Empirical Research On Scientific Thinking Training

The era of knowledge economy calls for people with creative spirits, which makes new requirements to school education. As an important component, science education, in addition to imparting knowledge and skills, also needs to adapt to the times and consider cultivate students'scientific thinking. On the basis of analysis of scientific thinking, tracing the transition of the goal of cultivating scientific thinking, this study combines psychology, learning science, science education and other related research results to develop an interdisciplinary research. It set up science curriculum with scientific thinking as the core aim and built MBD teaching model based on the knowledge of physiology and psychology related scientific thinking. It carried out empirical study about the learning of modeling construction in science classroom to facilitate the 6th grade students'scientific thinking.This dissertation has eight chapters, which is divided into two parts, theoretic discussion and empirical research.In the first chapter, the author defined the key concepts, such as thinking and scientific thinking, discussed the relationship with other concepts. So this chapter solved the first question that what scientific thinking is. It is the definition and summary of the concepts for the entire dissertation."Why should the students' scientific thinking be cultured?' is the second question which was answered in the second chapter. The author reviewed the history of formal education and material education, analyzed the changes in science education aims, and construted a system of science curriculum objectives with the scientific thinking as its core.Chapter three was drivened by the argument that whether scientific thinking could be cultured. This dissertation stood the point that scientific thinking chould be cultured by proper method because its development had the physiological bases and psychological adaptability based on the study in physiology and psychology.Chapter four turned to the empirical investigation of the dissertation. The theoretical framework, which referred to completing the students'mental causal model, targeting the students'development in knowledge, skills and value, and basing on the students'physiological and psychological condition, was summarized in the first lesson. Then this chapter designed the whole process of the empirical investigation, which contained the subject, variables, contents, learning process, and evaluation. Around 180 students of grade 6 in Shanghai attended the empirical study, and half of them used the MBD teaching model during their 7-lesson study about the particle model of matter. Test, interview, classroom observation and embedded observation were used as the measurement tool.Chapter five constructed the MBD teaching model, which consists of four steps. The first step is studying phenomenon, the second step is constructing model, the third step is using model, and the last step is returning phenomenon. Each step corresponds student activity and teacher activity.Chapter six focused on the development of the test. The author designed pre-test and post-test based on the Rasch model and Wiloson' "Four Building Blocks". This two tests were analyzed by the software Bond & Fox Steps. The results indicated that these two tests were in high quality.All the data were analyzed and discussed in chapter seven and chapter eight. Chapter seven focused on the discussion of the content of the students'scientific thinking. The results proclaimed that MBD teaching model could promote students" understanding of the particle model of matter, female students could get more benefit from MBD teaching model than male students, and the students in high level had more progress. Meanwhile, the experiment group has progression in modeling and explaination. However, all the students were inclined to ignore the unimportant variables of the system.Chapter eight analyzed the experiment group students' process of scientific thinking. The author compared interview results of the students from different level, which indicated that top learners were much better than poor students in their performance.Based on the work in theoretical and empirical study, the author summarized the conclusion and gave the reflection in the last part.