Earticle

The purpose of this study is to investigate the self-efficacy of secondary school science teachers. The instrument to survey the self-efficacy of them consists of 4 domains containing 16 items that are fivepoint Likert scale. The domains are teaching and learning, teaching content, understanding learners’ properties and science curricula. Subjects are 147 in-service science teachers. They have the highest selfefficacy level in ‘science curricula’ domain, whereas they have the lowest level in ‘understanding learners’ properties’ domain. There is not different between interest levels of females and males in all domains (p > .05). There are significantly correlations between domains. Especially, the ‘teaching content’ domain correlates strongly with the domain of ‘science curricula’(r = .556, p < .01). The results suggest that approaching to improve self-efficacy should be needed in the education for science teachers.

The purpose of this study was to investigate gifted program of GERI (Gifted Education Resource Institute) at Purdue University and suggest implication for Korean gifted program. The gifted programs of GERI are three kinds: Super Saturday, Super Summer, Summer Camp (commuter or residential). In this study, administration of the three kinds of gifted programs, diversity of the gifted programs, the contents of each programs, students selection, financial aid for minority, parent meeting were reviewed and investigated. Based on these results, some implications for Korean gifted program were suggested.

In this research, we have focused on the giftedness that reveal on the after-school gifted classes. We made an analysis of gifted class activities and purposed to verify an improvement of giftedness by gifted classes. We observed gifted classes 4 times. We wrote down actions and activities of students and teachers at intervals of five minutes and recorded video. The purpose of gifted education is to improve giftedness by gifted classes. The giftedness that improve through classes roughly includes five different characteristics; concept, creativity, leadership, inquiry, problem solving. We made an analysis that teachers fetched out characteristic of gifted children and students revealed it.

The purpose of this study is to develop the science learning plans of Clark’s Integrative Educational Model (IEM) for science gifted in elementary schools. The theoretical frame of IEM was proposed by Clark. IEM was developed by synthesizing the results from human brain research, the new physics, general systems theory, and psychology. The main purpose of IEM is to optimize learning and teaching. IEM, curriculum development for the gifted learner, synthesizes the four major functions of the brain - cognitive, physical sensing, emotional, and intuitive function and seven more components, other than the four major functions, exist to make each function of the brain complement the other functions and to develop the learners’ latent competency. In this study 5 science learning plans were developed ; ‘features of animals’, ‘classification of animals’, ‘seed of plants’, ‘the work of plant's leaves’, ‘features of our body’.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the interaction pattern and evidence in the argumentation discourse between pre-service science teachers. Over 3 months period, 7 groups of 24 pre-service teachers participated in open-ended inquiry and 10 argumentation discourses about inquiry were executed. All discourses were collected by video-recording and were transcribed. The results were as follows. First, we found that the interaction patterns were composed of one to one interaction pattern, one to many interaction pattern and many to many interaction pattern. These interaction pattern could help us to understanding the argumentation. Second, ‘experiment and observation’ was found to best in the evidence pattern analysis. These indicated that argumentation discourse could be thought to be highquality argumentation.

In this study, we analyzed the inquiry process of 3rd, 4th and 7th grade science textbooks. The results of the study were as follows. From the results of analyzing the fundamental research process, observation and measurement process were emphasized across all grades and courses. The observation process was composed of ‘observation by visual sensation’. In the measurement process, the weight measurement was the most frequent measurement activity. In the higher grade, more operational measurement were found than simple measurement. The frequency of classification was low, the prediction was mostly ‘prediction of experiment result’. Many reasoning process was found in the 7th grade textbooks.

In recent science education it is important to raise students’ interest of science and their creativity. In addition to the school education, out of school science education programs play another role for improving science education. This study focuses on “Christmas Science Lecture-Play,” as one of such out-of school science education programs. This program invites elementary and middle school student with their parents to appreciate the science deployed in a play at the season of Christmas. The storyboard of this program can be read as the fusion of science and art. Thus this program contribute to the development of new kind of science culture. The communication process in the lecture-play was analyzed with a semiotic frame. More attention should be addressed to the process of transmitting the scientific information for better understandings of interplay of the science contents and the story of the play.

The objects of the research are the illustrations in the first and second grade's Intelligent Life textbooks of the 7th National Curriculum and Revised 2007 National Curriculum. In this study, a research focus is the external side (the size, type and shape) of the illustration. Then the frequency of each corresponding categories is checked on the analysis frame to find percentage and that is analyzed according to the National Curriculum. The results are as follows. First, the Revised 2007 National Curriculum has much more convenient composition in many aspects compared to the 7th National Curriculum, such as paper quality, picture clarity, unit and time schedule display, and attached cards and so on. Second, the number of entire pages, units and illustrations has increased in the Revised 2007 National Curriculum while the school hours have decreased. Third, Overall, each one of the compared illustration's size is somewhat increased or decreased but there is no clear difference. Forth, the number of the photographs has increased a bit more, also the proportion of children-friendly cartoons has increased.

In this study, we analyzed the cognitive domain in the specific chapter, “Materials” in the new 7th science textbooks, by focusing on the items in cognitive areas. Referring to Davila's and Bloom's new education goals, cognitive areas and their sub-areas were selected. Applying the new Bloom's Cognition/Contents to the study, The results were as follows. The order of cognitive domain was ‘knowledge > comprehension > application > analysis > synthesis’ in the textbooks made by 2007 revised national curriculum. More comprehension and application domain was found in the textbook made by 2007 revised curriculum. This results means various cognitive areas were considered in the new curriculum.

In this study, It was researched the case study of practice for science education using science museum in Japan. We selected Osaka Science Museum. This science museum was established by Osaka prefecture which was evaluated as a positive science museum acting scientific activities for students and participants. The implications of this study are follows. First, science education in school or out of school such as science museum was needed to be familiar with their tradition and cultures. Second, the science museum should be important to have several programs to acquire needs of people in science education. Third, it also needs to research continuously that those who practice science education, and they have to make their students understand by their research results. Fourth, in order to develop science education, science specialists and science educator to be joined for science festivals, it should be actively utilized.