• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.359-371
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• 2007

The purpose of this study was to investigate elementary school students' conceptions of gas and analyse the type of alternative conceptions of gas which students constructed. To appreciate the conceptions formed by elementary school students on this topic, 173 sixth grade students from an elementary school located in Suwon participated in this study. Additionally, their conceptions and their alternative conceptions of gas represented by the questionnaires were analyzed. The questionnaires consisted of 11 questions related to the conception of gas. To analyze the types of alternative conceptions which presented themselves, constructed prototypes were generated by interviewing the students themselves. From our results, we suggest that sixth grade elementary school students have various conceptions of gas and tend to think that gas is weighty, and that gaseous volume decreases by pressure. However, their conceptions of gas melting in water were very low, as only about 16% of students were aware of this scientific conception. Students who did not understand precisely the conception of the nature of oxygen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen were over 20%. The results of the interviews showed that the construction of alternative conceptions of gas was affected by various and complex causes.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.123-137
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• 2001

In this study, the contents of elementary school science textbooks related to 'heat and temperature' are analyzed and alternative conceptions ofi"heat and temperature" among students enrolled in grades 4, 5 and 6 are investigated. 259 students were selected from a elementary school located in urban area. The relationships between students' alternative conceptions and the content of elementary science textbooks are also examined. Students' conceptions are analyzed from their answers to a paper-and-pencil test. The typical alternative conception of "heat and temperature" held by students was follows. They think that "heat" is a material and "temperature" is value of heat amount. They can't distinguish between "heat" and "temperature". Their explanation of "heat and temperature" is focused on hot or cool sensation and other observable characteristics of a material. A textbook analysis indicated that contents on "heat and temperature" were organized without the viewpoint of particle motion theory. This may be one of the causes of students' alternative conceptions.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.385-398
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• 2014

This study investigated students' alternative conceptions of plate boundaries and their conception revision according to the pattern of students' reasoning. Participants were twenty-two 10th grade high school students. All participants were asked to draw the three types of plate boundaries and to explain their drawings. Nine students participated in the reasoning activity. To this end, a semi-structured interview was conducted during which key questions were asked for the students to individually answer. The key questions used in the reasoning activity were created, by utilizing questions used in the previous studies. The findings revealed that the alternative conceptions of plate boundaries were classified into three levels based on established criteria. Students who attempted a variety of reasoning strategies such as causal reasoning, using an analogy, abductive reasoning, data reconstruction and concept combination, revised their alternative conception to a scientific conception after the reasoning activity. On the other hand, some students could not revise their alternative conceptions because they only conducted an incomplete reasoning strategy. The study also found that they were unable to use other reasoning strategies, either.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.32 no.8
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• pp.1295-1317
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• 2012

There has been disagreement on the importance of definitions in science education. Yager (1983) believes that one crisis in science education was due to the considerable emphasis upon the learning of definitions. Hobson (2004) disagrees with physics textbooks that do not provide general definition on energy. Some textbooks explain that "there is no completely satisfactory definition of energy" or they can only "struggle to define it." In general, imprecise definitions in textbooks (Bauman, 1992) and inaccuracies in definition provided by teachers (Galili & Lehavi, 2006) may cause alternative conceptions. Besides, there are at least four challenges in defining physical concepts: precision, circularity, context and completeness in knowledge. These definitional problems that have been discussed in The Feynman Lectures, may impede the learning of physical concepts. A meta-study approach is employed to examine about five hundreds journal papers that may discuss definitions in physics, problems in defining physical concepts and how they may result in alternative conceptions. These journal papers are mainly selected from journals such as American Journal of Physics, International Journal of Science Education, Journal of Research in Science Teaching, Physics Education, The Physics Teachers, and so on. There are also comparisons of definitions with definitions from textbooks, Dictionaries of Physics, and English Dictionaries. To understand the nature of alternative conception, Lee et al. (2010) have suggested a theoretical framework to describe the learning issues by synthesizing cognitive psychology and science education approaches. Taking it a step further, this study incorporates the challenges in semantics and epistemology, proposes that there are at least four variants of alternative conceptions. We may coin the term, 'alternative definitions', to refer to the commonly available definitions, which have these four problems in defining physics concepts. Based on this study, alternative definitions may result in at least four variants of alternative conceptions. Note that these four definitional problems or challenges in definitions cannot be easily resolved. Educators should be cognizant of the four variants of alternative conceptions which can arise from alternative definitions. The concepts of alternative definitions can be useful and possibly generalized to science education and beyond.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.36-54
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• 2021

The purpose of this study was to investigate pre-service elementary school teachers' understanding about alternative energy and to identify their alternative conceptions. The two-tier instrument had been developed by Cheong et al. (2015) were used for this study. Twelve items from the instrument consisted of four categories: 'source of alternative energy', 'greenhouse gas emission', 'cost in electricity and construction' and 'advantages and disadvantages'. One hundred and fifteen pre-service elementary school teachers were participated in online survey during the semester. The results analyzed using SPSS 26.0. were as follows: First, the correct response rate varied depending on the content of item. Items related to characteristics and advantages & disadvantages of alternative energy showed high percentage of correct answers. Whereas, items regarding the principles of alternative energy showed relatively low percentage of correct answers. Second, there are some items showing statistically meaningful differences according to students' high school track. Nevertheless, there are no significant differences in overall. Third, we identified twelve alternative conceptions about alternative energy from students' answer distribution. Educational implications were discussed based on the results.

• Journal of Astronomy and Space Sciences
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.69-88
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• 2005

This study was to understand the components that influence preservice secondary teachers' conceptions about 'seasonal changes' We selected 74 university science education students among whom 23 were in the second, 23 in the third, and 28 in the fourth year. The data collected from the paper-pencil test and individual interview with students. The results of this study show that the students had considerable apparent alternative conceptions, and that the 'distance theory' had most important effects on their alternative conceptions. It can be said that preservice secondary teachers' initial models of the seasonal change have their origin in their belief sets (specific theory) related to 'seasonal change', on the basis of which they can interpret their observations and cultural information with the constraints of a naive frame-work of physics. The structures and possible sources of their alternative conceptions for overcoming these alternative conceptions were also discussed. Implications for preservice science teacher education related to the results were discussed.

• 사회경제평론
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.107-145
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• 2018

This paper presents that in the Russian Revolution 1) socialist and alternative democratic conceptions between Marx and Lenin are very different, 2) the process and cause of failure of realizing Lenin's democratic alternative conception, 3) the interactive expansion process of the party and the state, 4) the failing process of socialist original accumulation, collectivization, and constructing planned economy. This shows that Russia could not help fail to transit to socialist society due to the combination of wrong conceptions and that new revolution and construction should combine right socialist and democratic conceptions.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Earth Science Education
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.214-225
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• 2014

This study aimed to investigate the high school students' conceptions about the plate tectonics through visual representation. For this purpose, the subjects were 67 students in 11th-grade high schools in Chungbuk. In order to in-depth understand the students' conceptions about plate tectonics, so the investigator conducted a semi-structured interview. The conclusions were as in the following. After learning the plate tectonics, the students had the alternative conceptions associated with terminology, colors' meanings, plate-related melting, plate's movement, plates' boundaries, mantle's physical conditions, driving forces for plate movement, and they had the organic relations about colors' meanings, mantle's physical conditions, and driving forces of plate movement. Also, the visual representation used to teach plate tectonics influenced on the students' responses about terminology, plates' boundaries, plate-related melting and the mantle's physical features, also this study found the factors of visual representation causing the learners to create alternative conceptions. These results implicated the importance of teacher's role in identifying the students' interpretation process on visual representation, and it needed to improve the factors creating students' alternative conceptions about visual representation and to study the factors further.

• Journal of the Korean earth science society
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• v.28 no.7
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• pp.775-788
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• 2007

This study was aimed to understand the structures of preservice secondary school teachers' alternative conceptions on radioactive isotopes in the interior of earth. The structure of their conceptions were analyzed by the suggestions of Niaz (1988) based on the Lakatosian frameworks. The survey was carried out on a group of seventeen students who were major in science education. The research method was open-ended written questionnaire. The results of this study show that students had apparent alternative conceptions. The high temperature and pressure' explanation for radioactive decay in earth's interior had most import effects on their alternative conceptions. It was also intended to survey their conceptional change by our teaching strategies of the philosophy of science in order to construct science concepts.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.24 no.3
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• pp.583-595
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• 2004

The purpose of this study was to identify whether the elementary school students force conceptions may influence on designing tools experiments. Four questions with multiple choices and reasons for those choices were asked to identify scientific/alternative force conception. Also four tasks for tools experiments matched to each force conceptions were developed into open questions in hypothesizing. controlling variables and methods of experiments. Forty elementary students were selected from 4 classes in sixth grade of a school in Daegu city. The major findings of this study were that the types of force conceptions can be classified into scientific and alternative conceptions. The patterns of designing experiments could be identified with types of hypothesis, controlling variables and methods of experiments in each four tools experiments. But students those who had scientific force conception did not better in hypothesis, methods of controlling variables and results for simple experiment than those who had alternative force conceptions. These results imply that students' force conception did not influence on designing tools experiments. The assumption that scientific conception could improve designing experiments was not guaranteed by this results.