Earticle

The purpose of this study was to restore So-ganui(小簡儀), which is a unique astronomical instrument during Sejong period, so that its educational application can be sought. To achieve it, researcher researched the observation principle of our ancestors and the structure of So-ganui, and then restored So-ganui. The result is as following. First, So-ganui is the astronomical observation instrument which can not only measure the position of the celestial bodies in terms of function but also find out the height and distance of topography, and get the time. Second, restoration So-ganui is suitable for the students to learn as an inquiry activity of the observation information in the science curriculum and it would be used as the learning materials for the proper understanding of the science and measurement principle of our ancestors. This study would contribute to raising the level of pride in our scientific culture for the students and succeed the heritage of the science and culture.

The purpose of this study is to: analyze the characteristics on ill-structured problem-solving process; examine the type of memories used in their monitoring. The data were primary collected from observation and secondary the semi- structured in-depth interviews based on analysis of observation results with two students who belong to science school and a guidance. The findings of this study revealed that the ill-structured problems possess multiple representations and the upper level's problem have several sub-problems. And multiple steps simultaneously exist in particular stage of problem-solving process that is not single sequential but complex flow and have high frequency of discussion step. Type of memories used in ill-structured problems include idiosyncratic memories which is related in personal histories such as school performance, problem-related memories, abstract rules and intuition.

The purpose of this study is to find how elementary students who have different spatial ability affects their understandings on the concept of the rotation of the earth. In order to perform this study, four 5th grade students were picked out of 85 students in Seoul. They had the same conceptual achievement on the movement of celestial bodies but had different spatial abilities. The results of this study were as follows : Regardless of their spatial ability, they understand how day and night are performed, and understand the fact that diurnal motions of moon are related to the rotation of the earth. Also, the students who had higher spatial abilities showed better understanding on the concept of the rotation of the earth and understood the reconstructed concepts in stereoscopic space. But the students who had lower spatial abilities did not fully understand the concept of the rotation of the earth and just memorized them as fragmentary concepts. As for the gender differences, the boy students who had higher spatial ability explained the concept clearly and the others who had lower spatial ability had difficulty in understanding the rotation direction of the earth related with the diurnal movement of celestial bodies. In the same manner, the girl students who had higher spatial ability explained the concepts concretely and the others who had lower spatial ability had difficulty in explaining the concepts by operating them stereoscopically. Therefore, developing teaching methods and studying data and so on, for the girl students, they should be trained to operate the stereoscopic space directly, and for the boy students, they should learn to think over objects with multi- viewpoints. And then the spatial ability on the movement of celestial bodies would be expected to be improved.

This study investigates the effect of ASI program on the improvement of gifted students’ scientific creative problem solving skill and science learning motivation. ASI developed by reflecting the characteristics of scientific inquiry. The study was aimed at Twenty elementary gifted students from C Gifted Education Program participated in the sixteen sessions of ASI curriculum from June 2010 to October 2010. First, we found that the ASP program is effective to improve the gifted students’ scientific creative problem solving skill overall. Specifically, the ASI was effective in the sub-catagories of scientific creative problem solving skills such as ‘fluency’, ‘flexibility’, ‘originality’, and ‘appropriateness’. However, there was no significant change in the sub-category of ‘reliability’ and ‘elaborateness’ Second, we found that the ASP program is effective to improve the gifted students’ sscience learning motivation overall. Specifically, the ASI was effective in the sub-catagories of science problem solving skills such as ‘intrinsic motivation’, ‘correlation with personal goal’, ‘self-determination’, and ‘fear of evaluation’. However, there was no significant change in the sub-category of ‘extrinsic motivation’ and ‘self-efficacy’. summary, the ASI program was shown to be effective for improving their scientific creative problem solving skill and scientific learning motivation; This study implies that the ASI curriculum would be a effective tool to help gifted students to improve their ascientific creative problem solving skill and their motivation to learn science.

The Purpose of this study was to analyze STS contents in elementary school science textbooks according to 6th, 7th and revision 2007 national curriculum. The contents of STS were analyzed by the STS elements of Yager and the STS topics of Piel's standard. Major findings from the analyses are as follows: (1) The STS contents in the science textbooks of the 6th curriculum took up 13.7% and increased to 18.3% in the 7th and 19.0% in the revision 2007, which showed that the textbooks followed the goal of the national curriculum faithfully. (2) Based on the STS elements by Yager's standard, most of STS content is focused on 'Application of science', 'Social problems and issues' and 'Local and community relevance'. (3) Based on the STS topics by Piel's standard, most of STS contents are focused on 'Effect of technological development' and 'Society of science'. These results indicate that recent STS education trends are reflected on the 6th, 7th and revision 2007 textbooks well. However, it is suggested that some improvement is needed, such as diversification of topic.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of Future Problem Solving Program on creativity and scientific attitude. For this study the 4 grade, 2 class was divided into a research group and a comparative group. The class was pre-tested in order to ensure the same standard. The research group had the science class with FPSP, and the comparative group had the class with teacher centered lectures for 9 classes in 10 weeks. The FPSP was focused on finding problems, finding key problems, creating solutions, selecting the standard of judgement, making alternative solutions, and learning creative steps of solutions consisting of development of action planning. To prove the effects of this study, creativity was split up according to fluency, originality, abstractness, accuracy, and openness. Also, scientific attitude consisted of honesty, patience, curiosity, preparedness, autonomy, criticism, and openness. The results of this study are as follows. First, the science class with FPSP with finding problems, finding key problems, and creating solutions had the effect of developing the scientific creativity; fluency, originality, abstractness of the title, accuracy, and openness. Second, the FPSP had the effect of developing the scientific attitude. Students made ideas and solved the problems through divergent thinking and convergent thinking. During the class it had the effect of developing the scientific attitude; honesty, patience, curiosity, preparedness, autonomy, criticism, and openness. As a result, the elementary science class with FPSP had the effects of developing scientific creativity and scientific attitude. It means the science class with FPSP has potential possibilities and value to develop scientific creativity and scientific attitude.

The purpose of this study is to find out the effect of hypothesis formulations using abduction on science processing skills and the creative thinking activities. As the subject, 2 classes in the 6th grade of B elementary school located in Busan were selected. Through the pre/post inspection design between experiment and comparison class, the units of science courses in the second semester of 6th grade ‘1. A change in the weather’ and ‘2. Various gases’ were applied. The results were as follows: Firstly, the test on science processing skills showed that there was not statistic meaningful differences between the two groups. And, in the sub-parts, there was not statistic meaningful differences between the two groups. Secondly, it was observed that it would have a meaningful effect to improve the creative thinking activities of students who performed hypothesis formulation using abduction. Especially, through this, the experimental class gave a positive effect on the ‘Fluency’ and ‘Elaboration’, one of lower categories of the creative activities. The results of ‘Flexibility’ and ‘Originality’ in the experimental class were higher than those of students in the comparative class. However, according to statistical analysis, this result is meaningless. Thirdly, on the survey about the hypothesis formulation using abduction, many students thought that this learning method was very interesting and helpful to study science. In addition, it was observed that the ability to use abduct thinking was improved more than ever before.

The focus of this study was on the comparative analysis in the area of illustrations between the primary school from third grade to the sixth grade between Korean and American science textbooks in order to offer some suggestions for consideration of the Korean science textbooks, which will be revised in 2009. The results are as follows: The number of illustrations per page in Korean science textbooks are more than that of American science textbooks. As the type of illustrations, the ratio of photos is the highest and as the role of illustrations, data provision has the highest percentage in both countries. The motivation role in Korean science textbooks seem to be higher than American science textbook, whereas study summary role is more prominent in American textbooks than in Korean textbooks.

The purpose of this study is to find out the effects of internet resource-based problem-based learning on the academic achievement in science and the attitude toward science of elementary school students. One experiment class and one control class of grade 6 students were selected to perform a prior investigation on the academic achievement in science and the attitude toward science, then the experiment class attended 4 weeks of lessons that was applied the internet resource-based problem-based learning, and the control class attended the traditional lessons based on the guidelines of teachers. After conducting lessons, a post investigation was performed for each class and the results were analyzed to produce the following conclusions. First, the internet resource-based problem-based learning could be seen to be effective in improving the students’ academic achievements in science. The internet resource-based problem-based learning seemed to make students recognize the lesson details better and grasp well the questions given during lessons from the process of finding solutions among many informations and data on the internet. Second, the internet resource-based problem-based learning had a positive effect on all attitudes’ areas toward science of students. It looked like that the internet resource-based problem-based learning taught the students to use the internet resources and gave them a friendly feeling, so the children could actively participate in class and had positive recognition on science. Third, from teacher observation and the result of the student recognition investigation, we could know that the students showed lots of interests in the internet resource-based problem-based learning, and they were able to understand the scientific theories in the process of solving problems that were relevant to real life, and thought science in a positive way.

This study was created to resolve the problems embedded in the formal measuring experiments to determine the earth’s size in the current curriculum, to develop an updated measuring experiment to determine the earth’s size and to establish its effect. For this study, pre-service elementary teachers, who had attempted the experiment of measuring the size of the earth when they were in middle school, performed the experiments in the existing national curriculum, and their responses, collected through in-depth interviews, were examined. To begin with, the pre-service elementary teachers conducted the experiment of measuring the earth size and they recorded the problems while performing it. At the end, an in-depth interview was administered. Based on the problems, an updated measuring experiment to determine the earth’s size was suggested to be applied to the same contents and be analyzed through the in-depth interviews. Common themes which were mutually categorized and analyzed by the two researchers were obtained based on the records produced while conducting the experiment and the in-depth interview data. The teachers mentioned that the experiments for measuring the size of the earth in the current curriculum gave rise to difficulties in measuring precisely the angles between the string and the post. Also, there has been a scientific contradiction that solar altitudes were increased in a high latitude region, instead of decreased. For this reason, an alternative method has been developed to measure the earth’s size using the distance and the solar altitude difference of two places. The teachers all agreed that by using the updated measuring experiment, they can acquire more precise measurements and it is easier, faster and consequently more effective than the existing methods. Through the results of this study, I suggest that the newly developed experiment by the researchers can overhaul the problems of the current experiments and it can be an effective alternative to the current experiment.

The purpose of this study is to examine what effects the experiment class to stress discussion of small groups in scientific experiment class of the elementary school has on scientific achievement and attitude on the science of the students comparing to the usual scientific experiment class. For that purpose, this study has divided 49 students at the 6th grade of the M elementary school in P City into test groups of 24 students and control groups of 25 students. Classes have been progressed by giving sufficient time to the test groups for discussion by each small groups after experiment while by allowing the control groups to finish the experiment with arrangement of the experiment results. Conclusions of this study include: First, the more familiar the experiment materials are and the easier the experiment procedures are to be operated by the students, the more actively the small group discussion activities have been deployed. It shows that the students need a certain level of background knowledge before experiment for vital discussing activities. Second, it is appeared that the test groups given the scientific experiment class stressing small group discussing activity have significantly high scores comparing to the control groups given the existing scientific experiment class. It shows that the small group discussing activities have effects on promoting understanding of the students on the scientific achievement for the scientific experiment class. Third, it is appeared that the test groups given the scientific experiment class stressing small group discussing activity significantly high scores on attitude about the science comparing to the control groups given the existing scientific experiment class. It is considered that the students could have opportunities to compare their own thoughts with others and to have reflective thought to change their thoughts through the small group discussing activity. As shown above, it shows that the experiment class to stress discussing activities is more effective to increase scientific achievement and attitude about the science than the scientific experiment class to get and arrange the experiment results from the existing experiment classes.

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of storytelling skill on science learning motivation and space perception ability. For this study the 5 grade, 2 class was divided into a research group and a comparative group. The class was pre-tested in order to ensure the same standard. The research group had the science class with storytelling skill, and the comparative group had the class with teacher centered lectures for 10 classes in 10 weeks. The storytelling skill was focused on finding stories, constellation searching, story deciding, story hero deciding, story composition, storytelling completion. To prove the effects of this study, science learning motivation was split up according to attention power, relation, confidence, and sense of satisfaction. Also, space perception ability consisted of two-dimensional rotation, 3 dimension rotations, reflection, three-dimensional searching, number of block, and figure type in pattern. The results of this study are as follows. First, using storytelling skill was effective in science learning motivation. Second, using storytelling skill was effective in space perception ability. Also, after using storytelling skill was good reaction by students. As a result, the elementary science class with storytelling skill had the effects of developing science learning motivation and space perception ability. it means the science class with storytelling skill has potential possibilities and value to develop science learning motivation and space perception ability.

This study investigates the effect of environmental club activities of the creative experiential learning activities on the improvement of students’ Environmental Literacy and Pro-environmental Behavior. For that purpose, This study divided 24 students at Jinhae U Elementary School into test groups of 12 students and Control groups of 12 students. Test groups participated in the 'GomGomi' environmental Club for sixteen times from March 2011 to December 2011. Conclusions of this study include; First, we found that the environmental club activities is effective to improve the students’ environmental Literacy overall. Specifically, the Environmental Club Activities was effective in the sub-catagories of environmental Literacy such as ‘rights of nature’ and ‘eco-crisis’. However, there was no significant change in the sub-category of ‘human exemptionalism’ Second, we found that the environmental club activities is effective to improve students’ pro-environmental behavior overall. Specifically, the environmental club activities was effective in the sub-domains of Pro-environmental Behavior such as ‘cognitive domain’ and ‘affective domain’. However, there was no significant change in the sub-domains of ‘behavioral domain’. Summary, the environmental club activities was shown to be effective for improving their environmental literacy and pro-environmental behavior; This study implies that the environmental club activities of the creative experiential learning activities would be a effective tool to help students to improve their environmental literacy and pro-environmental behavior.

Modern society requires people with practical knowledge that is able to recognize actual problems in the complex reality and solve the problems. Due to that reason, the 7th National Curriculum aims to basically cultivate ability adaptable to information-oriented global age by maximizing students’ individuality and creativity. However, as existing education is hard to improve creativity, logical thinking, information processing skills, and problem-solving ability in the information-oriented age, self-directed learning is getting highlighted. Therefore, this study aimed to look into how learner-oriented IPER for self-directed learning and problem-based learning(PBL) in middle school science affected academic achievement of science and self-directed learning characteristics. As the results of the study are as follows. First, as the result of pre-and post-test to compare and analyze the effects of IPER instruction model and PBL instruction model on learners’ academic achievement increase, it showed that the class with IPER instruction model was more effective. Second, as the result of pre-and post-test to compare and analyze the effects of IPER instruction model and PBL instruction model on self-directed learning characters, IPER was more effective than PBL overall, and among sub-areas, ‘openness’, ‘self-concept’, ‘initiative’, ‘future-oriented self-understanding’, and ‘self-evaluation’ were more effective in IPER while ‘creativity’ was more effective in PBL. However, among sub-areas ‘responsibility’ and ‘learning enthusiasm’ didn’t show statistically significant difference. Third, the results of the post-survey to compare and analyze learners’ perception regarding the application of IPER instruction model and PBL instruction model, the two models were positively affective. In addition, as the result of comparing the two models, IPER was more positive than PBL.