• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.33 no.2
• /
• pp.207-216
• /
• 2014

Understanding the nature of science (NOS) has been a major component of scientific literacy and an important learning goal in science education (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990, 1993; Millar & Osborne, 1998; National Research Council, 1996, 2013). To achieve this goal, it is necessary to include appropriate views of the nature of science in science curriculum such as a textbook. The aim of this study was to conduct a content analysis of the elementary science textbooks to examine the presentation of the nature of science (NOS) using the four themes of scientific literacy, which are (1) nature of scientific knowledge, (2) nature of scientific inquiry, (3) nature of scientific thinking, and (4) nature of interactions among science, technology, and society (STS). Findings show while $3^{rd}$ and $4^{th}$ grade levels of science textbooks heavily emphasize on the Theme I, nature of scientific knowledge and the Theme II, the nature of scientific inquiry, the upper grade levels such as $5^{th}$ and $6^{th}$ grades of science textbooks are well balanced with the four themes of the nature of science. In addition, most of elementary science textbooks little focus on the Theme IV, nature of interactions among science, technology, and society (STS) among the four themes of the nature of science. It might be a shortcoming because the understanding the nature of interacions among science, technology and society (STS) is one of the key components in order for students to be a scientific literate person.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
• /
• v.33 no.3
• /
• pp.553-568
• /
• 2013

Although many researchers and science educators agree that understanding of the nature of science is essential in order for students to be a scientific literate person, it is not easy to compromise exactly what kind of understanding of the nature of science is required to achieve this goal (Smith & Scharmann, 1999). This study discusses a theoretical background about the nature of science (NOS) including some consensus views of the NOS that several important U.S. educational reform documents and science researchers have presented over the past several decades. Finally, this study proposes an inclusive framework of the nature of science based on the four categories of scientific literacy, which are (1) science as a body of knowledge, (2) science as a way of investigating, (3) science as a way of thinking, and (4) the interaction of science, technology, and society. Each category of the framework includes several statements about the nature of science to describe each theme of the NOS. This framework is comprehensive and inclusive because it is suggested by examining several major U.S. national-level documents and in the publications of science education researchers presented about the nature of science. Significantly, many of the key ideas were added into category (4) and category (3), which indicates that the current literature stresses the relationship among science, technology, and society as well as the work of scientists.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
• /
• v.29 no.4
• /
• pp.401-413
• /
• 2010

This study analyzed the kinds and frequencies of descriptors in 154 articles in ERIC data base on the 4th day of January in 2010. The titles of the articles includes the words, 'scientific literacy'. As each descriptor is constituted of two words and over, in this study the first word in the descriptor was defined as 'restrictive word' and the rest word(s) as 'target word(s)'. The results are as follows. First, the descriptors which show high frequencies of target words are the traditionally important themes of scientific literacy education. Target words which show relatively high frequency are 'education', 'literacy', 'instruction' and 'countries'. Low frequency word is 'curriculum', which has various restrictive words and represents wide differentiation. Second, among the descriptors which show low frequencies of target words, relatively high frequency descriptors are '(and)society', 'change', 'secondary education', 'concepts', and 'biology', which have been given more attention in scientific literacy research than the rest descriptors. Third, the number of the descriptors that shows largely distributed pattern A, which happens over 15 years continuously, is over the half of all analyzed descriptors, which shows that they have been the major objectives in researches about scientific literacy. Most descriptors of pattern A shows normal distribution of frequency or the trends of increasing frequency as the time is nearer. Fourth, The descriptors are divided into four groups according to the time span. Each research trends are as follows. In later 80s, the research which emphasizes the importance of the sociality and technology in all level school science curriculum. In later 90s the research for educational change of inquiry-centered science curriculum which considers technological literacy in social contexts. In earlier 2000s the research that scientists and science teachers develop science curricula mostly related to scientific principles and thinking in chemistry and biology especially. In later 2000s case studies which relates teaching methods and science process activities to students' attitudes, scientific concepts and curricula.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.44 no.3
• /
• pp.273-288
• /
• 2020

This study aims to investigate the presentation of the Nature of Science (NOS) in integrated science textbooks of the 2015 revised curriculum. The five integrated science textbooks published by the revised 2015 curriculum were analyzed with the conceptual framework of the four themes of the Nature of Science (NOS) (Lee, 2013) based on scientific literacy. The four themes of the NOS are 1. nature of scientific knowledge (theme I), 2. nature of scientific inquiry (theme II), 3. nature of scientific thinking (theme III), and 4. nature of interactions among science, technology, and society. The reliability of the textbooks analysis was measured between two coders by the Cohen's kappa and resulted in between 0,83 and 0,96, which means the results of analysis was consistent and reliable. The findings were as follows. First, overall theme II, nature of scientific inquiry emphasized on the integrated science textbooks of the 2015 revised curriculum by devoting the contents over 40 % in the all five publishing companies' textbooks. Second, while the theme II, nature of scientific inquiry was emphasized on the textbooks regardless of the publishing companies, other themes of the NOS were emphasized in different portions by the publishing companies. Thus, the focus among other three themes of the NOS was presented differently by the publishing companies except that in theme II, nature of scientific inquiry was most emphasized on integrated science textbooks. Third, the presentation of the NOS was identified similarly across the topics of integrated science textbooks except on topic 4. Environment and Energy. The theme IV, nature of interactions among science, technology, and society was emphasized reasonably only in the topic of Environment and Energy of the textbooks. Finally, the presentation of the NOS in the integrated science textbooks of the 2015 revised curriculum were more balanced among the four themes of the NOS with focus on the scientific inquiry compared to the previous curriculum textbooks.

• Journal of Science Education
• /
• v.38 no.3
• /
• pp.625-640
• /
• 2014

In 21st century, it is essential to understand Nature of Science (NOS) related to science educational curriculum. The study analyzed Earth Science components of third- through sixth-grade science textbooks in terms of incorporated NOS themes and their relative proportions. Modified analysis methods of Chiappetta et al. (1991) and Lee (2012) are devised and adapted. The results of analysis indicates that the current elementary school textbooks include and explain all the four themes of NOS, but do not include sub-areas of each theme of NOS in a balanced way. In addition, the themes of NOS in Earth Science are not treated equally among different grades. Such results warrant the efforts to include balanced themes of NOS into elementary school science textbooks with the ultimate goal of fully and properly comprehending NOS to the students.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
• /
• v.38 no.1
• /
• pp.91-104
• /
• 2017

The purposes of this study were to analyze high school students' understanding about the Earth system and systems thinking process, and to develop science writing programs designed to assess students' understanding about themes of Earth Science such as global warming, volcanoes, and desertification. A total of 8 $11^{th}$ grade students from general high schools participated in the writing program and draw the causal maps. The methods of this study are as follows. First, DAET-C was used to investigate the way of students' understanding about the Earth systems. What the students' best understood was the component of the Earth systems followed by the interaction of the Earth systems and the scientific literacy of Earth science. Second, feedback circulations on the causal maps were found in four students in global warming section, one student in volcanic eruption section, and four students in desertification section, which means that systems thinking was not largely employed by the students. Consequently, the student participants understood that the global change was happening in correlation with complex concepts and factors, but they were short of using systems thinking in their science study. Therefore, the result of this study suggests that more studies be conducted to develop systems thinking in Earth Science learning through science writing programs.