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In modern society, people are expected to make scientific decisions and rational actions over a range of personal and social problems. There have been a number of studies on students’ and adults’ decision-making over socio-scientific issues under the name of scientific literacy. In this study, we investigated the social and cultural backgrounds of Korean people’s actions and trust over their personal problems (e.g. health, career choice), by conducting in-depth interviews with ten Korean adults on their experience related to acupuncture and Four Pillars of Destiny (FPD), two representative examples of unorthodox sciences. The analysis of the data reveals that their actions concerning acupuncture and FPD are influenced by socio-cultural factors (esp. family culture, social system) and by their understandings of the nature of science. In addition, we found that there are a different set of reasons and varying degrees of people’s trust between acupuncture and FPD. Based on the results, we discussed the needs to introduce wider concepts of the nature of science and of the scopes of science education.

Every classroom environment reflects the cultural features of the country where it is located. In this study, with a focus on cultural features, we compared the science classroom environments of two Asian countries: Korea and Thailand. For this, What Is Happening In this Class (WIHIC) and the Cultural Learning Environment Questionnaire (CLEQ) were administered to 1575 students (765 from Korea and 810 from Thailand) in Grades 4, 6, 8, and 10. The results of two instruments were analyzed and discussed with a particular focus on the four cultural dimensions in science classrooms, which were reframed from Hofstede's four cultural dimensions. The results of the analysis can be summarized as follows. First, regarding the first dimension, relationships between individuals and groups, students in both countries liked collaborative activities and had many emotional exchanges in their classrooms. However, cognitive collaborative activities occurred more frequently in Thailand than in Korea. Second, regarding the second dimension, equity issues, almost all students in Korea perceived that they participated equally in science classrooms. However, in Thailand, students thought they had equal participation in science classrooms except for the gender aspects. That is, Thai boys and girls were reported themselves to be participating in different ways in their classrooms. Third, regarding the third dimension, relationships between students and teachers, two kinds of relationships were investigated: teacher authority and teacher support. In terms of teacher authority, the extent of psychological distance between students' and their teachers' power was similar in the two countries. However, in terms of teacher support, Thai students had more positive perceptions about teacher support than Korean students did. Fourth, regarding the features of science teaching and learning processes, Korean students had more negative perceptions of involvement, investigation, and task orientation than Thai students did. The negative responses of Korean students could be the cause of the low engagement of Korean students in their science classrooms. Based on these results, educational implications are discussed in terms of culturally appropriate pedagogies in science classrooms.

The purpose of this study is to identify pre-service elementary school teachers' difficulties and needs in the science class utilizing smart technologies. The participants were nine pre-service elementary teachers who had practical training at an elementary school and took classes related to technology, pedagogy, and science knowledge. The data was collected through semi-constructed and in-depth interviews. The documents such as participants' guidance plans, daily records produced in teaching practice was collected and analyzed. The results of the research are as follow: Pre-service teachers have usually used the technology as a secondary transfer media to convey the knowledge. We found that the pre-service elementary teachers had 15 difficulties in the science class utilizing smart technologies. In addition, they needed a class to focus more on teaching them by integrating technology knowledge, pedagogy knowledge, and science knowledge, and by sharing a real case of science class utilizing smart technologies.

This study, based on literature review and theoretical discussion, reinterprets the learning environment instruments from cultural perspectives and suggests the applicability of learning environment instruments for understanding science classroom cultures. To do this, the existing learning environment instruments are first investigated and compared in terms of their features and utilizations appeared in previous studies. The learning environment instruments are then reinterpreted in the light of culture. Finally, we suggest the possibilities to use the learning environment instruments to understand science classroom cultures. The results of this study can be summarized as follows. First, the learning environment instruments, by interpreting them culturally, could be interpreted in cultural ways and used as the alternative ways to explore science classroom cultures. Second, the learning environment instruments, such as WIHIC and CLEQ, could be interpreted both along the dimension of phenomena in classrooms and the dimension of students' psychology in order to investigate science classroom cultures. Third, the instrument items could be interpreted culturally in different ways according to the description types of instrument items. Thus, when learning environment instruments are used in culture research, the description types should be sufficiently taken into account. Based on the results of this study, educational implications are discussed in terms of exploring classroom cultures and of culture research.