초등학교 과학교과의 자유탐구 활동에서 탐구문제 발견과정의 사례 분석

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze a process of the fourth year students' finding inquiry problems in self-inquiry activities in the elementary school science curriculum revised in 2007 and the number and types of their questions produced during the process. The process of finding inquiry problems in self-inquiry activities for 26 fourth year students of Y elementary school in K metropolitan city worked in the order of choosing a topic,making a network for the topic, introducing how to produce self-inquiry problems, recognizing the need for questioning strategies and the types of questions, teaching and learning how to make questions?), reviewing mutually and evaluating questions, and finding out inquiry problems. The students' questions about the topic of 'plant roots'generated in the process are classified and analyzed according to the types of questions proposed by Chin et al., and the relation between the questions and the self-inquiry problems produced the process is investigated: the number of the questions collected is 390, the 15.9 % of which is part of the type of basic information question and the 84.1 % is part of the type of the wonderment question. The contents of the students'questions are more limited to a scientific situation than to a real situation, and the scientific concepts involved are limited. The research findings provide implications for the importance of teachers as science experts to set up strategies to offer scaffolding fit for the students' levels and guide them through the directions and methods of inquiry according to the types of questions so that they can discover new inquiry problems on their own. Thus it is required to develop activity programs for finding inquiry problems applicable to the instruction of the process of finding inquiry problems in self-inquiry activities in elementary school science.