• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.391-401
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• 2018

This study investigated elementary students' perception of the suitability of inquiry activities related to the science inquiry, essential features of the inquiry and essential features of the inquiry by science inquiry activities. First, 5-6th grade elementary students' perception of the suitability of inquiry activities to the science inquiry was positive in this study and especially the score of experiment and field trip was high. The lowest score was on the discussion and elementary students thought that discussion might be wrong, because they just talked when they participated in the discussion. Second, perception of the essential features of science inquiry was positive. Especially, engaging students in evaluating their explanations in the light of alternative explanations was the highest. Students thought that explanation is important, but it is too hard to perform the science inquiry with only the explanation. Third, the score of research and experiment was high in essential features of science inquiry by science inquiry activities. The score of the field trip was low, so a more meaningful field trip should be carried out in the school.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.38 no.2
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• pp.163-172
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• 2019

This study explored elementary teachers' perceptions on the essential features of science inquiry, the appropriateness of inquiry activities to science inquiry, and the essential features of inquiry by inquiry activities. 85 elementary teachers' perceptions were investigated using Likert scale survey, and 7 teachers were interviewed. The results are as follows. First, the features that elementary teachers perceived the most essential were 'Engaging students in evaluating their explanations in light of alternative explanations' and 'Engaging students in communicating and justifying their explanations'. Second, The inquiry activities that teachers thought the most appropriate to science inquiry were 'experiment' and 'project'. On the other hand, the perceptions on 'discussion' and 'field trip' were relatively low. Third, the inquiry activity that showed the highest mean score of five essential features of inquiry was 'experiment' while the mean score of 'field trip' was the lowest. Educational implications about the science inquiry were discussed.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.92-103
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• 1995

Since the late of 1960,s, the improvement of science inquiry skills has been one of the most important goals in secondary science education. To achieve this goal, it is essential to develop a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating science inquiry skills. The purpose of this study is to develop a valid and reliable instrument for evaluating science inquiry skills for high school students. The instrument is developed through R & D procedure, which includes two field trials of the instrument. This study has formed a clear definition of the elements of science inquiry skills (formulating a hypothesis, controlling variables, designing an experiment, numeric calculation, graphing experimental data, inference, determining relationship, determining causalities, predicting experimental results , drawing a conclusion, formulating a generalization or model), and established the goals of assessment and developed the items of assessment. The instrument, Test of Earth Science Inquiry Skills, consists of 33 items which measure 11 science inquiry skills. There are content-free items for each science inquiry skills. This study has selected 11 science inquiry skills which are considered appropriate for being evaluated by paper-and-pencil test with SIEI (Hur,1984). The content validity of items, objectivity of the scoring keys and clarity of the items were checked by six experienced specialists in science education. At the same time, the two field trials has been executed and produced the reliability of the instrument, item difficulty index, and the effectiveness of distracters. The first field trial was performed using a sample of 304 high school students, and the second one using a sample of 872 high school students. Because the content validity is 84 % and the reliability (K-R 20) is 0.84, the developed instrument in this study is considered valid and reliable. The difficulty index is 49.4 %, answer ratio 59.1 %, the discrimination index 0.47 and the effectiveness of distracters evenly distributed, which also suffice the criteria of good instrument. The developed instrument in this study can diagnosis the well-developed science inquiry skills and the ill-developed science inquiry skills of the students, and trace the degree of the improvement of science inquiry skills.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.61-73
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• 1998

This research suggests science inquiry play of analogy as a teaming method to help the students in concrete operational stage to develop scientific thinking skills and to understand abstract science conceptions. The research focuses on/considers the characteristics and merits of the science inquiry plays, and the learning method by analogical reasoning. This learning through the science inquiry play of analogy can be considered as a meta-model for scientific thinking skill. The learning has the following processes: 1) Students analogize the abstract science conceptions and facts into play-type activities including the concrete contents such as students themselves, their physical-sensory motions, concrete objects, play methods, and play rules. 2) Students as analogized objects play a role physically and sensuously according to the methods and rules analogized in the play. 3) Students find out the concrete contents included in the science inquiry play of analogy, draw the results, and deduce the new conceptions from the results by reflective thinking and analogical reasoning.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.83-96
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• 1991

The purpose of this study is to construct the evaluative objectives of science inquiry skills specificationaly. Specification of evaluative objectives will be able to serve as evaluative criterion for development of a test of the integrated science process skills. The results in this study are as follows ; (l) The selections of science inquiry skills from the previous developed taxonomies are observation, measurement, formulating hypothesis, designing an experiment and controlling variables, inference, predicting(including intrapolation and extrapolation), organizing data and interpreting, defining operationally, formulating a generalization or model, drawing a conclusion. (2) The definitions of the selected science inquiry skills are made operationally. (3) Evaluative objectives relating to the selected science inquiry skills are specified with the previous developed items. Based on the above results, total 9 science inquiry skills are selected and 72 evaluative objectives are specified.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.9-20
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• 2005

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of integrated science inquiry teaming method through literature materials on the learner's science concept formation, inquiry ability, and attitude related to science when it was applied to the unit 'The temperature of atmosphere and winds', 'The journey of water' in the 5th grade, and to find out the effect on science learning according to teaming styles. To study these subjects, 4 classes of 5th grade in J elementary school in Busan were selected. The result of this study were as follows: First, Integrated science inquiry learning method through literature materials was more effective for concept formation than conventional teaching method. In science inquiry ability, there was not significant difference at all between the comparison group and the experimental group. In attitude related to science, the experimental group showed significant difference only in the interest in occupation related to science. The visual modality learners within the experimental group showed significantly higher statistics than the other modality learners in the post-investigation into the science concept and there was significant difference between the visual and the kinesthetic modality learners in the result of post-test on science inquiry ability.

• Korean Journal of Child Studies
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.283-300
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• 2010

This paper investigated the effect of music and science integrated activities using instruments designed to test both musical concept and science inquiry process skills of children. The subjects of this study consisted of two classes of children aged 5 at H Kindergarten in Busan city. This study involved a class of 31 children using a music and science integrated curriculum as the experimental group and another class of 32 children using a traditional music and science curriculum as the control group. The integrated activities were used 12 times over a 6-week period. A test was taken to evaluate the effects of the integrated activities on the children's understanding on seven sub-categories of musical concepts and six sub-categories of science inquiry process skills. The results were that the experimental group showed significantly higher improvements in all subcategories of musical concept and science inquiry process skills, compared to the control group. Based on these results, we concluded that these integrated activities were effective in the development of both musical concepts and the science inquiry process skills of children.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.464-472
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• 2013

The purpose of this study was to analyze the science inquiry problem finding ability of gifted elementary students of science and general elementary students. For this purpose, this study analyzed the types of science inquiry problems in an ill-structured problem finding situation. Also, this study has compared science inquiry problem finding abilities of those two groups. From the results of this study, new ways of improving student' science inquiry problem finding ability and selection of gifted students of science were suggested. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, most of the inquiry problems generated by the scientifically gifted and the general students in an ill-structured problem situation could be categorized into seven types (measurement, method, cause, possibility, what, comparison, relationship) according to the inquiry objectives, and both group found more problems in scientific context than in everyday context. Regardless of the context of problem, scientifically gifted students found more problems and the type of problems generated by them were more various than those of general students. Second, there were differences in problem finding ability between scientifically gifted and general students. Scientifically gifted students found more problems and the quality of problems were higher than general students.

• Journal of The Korean Association For Science Education
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.93-101
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• 1997

The purpose of this study is to develop a test of earth science inquiry abilities using structured items. To develop a more valid and reliable instrument factual data was used, and most of the previous studies regarding inquiry teaching method and inquiry evaluation were consulted. The model developed in this study is composed of 5 stages; recognizing problems and generating hypotheses, designing inquiry, pursuiting inquiry, interpreting data, and drawing conclusion. Also, in this study 10 science inquiry abilities; recognizing problems, generating hypotheses, controlling variables, designing experiments, performing experiments, transforming data, inferencing, predicting, conclusing, and generalizing were clearly defined. The test developed in the study, Test of Earth Science Inquiry Abilities, includes 25 multiple-choice (five-choice) items and requires testing time of 50 minutes. The content validity of items, objectivity of scoring keys and clarity of items were checked by 7 experienced specialists in science education and earth science. The developed test were investigated and revised through three field tests. According to the results of the third field trial, test reliability (Cronbach $\alpha$) was 0.62, difficulty index was 0.54 and index of discrimination was 0.35. Also, the developed Test of Earth Science Inquiry Abilities showed a correlation coefficient of 0.53 with TIPS. Therefore, the development of Test of Earth Science Inquiry Abilities using structured items satisfied the reliability and validity requirements for general assessment instruments for students' earth science inquiry abilities.

• Journal of Korean Elementary Science Education
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.146-153
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• 2012

The purpose of this study were to know the effects of making science newspaper activity on the science inquiry process ability of elementary school students and to analyse the writing context about their articles. The 33 sixth grader were participated in this program and they made 3 or 4 make a group, 9 groups made their own science newspaper. The results are as follow: first, there were statistically significantly differences(p<.01) on the basic science inquiry process abilities especially measurement and reasoning on making science newspaper activity. But there were no significantly differences on the integrative science inquiry process abilities; second, according to their articles on science newspaper, in personal context, they used many terms such as ecosystem, producer, consumer, decomposer, balance, but it was not personalized. And in social context, They pointed the cause and solution for the pollution and destruction in ecosystem, but it was superficial. Lastly in physical context, They used well their science concepts from class and format in newspaper in making science newspaper.