The Study Of Scientific Conception Learning

Middle school students always memorize concepts definition in the process of learningscience, and can not solve problems of daily life. These learning difficulties can be solved byExplanation-Driven Inquiry. Explanation-Driven Inquiry is proposed based on a series ofresearches from the areas of scientific education, cognitive neuroscience and psychology oflearning. Researches of scientific education advocated integration the core concept and practicethat construct explanation to things and events. The results of cognitive neuroscience studiesshowed special reasoning mode in conception acquisition is hypothetical-deductive reasoningwhich is the essence of science concept learning. Explanation-Driven Inquiry provides thecorresponding activities for the special reasoning. Researches of psychology of learningemphasized the effective strategies of science concept learning, Explanation-Driven Inquiry isproposed as an effective learning strategy of scientific concept learning.This study summarized the researchers’ understanding of science concepts and conceptslearning in the light of psychology and logic view by literature review. On the one hand, thisstudy illustrated the connotation of scientific concepts. Some psychologists thought scientificconcepts is the entities in the minds of students, belonging to the defined concepts, with thestructure of performance for the fusion of experience and standard attribute schema, helpingstudents reason by the hypothetical-deductive inference. Some logicians illustrated that scientificconcepts is an important part of the objective scientific knowledge, which is an importantfoundation of scientific theory, and a knowledge system explaining the of natural phenomena,help scientists do scientific inquiry. The meaning of scientific concepts is illustrated by thinkingprocess and thinking content in light of Popper’s "Three Worlds" notions. The study pointed outthat the scientific concept is mainly in science curriculum in the textbook that has a precisedefinition. On the other hand, this paper analyzed the essence of scientific concept learning andscientific concept learning ways by review key studies of science education in the recent twentyyears. There are mainly three kinds of views of the essence of learning scientific conceptsrespectively: knowledge structure establishment, the process of conceptual change and changesof reasoning process. Researchers believed that scientific concepts can be obtained through thedefinition of learning scientific concepts in the way of conceptual assimilation, but also canformulated through the inquiry in the form of concept formation.More and more researcheragreed that the essence of learning scientific concept is reasoning change in explanation objectsand events, and advocated scientific inquiry approach to learning science conception learning.Therefore, this paper put forward the main purpose that explore the effects of Explanation-Driven Inquiry on students learning scientific concept in middle school classroom. This researchinvolves three important questions, first of all, what is Explanation-Driven Inquiry. Sceond, ifthe Explanation-Driven Inquiry can promote scientific understanding of the concept. Third, howExplanation-Driven Inquiry promote science conception learning. These three questions areanswered by the methods of theoretical analyses, quasi-experiment and phenomenography. Firstly, this paper introduced the connotation of Explanation-Driven Inquiry throughtheoretical analysis. As a special pattern of inquiry, Explanation-Driven Inquiry is a learningstrategy of scientific concept learning. Explanation-Driven Inquiry aims at establish the causalrelationship in a core practice of constructing explanation which drive student do other inquiryactivities. Students do Explanation-Driven Inquiry is the process of application hypothesis-deductive reasoning, and understanding of scientific concepts in the framework of theory. Inaddition, summarizes five kinds of models to explanation, and constructed a model that explainhow the Explanation-Driven Inquiry promoted scientific concept learning. Some teachingstrategies of inquiry learning proposed that students’ participation in Explanation-Driven Inquiryactivities include three basic components: hypothesis, the collection of evidence and theconclusion.These three segments are all linked to scientific concept learning,Secondly, an effective measurement tool is developed to measure the students conceptunderstanding level in order to know if Explanation-Driven Inquiry has positive effect onstudents concept learning. The electrolyte concept inventory has good psychometric indexesafter two rounds of survey, thus can be used after teaching practice.Thirdly, carried out teaching practice combined with the method of quasi-experimental andphenomenography. The experimental group (N=61) and control group (N=58) are set accordingto the quasi-experimental research. Students in the experimental group adopted to Explanation-Driven Inquiry learned two concepts of electrolyte and oxidation reduction reaction, as thestudents in the control group with normal school teaching. After the end of the study,studentsboth in experimental and control group are assessing by electrolyte concept inventory andoxidation reduction concept inventory. The results showed that the understanding ofelectrolyte and reduction reaction of experimental group students are both higher than studentsin control group. According to the method of phenomenography, eight students of differentlearning levels are selected from the experimental group. These students explain how theyleaning scientific concepts using Explanation-Driven Inquiry and scientific conceptunderstanding by the interview. The result indicated that low level students are used to establisha simple connection between the name of science concepts and examples using word association,the intermediate level students learning through the specific thinking between existingknowledge and new information to establish contact with the knowledge connection, and highlevels of learning to use abstract thinking in essence between different information, grasp thenature of concept. At the same time draw the overview interpretation of students’ scientificconcept understanding progress step by step, providing a reference for teachers to understandstudents’ learning of scientific concepts.Finally, this study reached the following conclusions: one is Explanation-Driven Inquirycan promote science concept learning, another is four kinds of ways of conceptual understandingin the Explanation-Driven Inquiry, which are word association, knowledge connection,conceptual abstract and conceptual transfer.Some suggestions on scientific concept teaching andinquiry teaching is given, and put forward research prospect.