과학, 비과학 주제에 대한 문제해결 전략 및 평가에서 나타난 중학생의 인식

Abstract

This study analyzed the characteristics of problem-solving strategy formulation as perceived by students and the development of evaluation criteria for such strategies. For this purpose, we analyzed the outputs of six classes of 52 middle school students participating in a university-affiliated gifted education center. The main findings were as follows: First, students presented their problem-solving strategies in three to six steps, with responses of five, four, three, and six. Second, the problem-solving steps proposed by the students could be categorized into the first half of “recognizing the problem, preparing for the investigation, making predictions, setting hypotheses, making plans, and collecting data” and the second half of “organizing results, testing hypotheses, concluding, and writing reports” based on the execution. Third, there was a difference between scientific and non-scientific problem-solving topics that students perceived in their daily lives. In terms of topics, tools were the most common among both scientific and non-scientific problem-solving. Fourth, students identified a variety of similarities and differences between scientific and non-scientific problem-solving strategies, and “process” was characterized by both similarities and differences. Fifth, students mostly gave three to five criteria for evaluating their peers’ problem-solving strategies, with a total of 20 different criteria. Among them, feasibility, solvability, and efficiency were selected by the majority of students. In addition, we discuss the implications for science education based on the results of this study.