This study introduces the international young physicists¡¯ tournament (IYPT), which is one of the
biggest competitions for the science gifted, and gives implications for gifted education in Korea. Thus, this
study provides a brief summary of KYPT(domestic competition) and IYPT with historical backgrounds and
shares problems of Korean gifted students with a focus on three stages: report, opposition and review. In
terms of the report, students tend to rely on theories found in the previous studies rather than to focus on
observing actual phenomena. When they face anomalous situation between theoretical and experimental data,
they are inclined to calibrate experimental data, rather than revising the hypotheses. In the opposition,
students do not put much attention to experimental results and concentrate on theoretical debates. In the
review, they do not have practical advice to solve the fallacies of the given reports even though they provide
many parameters influencing the results of the research. Such problems may be linked to insufficient learning
opportunities about empiricism and evidence-based reasoning, and thus this study suggests several ways to
solve these problems.
