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This study aimed to develop an automated computer scoring system (ACSS) incorporating a Korean spell checker to assess students' constructed responses and to check the efficacy of this system. To accomplish this, we examined the performance of automatic spelling correction in reporting and correcting spelling errors, the interaction of gender and grade level in making spelling errors, the relationship between spelling errors and academic achievement, and the scoring efficacy of an ACSS that incorporated a spell checker. The analysis of percentage, two-way ANOVA, t-test, Pearson's correlation, and human-computer correspondence were conducted. The results revealed that an automatic spelling correction system could report 66.44% and correct 26.78% of all total misspelled words. We also found gender and grade-level differences in misspelling words. Students misspelled fewer words as they advanced in grade level, and male students misspelled more words than females. In terms of the relationship between spelling errors and concepts, we found that the number of concepts included in student's responses had a significant relationship with the total number of written words and misspelled words. This indicates that students who made more spelling errors had discussed more concepts in their responses. Based on these results, we discuss practical implications for preventing students' responses being scored lower due to spelling errors caused by being less attentive using an ACSS with a spelling correction system.

Preparing a positive attitude toward convergence is essential to help students grow into future generations with the ability to solve various complex problems. This research aims to examine high school students' attitude toward convergence and the relation to gender and track. Responses from 1,186 Indonesian students in tenth (10th) and eleventh (11th) grade were purposively collected. Students were administered twenty-three items of attitude toward convergence covering five constructs: knowledge, personal relevance, social relevance, interest, and self-efficacy. Data were analyzed using IRT-Rasch analyses, two-way ANOVA, Pearson correlation analysis, and cluster analyses. The primary finding of this research presented that high school students' attitude toward convergence on the construct of interest and self-efficacy is significantly related to gender and track. Female students show to be more interested in convergence than male students. However, female students have lower self-efficacy. Additionally, science track students tend to be more interested in convergence than humanities track and showing higher self-efficacy. After performing cluster analysis, students are divided into three particular groups according to their attitude toward convergence. Finally, customized learning is proposed to improve students' attitude toward convergence.

The exploration of career values can motivate and inspire young people, and help them achieve career success. The current study assesses the effect of sociocultural background on adolescents' career value among 951 Indonesian and 1,242 Korean secondary school students. Latent class analysis results suggest that participants can be grouped into five classes: personal-stability oriented, ability utilization, social-status oriented, social-relation oriented, and multi-valued leadership. Furthermore, the result of a three-way ANOVA indicated significant interactions for country, gender, and educational level on all career values for every class. The findings are discussed in the sociocultural contexts of Indonesia and Korea.

The conception of racial categories from a biological perspective is unconsciously embedded in the individual's cognition. This is true even among university students majoring in biology and medicine. Even though students have never learned about "race" explicitly in formal biology class, they are highly likely to implicitly construct, and hold biological concepts of race. This study investigated how Korean college students majoring in General Science Education define the concept of race and acquire a scientific conception of race. The study draws on Efstathiou (2009)'s framework of the "founded concept." Two open-ended questions regarding race conceptualization were administered to 218 college students. Furthermore, interviews with three students were conducted to explore any biological meaning of race. The results suggest four types of conception held by students about race. These were race as a typological means of distinguishing human diversity, race as a biological concept, race as a social construct, and race as a bio-social mixture. Additionally, in-depth interviews indicated that students constructed their biological concept of race unintentionally through learning biology. There are three mediators which have a role as mediator in the transfiguration process of finding and founding race concepts in a biological context: skin color, reproductive isolation, and ethnicity. Accordingly, science teachers should carefully teach this information in order to help prevent any misunderstanding of biological racial concepts. Teaching strategies and other educational implications are discussed.

Even though the concept of species is central in biology, the history of species concept and the existence of different species concepts are rarely discussed in biology classroom. This is unfortunate, as teachers could use the plurality of species concepts to enrich discussion in the classroom. Therefore, knowing the students' perception of species is essential to plan compatible strategies for teaching species. An open-ended question was administered to 548 high school students. A semantic network analysis was then used to explore the ideas of species in the students' responses, and further analyses were conducted to observe the co-existence of those ideas. The following five concepts were found: species as the lowest taxon in taxonomy (A1), species as a type of animal or plant (A2), species as the basic classification of living things (A3), genetic species concept (A4), and morphological species concept (A5). Of the five species concepts, naïve ideas were more frequent among responses, and some of them co-existed with normative ideas. As students mainly learn the concept of species through biology instruction, in this study, we have discussed the implications of our results for biology teaching and learning.

Neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease (AD), pose significant challenges to global healthcare because of their irreversible postsymptomatic progression. Conventional radiographic techniques have limitations in early detection, owing to the time lapse between symptom recognition by individuals and precise inspection using medical instruments. Current research explores ophthalmic approaches to address this gap, investigating the physiological link between ocular health and brain diseases. Intraocular lenses (IOLs), widely used in cataract and refractive surgeries, provide a safe and minimally invasive platform for the continuous monitoring of neurodegenerative disease biomarkers, including those associated with AD. By integrating biomolecule‐responsive sensors with IOLs, it becomes feasible to achieve early diagnosis and long‐term, noninvasive monitoring postimplantation. Herein, a fluorescently labeled inverse opal hydrogel (FIOH) is merged with IOLs for ApoE4 detection, a key risk factor for AD. The permeability and inherent photonic properties of FIOH facilitate the cumulative enhancement of the fluorescence signal. In a simulation of the aqueous humor circulation, the detection limit for ApoE4 is determined to be 0.1 nM. Therefore, FIOH‐integrated IOLs hold promise not only for early detection but also for providing a reliable platform for the continuous, noninvasive monitoring of neurodegenerative diseases after the initial, minimally invasive implantation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study aimed to examine differences in ecological values between Indonesian and Korean preservice science teachers. Fifteen items from revised-New Ecological Paradigm based on value orientations were used as the research instrument. Two hundred seventy-three preservice science teachers participated in the study. Rasch analyses of dimensionality, item fit, and differential item functioning were used to explore the validity of the instrument. The independent-sample "T"-test and Pearson's correlation test were utilized to compare data from the two countries. Preservice science teachers from the two different countries showed significant differences in only one of the three value orientations, which is egoistic value. Relationships among cultural, educational, and economic factors, as well as environmental values in these countries are discussed to fully explore the findings.

Where do scientists' superior abilities originate from when generating a creative idea? What different brain functions are activated between scientists and i) general academic high school students and ii) science high school students when generating a biological hypothesis? To reveal brain level explanations for these questions, this paper investigated neural connectivity differences between general and science high school students and biologists during hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding using fMRI. Researchers designed two sets of task paradigm on biological phenomena, one for hypothesis-generating and the other for hypothesis-understanding. Thirty-six healthy participants (twelve participants per group) were given hypothesis generating and understanding tasks. Results showed strong interconnections of functional connectivity in the biologist group, which is acknowledged as possessing superior hypothesis generation skills. The group was also found to have significant functional connectivity between the frontal cortex and the mesolimbic system, which has been documented as the fronto-striatal pathway. Moreover, the biologist group recorded higher interconnections in other functional connectivities known to be associated with hypothesis-generating. Taken together, it can be concluded that the hypothesis-generating skill gap between groups resulted from activation of particular regions as well as interconnections of functional connectivity related to network fluidity. Specially, the biologists' hypothesis-generating superior skill resulted from highly strengthened interconnections of functional connectivity. (Contains 3 tables and 7 figures.)

The purpose of this study was to understand the career motivation of secondary students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) by comparing Korean and Indonesian students. Effects of gender and educational level on students' STEM career motivation were also examined. To test for differences, we used Rasch analysis, 3-way ANOVA, correlation analysis, and multiple group path analysis. STEM career motivation was found to be significantly affected by interactions between country, gender, and educational level. Overall, Indonesian students had more STEM career motivation than Korean students. Korean students showed larger gender differences in STEM career motivation than Indonesian students.

Motivation to learn is an essential element in science learning. In this study, the role of career motivation in science learning was examined. In particular, first, a science motivation model that focused on career motivation was tested. Second, the role of career motivation as a predictor of STEM track choice was examined. Third, the effect of gender and academic year on science motivation was explored. The participants of the study were 626 high-school students. We used the Rasch analysis, structural equation modeling, logistic regression, MANOVA for the statistical analyses. It was found that career motivation has direct influences on several motivational factors in science learning, such as grade motivation, need for learning, self-determination, and self-efficacy. Moreover, career motivation was found to be a predictor of students' STEM track choice. Finally, there were substantial differences in science motivation across gender and academic years. Generally, females and students in higher academic years exhibited a lower level of science motivation. Female students especially showed a low level of career motivation. The findings suggest that it is important to facilitate students' career motivations to improve their science motivation and promote long-term scientific achievement.

Fourteen science high school students participated in this study, which investigated neural-network plasticity associated with hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding in learning. The students were divided into two groups and participated in either hypothesis-generating or hypothesis-understanding type learning programs, which were composed of 12 topics taught over a 12-week period. To measure change in student competence and brain networks, a paper & pencil test and an fMRI scanning session were administered before and after the training programs. Unlike the hypothesis-understanding group, a before and after training comparison for the hypothesis-generating group showed significantly strong changes in hypothesis explanation quotients and functional brain connectivity associated with hypothesis-generating. However, for the hypothesis-understanding group, the brain network related to hypothesis-understanding significantly strengthened, not from hypothesis-generating type learning, but from hypothesis-understanding type learning. These findings suggest that for hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding there are at least two specialized brain network systems or processes at work in the brain. Furthermore, hypothesis-generating competence could be developed by appropriate training programs such as teaching by way of active hypothesis generation rather than present passive expository teaching practices.

This study investigated the neural correlates of experts and novices during biological object pattern detection using an fMRI approach in order to reveal the neural correlates of a biologist's superior pattern discovery ability. Sixteen healthy male participants (8 biologists and 8 non-biologists) volunteered for the study. Participants were shown fifteen series of organism pictures and asked to detect patterns amid stimulus pictures. Primary findings showed significant activations in the right middle temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule amongst participants in the biologist (expert) group. Interestingly, the left superior temporal gyrus was activated in participants from the non-biologist (novice) group. These results suggested that superior pattern discovery ability could be related to a functional facilitation of the parieto-temporal network, which is particularly driven by the right middle temporal gyrus and inferior parietal lobule in addition to the recruitment of additional brain regions. Furthermore, the functional facilitation of the network might actually pertain to high coherent processing skills and visual working memory capacity. Hence, study results suggested that adept scientific thinking ability can be detected by neuronal substrates, which may be used as criteria for developing and evaluating a brain-based science curriculum and test instrument.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), this study investigates and discusses neurological explanations for, and the educational implications of, the neural network activations involved in hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding for biology education. Two sets of task paradigms about biological phenomena were designed: hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding, and 60 healthy participants performed the tasks. fMRI results showed that participants utilised different neural networks during hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding, and these networks appeared to have specialised patterns. In other words, these two types of learning strategies related to hypotheses do not share the same brain region or network. Therefore, for biology learning, it might be concluded that hypothesis-generating and hypothesis-understanding are operating at differing neural network levels, which causes the difficulty students have generating hypotheses about complicated natural phenomena despite a huge amount of exposure to hypothesis-understanding during their learning. (Contains 3 figures and 2 tables.)

The aim of the present study is to investigate the learning-related changes in brain activation induced by the training of hypothesis generation skills regarding biological phenomena. Eighteen undergraduate participants were scanned twice with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) before and after training over a period of 2 months. The experimental group underwent eight biological hypothesis generation training programs, but the control group was not given any during the 2-month period. The results showed that the left frontal gyri, the cingulate gyrus, and the cuneus were activated during hypothesis generation. In addition, the brain activation of the trained group increased in the left inferior and the superior frontal gyri, which are related to working memory load and higher-order inferential processes. However, the activation after training decreased in the occipito-parietal route, which is associated with the perception and the analysis processes of visual information. Furthermore, the results have suggested that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) region is the critical area in the training of hypothesis generation skills. (Contains 1 table and 3 figures.)