This study aimed to identify some tendencies when college students got to making a decision on socioscientific issues. The guiding research questions were as follows. First, what are college students' tendencies in terms of their moral reactions and attitudes toward SSI when they get to making a decision? And second, how do their own circumstances, personalities, and values play a role in shaping their stance on SSI? Data was collected by individual interviews with thirty college students. The results indicated that most participants immediately brought in their own values, worldviews, and feelings in implicit or explicit ways when talking about SSI. Their reactions were influenced by their backgrounds such as religion, and family background, personality, past experiences, personal interests, and prior knowledge. In addition, the responses of the participants presented some tendencies in their decision-making process. The tendencies can be categorized into 1) bringing in personal values without further engagement, 2) being confused with incompatible values, 3) being overwhelmed by too many aspects to consider, and 4) trying to be detached from the issues.

The purpose of this study is to analyze methods for measuring the size of the Earth, put forth in 6 different Korean 8th grade science textbooks. The research questions are as follows: 1) Do they adequately map out the experiments for measuring the size of the earth by using the concept of the sun's altitude? 2) Do they reduce the size of the sun like as the Earth is similarly downsized to the globe? 3) Do they suggest the precise experimental conditions for selecting two equal longitudinal spots for measuring the size of the earth? 4) Do they design adequate experiments for exact measurement? 5) Do they offer a proportional expression for seeking the size of globe which is easily understood by students? 6) Do they develop experiments to measure actual size of the earth? Four graduate students and one researcher took part in this study. All conditions were unanimously agreed upon by the participants. The results are as follows. First, one publishing company must include the concept of the sun's altitude to accurately measure the size of the Earth. However, some textbooks fail to mention this. As such, the concept of the sun's altitude must be introduced to accurately measure the size of the Earth. Second, a reduced size globe is used as the actual earth so; the sun should be factored in with a reduced light value. Third, you have to lay a stress on two points at the same longitude. In other words, a shadow located at the same longitude from two randomly selected points. Most textbooks mention two points at the same longitude but two of them design the experiment with a shadow at the same longitude. Fourth, we need a method to precisely measure the angle between a stick and its shadow. The angle between the stick and the tip of its shadow is the sun's altitude difference. Fifth, we need to present more specific proportional expressions for calculating the size of the globe. Only 3 out of the 6 texts employed a proportional expression. Sixth, we need to calculate the size of the earth by accurately presenting the scale of the globe to attain the goal of the experiment. Two of the texts analyzed, designed the experiment for the purpose of calculating the size of the globe. Three of the texts designed their experiments to calculate the radius of globe which is not even relevant to the purpose of experiment.

The objectives of this study were to investigate what kind of background concepts is necessary to help that high school students easily understand meiosis and to find out how these background concepts affect students' understanding of meiosis. To achieve these objectives, first this study surveyed meiosis background concepts that high school teachers think. Based on 8 background concepts - nuclear phases, chromosome, mitosis, reproduction, gamete, gene, mother/daughter cell - of previous survey, the questionnaire was made for the 10th(724) and 11th(862) grade students and then was analyzed for the effect of meiosis background concepts on the high school students' understanding of meiosis. Results of the analysis revealed that the influential background concepts are as follow; cell cycle, chromosome in the advanced level, mother/daughter cell, mitosis, chromosome, nuclear phases in the intermediate level, mother/daughter cell, nuclear phases, gene in the low level. And the achievement according to item types was differed not by meiosis achievement, but by each background concepts.

Many topics in science, especially, abstract concepts, relationships, properties, entities in invisible ranges, are described in mathematical representations such as formula, numbers, symbols, and graphs. Although the mathematical representation is an essential tool to better understand scientific phenomena, the mathematical element is pointed out as a reason for learning difficulty and losing interests in science. In order to further investigate the relationship between mathematics knowledge and science understanding, the current study examined 793 high school students' understanding of the pH value. As a measure of the molar concentration of hydrogen ions in the solution, the pH value is an appropriate example to explore what a student mathematical structure of logarithm is and how they interpret the proportional relationship of numbers for scientific explanation. To the end, students were asked to write their responses on a questionnaire that is composed of nine content domain questions and four affective domain questions. Data analysis of this study provides information for the relationship between student understanding of the pH value and related mathematics knowledge.