The Characteristics of the New Education Movement Reflected in Science Study during the Syllabus Period

This study examines how the New Education Movement and progressive educational thought were incorporated into elementary science education during the Syllabus period (gyosuyomokgi) through an analysis of textbooks. For this purpose, it comparatively analyzed Elementary Science(Chodeung I-gwa) from the late Japanese colonial period, Science Study(Gwahak Gongbu) from the Syllabus period, and the U.S. elementary science textbook series Discovering Our World published in the same era. It also analyzed writings on science education published in educational magazines in the late 1940s. The analysis shows that Science Study organized learning around learners’ experience and thinking by employing question- based unit structures, introductory narratives emphasizing everyday experience, illustrations that made observation and experimentation processes visible, and inquiry activities arranged in a question–experiment–summary sequence. These features can be interpreted as reflecting a progressive view of science learning that understands it not as the transmission of knowledge but as the reconstruction of experience and a process of thinking throughout the textbook’s overall structure. By demonstrating that the reception of the New Education Movement in post- liberation science education occurred at an institutional level through the curriculum and textbooks, this study offers implications for understanding the historical context in which inquiry-oriented discourse in Korean science education was formed.