• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.153-167
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• 2007

In this study, it is assumed that understanding the nature of science (NOS) would enhance students' performance of scientific inquiry in more authentic ways. The ultimate goal of this study is to suggest new models for developing scientific inquiry activities through understanding the NOS by linking the NOS with scientific inquiry. First, the various definitions and statements of the NOS are summarized, then the features of the developmental nature of scientific knowledge and the nature of scientific thinking based on the philosophy of science are reviewed, and finally a synthetic list of the elements of the NOS is proposed, consisting of three categories: the nature of scientific knowledge, the nature of scientific inquiry, and the nature of scientific thinking. This suggested synthetic list of the NOS is used to suggest a model of scientific inquiry through the understanding of the NOS. This list was designed to provide basic standards regarding the NOS as well as practical guidance for designing activities to improve students' understanding of the NOS.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.22 no.5
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• pp.991-1009
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• 2002

This qualitative study investigated two preservice teachers' conceptual ecologies in professional development during the science teacher preparation program. The notion of a conceptual ecology contains nature of knowledge, science and science teaching, learning, and content knowledge and comfort level. The data were collected during the participants' preservice year and their practicum experience. Both data collections and analyzing were from the various sources of interviews, teaching observations, journals, and information and profiles by the participants' supervisor. Two preservice teachers serve as cases representative of this study. Results show that problems preventing the preservice teachers from moving closer to conceptual change teaching were their understandings of the nature of science and the nature of knowledge. The preservice teachers' views about knowledge come from, and what knowledge is, are largely shaped by the nature of science and learning drive pedagogy and classroom practice. Knowledge of and comfort with the subject matter are also important.

• The Korean Journal of Community Living Science
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.331-341
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to develop a nature friendly education program that would support ecological literacy of preschool children and to examine the effects of the program on their ecological knowledge and positive attitudes toward nature. The subjects of the study were 59 children from two child-care centers located at Gyeonggi Province. 30 preschoolers from one center were allocated into an experimental group, while 29 preschoolers from the other center were regarded as the control group. The program was composed of 24 sessions, performed three times a week for 20-30 minutes from May to June 2009. The instrument included the knowledge and attitudes toward the environmental scale for preschool children. The following results were obtained. First, the experimental group was found to attain higher level of ecological knowledge and more positive attitudes about nature as a result of the program. Second, after the program was administrated, the experimental group showed higher level of the knowledge and more positive attitudes about nature than the control group. These results suggest a program which conducts within a integrated teaching frame of meeting and getting familiar with nature and taking care of animals and plants, can become an effective early childhood education tool which fosters positive attitudes and knowledge concerning the environment.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.428-445
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• 2012

The objective of this study is developing an instrument for investigating views of the respondents on nature of science(NOS) by using experienced scientific knowledge, atomic model. It consists of total six questions and 36 detail items, and each question is reflected the aspects of different NOS which are 'recognition on the model', 'tentativeness of scientific knowledge', 'subjectivity in science', 'use of inference and imagination', 'myths of the scientific method', and 'comparison between science and art'. Particularly, 'comparison between science and art' is addressed almost for the first time in this questionnaire. In the class environment almost not to teach nature of science linking with concrete scientific knowledge, to inquire how the students recognize nature of science, relating to experienced scientific knowledge through this questionnaire will give the data of scientific knowledge based recognition on the nature of science and an important implication for nature of science teaching with concrete scientific knowledge. Developing processes have gone through four steps. In first step, we chose aspects of NOS and developed questions and details. In second step, we tested the draft into fifteen science teachers and, reflecting their opinions, corrected the form and contents of questionnaires. In third step, we tested the questionnaire included writing section for expressing thoughts of the respondents into 55 students in science high school and checked index of coincidence between Likert and open-ended responses which shows 88.2% degree of consensus. Furthermore, to identify the feature of using concrete scientific knowledge we applied this and views on science and education questionnaires together into six university students. We performed final test to 68 university students and measured Cronbach's, and ultimately completed final questionnaire in last step.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.207-212
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• 2014

The national reform document, Science for All Americans (AAAS, 1990), and the Next Generation Science Standards (NRC, 2012) emphasize the importance of the nature of science in guiding science educators in accurately portraying science to students. Therefore, it is important that textbook materials convey an accurate conception of the nature of science. This study employs content analysis to examine the content of textbooks in US and Korea elementary science textbooks with regard to the four aspects of the nature of science: (a) nature of scientific knowledge; (b) nature of scientific inquiry; (c) nature of scientific thinking; and (d) nature of interactions among science, technology, and society (Chiappetta, Fillman, & Sethna, 2004). Intercoder reliability was determined by calculating Cohen's kappa (Cohen, 1960). Findings show that while US elementary science textbooks are not balanced in presenting the four aspects of the nature of science regardless of the publishing companies, the presentation of the nature of science in Korean elementary science textbooks have better balanced treatment of the four themes across the grade levels. On the other hand, both US and Korean elementary science textbooks are attempting to convey an idea of what science is by emphasizing scientific knowledge and investigation.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.25 no.6
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• pp.689-697
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• 2005

Science education has been in a state of crisis for some time. To understand the science teacher's role, it is helpful to reconsider an aspect as fundamental as the nature of science. Since teaching cannot be separated from learning and knowledge, their very close dynamic processes need to prescribe the role of the teacher and student simultaneously. However, traditional views are limited because they tend to emphasize some particular selected aspect of learning and teaching. This paper investigates the epistemology of Michael Polanyi (1891 1976), which is often considered to transcend the confrontation between objectivity and subjectivity of knowledge. Polanyi reconceptualized science knowledge as 'personal knowledge' based on his own experience as a scientist and a thinker. In this study, I discuss 1) the nature of science in light of Polanyi's epistemology, 2) what this says about the meaning of science learning and teaching, 3) the potential of these ideas for the role of the science teacher.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.207-216
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• 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 Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.30-42
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• 2023

The purpose of this study is to quantitatively and qualitatively analyze the science journals written by pre-service elementary school teachers, and to categorize the view on the nature of science and the process of their change. For this purpose, 112 science journals written by 13 pre-service elementary school teachers were analyzed. The frequency of each area was analyzed using the research framework of the four areas of the nature of science, and the pattern of change in perspective on the nature of science was inductively derived and classified using the VNOS-C test analysis framework. As a result, The nature of scientific thinking, nature of scientific knowledge, nature of STS, and nature of scientific inquiry were described in relatively similar proportions, but among them, The nature of scientific thinking appeared in the largest percentage, and the nature of scientific inquiry was described in the smallest percentage. The variability of scientific knowledge, the importance of empirical evidence, and the positive and negative effects of science were especially intensively addressed. In addition, the changing aspects of pre-service elementary school teachers' perspectives on the nature of science could be categorized into 'naive view maintenance type', 'informed view maintenance type', 'regression type', 'development type', and 'mixed type'. The element of 'the empirical nature of scientific knowledge' showed various patterns of change depending on the students, and most of the students maintained a informed view on the tentativeness of scientific knowledge for several sessions.

• Journal of Science Education
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• v.38 no.1
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• pp.57-77
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• 2014

A longitudinal study traced changes in students' understanding of Nature Of science (NOS) through the public secondary science education in Ontario Canada. Although the concepts of NOS are complicated, and students' understandings are not easy to change, not many longitudinal studies have been done across the world. The current study tried to identify the changes of participating students' understandings of NOS for two and half years of public secondary science education in Ontario Canada. Pretest was administered using Views of Nature of Science (VNOS-C) when six participants graduated from a middle school of Toronto. Two and half years of secondary education, the posttest was carried out using the same instrument. After pre and posttest, probing interviews were performed. The analysis of the data was founded on the Standards and the conceptual framework for this study. The findings were that the initial views have little changed. Most examples and explanations the participants provided were from their science classes. Lab activities for confirming the existing laws and theories and observable photos in science textbooks made students regard the knowledge as a truth. Naturally, their knowledge has been expanded for 2 and 1/2 years, but this expansion of scientific knowledge led students toward Universalist views on science. On the other hand, when science was presented with a historical approach or was networked with other concepts, students acknowledged science and scientific knowledge had been induced from inferences as well as observations and experimental results. Based on the findings the authors of this research suggest that educating the knowledge of science should be historical and networked approaches rather than teaching the knowledge as concise and true statements of the nature.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.235-249
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• 2003

The purpose of this study is to analyze and evaluate the nature, role and development of pedagogical content knowledge in science teaching. Two research questions were considered: 1) What are the nature and the components of the pedagogical content knowledge in science teaching? 2) What is the value of pedagogical content knowledge and are there any routes and paths to developing pedagogical content knowledge for science teachers? In order to answer these questions instead of analyzing empirical data, former research literatures are reviewed. The results indicate that science pedagogical content knowledge is a special amalgam of science content knowledge and science method knowledge in a special context of science teaching that is uniquely the province of teacher based on their own special form of professional understanding. As a part of one's own distinctive bodies of knowledge, science teachers' pedagogical content knowledge is an important basis for professional development and competent teachers. It is knowledge of how to teach specific content in specific contexts, also it depends on each teachers' distinctive knowledge structure. Pedagogical content knowledge for science teaching is composed of five components: orientations toward science teaching, knowledge and beliefs about science curriculum, knowledge and beliefs about students' understanding of specific topics, knowledge and beliefs about assessment for teaching science, knowledge and beliefs about instructional strategies for teaching science. The development of science pedagogical content knowledge does not start until teachers have acquired a deeply principled conceptual knowledge of content, also it is promoted by the constant use of subject matter knowledge in teaching situations.