The Comparative Analysis of Inquiry Activity in Primary Science Curricular Materials of Korea and SCIIS

한국의 국민학교 자연 교과서와 SCIIS의 탐구 활동 버교 분석

The purpose of this study is to analyze the inquiry activities of SCIIS and Korea primary school science curricular meterials and to make suggestions for the improvement of inquiry learning based on the analysis The Scientific Inquiry Evaluation Inventory (SIEI: Myung Hur, 1984) was used to evaluate the inquiry activity content of the primary school "Science, Level-6" and "SCIIS, Level-6" textbooks. The results are as follows: 1) The inquiry activities of Korean science textbooks are stressing on gathering and organizing data, but rarely require students to formulate a hypothesis, to design an experiment. 2) The SCIIS textbooks relatively tended to put more weight on interpreting/ analysing data and hypothesizing/ designing experiments. 3)The Korean science textbooks had little concern about establishing hypothesis and designing experiments, interpreting / analysing data. 4) The SCIIS textbooks require students to perform a variety of inquiry skills when compare to Korean science textbooks. 5) Competition / Cooperation Scale checks the level of competition and cooperation among student teams inherent in science curricular materials. The result from each team is incorporated into the formation of a class result. The communication is required to formulate a synthesized class response, enhances cooperation among teams. The SCIIS(84%) is the higher than Korea(50%) in cooperation scale. 6) Korean science textbooks rarely require students to discuss about experiment when compare to SCIIS textbooks. 7) Korean science textbooks provide students with both inquiry problems and experimental procedure, or including answers SCIIS textbooks provide students with both inquiry problems and experimental procedure, or problems only. 8) The Korean textbooks emphasize demonstrating or verifying of the text while the SCIlS emphasize extending the content of the text in inquiry scope scsle. The inquiry pyramid which helps analysis the inquiry activity curriculum as a whole is one of type 1- the course is centered on gathering and organizing data. The SCIIS are better than the Korean science textbook in the light of proportion of interpreting / analysing data and hypothesizing / designing experiments.