hundred and sixty-eight(568) the US students were sampled in university level. The Test of Scientific Reasoning was used as a scientific reasoning test. The test is consisted of two conservational reasoning, two proportional reasoning, one pendulum, two probability reasoning, two controlling variable, one correlational reasoning, and two hypothesis-testing reasoning tasks. Korean students showed a significant higher score in proportional and probability reasoning tasks than the US students. However, the Korean showed a significant lower score in conservation and correlation reasoning tasks than their American counterparts. Further, Korean and the US college students showed a notably poor performance in hypothesis-testing skills comparing with other scientific reasoning skills, which supported the hypothesis that hypothesis-testing skills are more advanced ones than other scientific reasoning skills. In addition, the Korean showed a severe deficiency in candle-burning task which required the skill that students have to design a scientific test-procedure to test theoretical hypotheses. This study also discussed on the educational implications of the results of the present study.

• 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 The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.309-318
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• 2003

Scientific reasoning is one of the main concerns in current science education. This study have tried to answer on the question whether Korean science education has the potential to help improve of students' ability to think scientifically. Therefore, the present study investigated the relationship between reasoning patterns evident in science textbook and science examination items, and students' scientific reasoning skills across grades in Korea. 1975 subjects (1022 females and 953 males) were administered in the Lawson's Test of Scientific Reasoning skills. Forty seven science textbooks and 240 assessment instrument were analyzed by several scientific reasoning keys. Scientific reasoning patterns were adopted from Lawson's classification which characterized the patterns as the empirical-inductive and the hypothetical-deductive. This study found that reasoning patterns evident in textbook analyses and assessment instrumental items do not evidentce the potential to stimulate the development of students' reasoning skill. In order to improve the students' abilities to think and achieve, higher levels of reasoning must be included in the science textbook and examination. Further, some of scientific reasoning processes, such as generating hypotheses, designing experiments, and logical prediction, were not found in science textbooks and test items in Korean secondary schools. This study also discussed the educational implication of these results and further studies about to develop student's reasoning ability.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.61-73
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• 1998

This research suggests science inquiry play of analogy as a teaming method to help the students in concrete operational stage to develop scientific thinking skills and to understand abstract science conceptions. The research focuses on/considers the characteristics and merits of the science inquiry plays, and the learning method by analogical reasoning. This learning through the science inquiry play of analogy can be considered as a meta-model for scientific thinking skill. The learning has the following processes: 1) Students analogize the abstract science conceptions and facts into play-type activities including the concrete contents such as students themselves, their physical-sensory motions, concrete objects, play methods, and play rules. 2) Students as analogized objects play a role physically and sensuously according to the methods and rules analogized in the play. 3) Students find out the concrete contents included in the science inquiry play of analogy, draw the results, and deduce the new conceptions from the results by reflective thinking and analogical reasoning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.26 no.5
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• pp.620-636
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• 2006

The purpose of this study was to analyze one science teacher's understanding of student argumentation and his explicit teaching strategies for implementing it in the classroom. One middle school science teacher, Mr. Field, and his students of 54 participated in this study. Data were collected through three semi-structured interviews, 60 hours of classroom observations, and two times of students' lab reports for eight weeks. Coding categories were developed describing the teacher's understanding of scientific argumentation and a description of the main teaching strategy, the Claim-Evidence Approach, was introduced. Toulmin's approach was employed to analyze student discourse as responses to see how much of this discourse was argumentative. The results indicated that Mr. Field defined scientific inquiry as the abilities of procedural skills through experimentation and of reasoning skills through argumentation. The Claim-Evidence Approach provided students with opportunities to develop their own claims based on their readings, design the investigation for evidence, and differentiate pieces of evidence from data to support their claims and refute others. During this approach, the teacher's role of scaffolding was critical to shift students' less extensive argumentation to more extensive argumentation through his prompts and questions. The different level of teacher's involvement, his explicit teaching strategy, and the students' scientific knowledge influenced the students' ability to develop and improve argumentation.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.1-7
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• 2001

The purpose of this study is to examine the learner's variables affecting on scientific thinking and scientific process skills. To study this purpose, through the procedure study, the learner's variables were divided into cognitive variable, ego variable, and affective variable, then the questionaire survey through the reconstruction of standardization instrument was made over 120 elementary school fifth grade student in Seoul, Anyang, and Pajoo. The results of this study were as follows: 1) The learner's variables affecting on scientific thinking were cognitive variable and for female students, also affect affective variable. The subordinated catagories of statistically significant degree of explanation were achievement motivation, cognitive level, and cognitive style and another statistically significant correlation were meta-cognition, self regulated learning, self efficacy, and muliple intelligence. 2) The learner's variables affecting on science process skills were cognitive variable and affective variable. And the subordinated catagories of statistically significant degree of explanation were achievement motivation, and cognitive level. And another statistically significant correlation were meta-cognition, self regulated loaming, self efficacy, multiple intelligence, and attribution.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.503-516
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• 1998

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate some variables, such as learner's cognitive characteristics and a training-program emphasized proportional logic, in proportional reasoning development. Seven hundred and ninety students in junior high schools were enrolled as subjects for the study which investigated learner's cognitive characteristics in proportional reasoning development and asked to perform tests of logical thinking, card sorting, planning, mental capacity, cognitive style, brain lateralization, information processing pattern and scientific reasoning. In addition, one hundred and thirty-three students who failed to solve proportional thinking items were administered a training program which has been applied to improve the subjects' proportional reasoning skills. The results showed a significant higher correlation between subjects' performance score on proportional thinking test, and their age and scores on scientific reasoning test, mental capacity, information processing test and perseveration errors on card sorting test. Also, the training program applied in this study showed an effective result in developing subjects' proportional reasoning skills. Further, this study may serve as a suggestion in the efforts to investigate factors of proportional thinking development and a contribution for the future research in other logical thinking development.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.417-428
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• 2004

Conservation reasoning makes operational thought possible as a functional tool and it is the essential concept not only in the area of science and mathematics but also in several aspects of daily life. The abilities to solve mathematical problems and that of scientific reasoning and abstract way of thinking depend on whether thereis conservation reasoning or not and they are critical concepts that enables us to confirm the steps of cognitive development. Therefor in the study, we emphasized the issue that is the ways to speed up the scientific era by analyzing the correlation between the formation of conservation reasoning and neuro-cognitive variables. About 50% of 1-3 grade students did not had conservation reasoning skills. The formation of conservations was not linear. Scientific reasoning ability, planing and inhibiting ability were significantly different in levels of conservation, And, conservation reasonings were significantly correlated with cognitive variables. Scientific reasoning and planning ability significantly explained about 20% of the conservation reasoning ability of 1-3 grades.

• Journal of Gifted/Talented Education
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.73-101
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• 1999

The purpose of this study was to suggest an advanced system for educating scientifically gifted children in the Center for Science Talented Education at Kyungpook National University. Several suggestions based on analysis of current identifying-process and instructional materials for scientifically gifted children were provided for advancing the educational system of the center. First, this study suggested a three-step procedure to identify procedure emphasized students reasoning skills as one of important characteristics of the gifted child. Second, this study provided an instructional model for developing hypothesis testing skills in scientifically gifted children. The model was originally based on Lawson's scientific reasoning processes and learning cycle mode. Third, this study also suggested an effective administration system of the Center for Science Talented Education. Further, this study suggested effective ways on research works for advancing the center, educating instructors, the cyber center for remote education, and international co-works for developing the gifted children's potential abilities.