Korea has recently started to implement a STEM-like approach in K-12 education, titled STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) curriculum, to educate the next generation of students to become creative innovators. As this approach has been shown to increase educational success, it is vital to prepare and develop interest in middle school students to participate in STEAM subjects-related learning opportunities. This study examined the impact of hands-on global climate change monitoring projects whose curriculum was designed based on the six structured inventive thinking (SSIT) approach that can facilitate the development of the knowledge of STEAM content and investigate the perceptions of STEAM subjects by middle school students. The participants in the study were sixty-eight grade 7 students from a middle school in Seoul, Korea. Employing a quasi-experimental research design, the participants were measured on their STEAM knowledge and perceptions before and after participation. The findings indicate that students who participated in global climate change monitoring activities reported gains in their STEAM content knowledge and showed an improvement in their perceptions of STEAM subjects. The latter finding was more pronounced for female students who had significantly higher science achievement and positive perceptions of the STEAM program than for male students. The results of this study suggest that carefully designed projects comprised of SSIT-based environmental activities can be effective in STEAM education at the middle school level.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the case-based reasoning instructional model on learning about climate change unit. Results suggest that students showed interest because it allowed them to find the solution to the problem and solve the problem for themselves by analogy from other cases such as crossword puzzles in an aspect of students" awareness of the designed model. This means students are motivated to study and the process of selecting and organizing educational content and teaching methods has to focus on students" active construction of knowledge. Therefore, the casebased reasoning instructional model can help researchers, teachers, and curriculum developers better understand students" process of learning and developing scientific knowledge about climate change.

This study investigated how keeping a journal related to issues and concepts in science influences sixth grade students’ affective characteristics, including cognition, interest, and attitude towards science. The development of these characteristics is related to students’ attitudes and interests in learning. Previous studies have primarily focused on the affective characteristics of gifted students, while only a few have focused on elementary students in public schools. We asked 34 grade six students in Korean public schools to keep a journal related to science and technology three times a week for 12 weeks (September–November 2018). The results show students’ perspectives on writing science journals from data, including questionnaires, interviews, and surveys. The results also suggest that keeping a science journal develops students’ affective characteristics related to science. Our findings will contribute to the development of better pedagogies for sustainability and resources for teaching science among elementary students.

The sulphate ion (SO42-) is one of major species in freshwater as well as seawater, originating from various natural and anthropogenic processes (Krouse & Mayer 2000). Compared to the Northern Hemisphere, where human activities affect the sulphate concentration and isotopic signatures, the contribution of anthropogenic sulphate is likely to be negligible in freshwater and ice cores in the Antarctic region (Patris et al. 2002). This means that the sulphur and oxygen isotope compositions of the dissolved sulphate could hint at information on the sources, formation and deposition due to various natural processes and sulphur cycling in the Antarctic region, especially for the dissolved sulphate in surface waters such as ponds and creeks (Patris et al. 2000, Kim et al. 2017). Here we report the ion concentration and sulphur and oxygen isotope compositions of the dissolved sulphate in freshwater from King George Island in the Antarctic Peninsula, which provide implications regarding the sources of the dissolved sulphate and the sulphur cycling in the Antarctic region.