High-level Scientific Thinking Of Elementary School Students

Science higher order thinking(SHOT)is an important goal of science education,a key component of science discipline key competence,and a hot topic of science education research.SHOT is based on science knowledge and domain-specific which means psychological characteristics of critical thinking and creative thinking are successfully applied to the high-level cognitive process in scientific inquiry and scientific learning.Right now,the structure of SHOT is not operable and mainly represented by hierarchy,lack of reflecting the core of higher order thinking and cannot guide scientific teaching;the assessment of SHOT mostly focuses on a certain type of scientific knowledge based higher order thinking(Such as science critical thinking),lack of integrated evaluation of higher order thinking as an independent system;the cultivation of SHOT still adopts general teaching mode,method and strategy,lack of establishing a teaching model that reflects the essence of higher order thinking and highlights the characteristics of science disciplines.In order to make up shortage of the research aforementioned,this study have established a SHOT structure model based on definition of the core structure of higher order thinking.And based on SHOT structure model,elementary school student’s SHOT have been evaluated systematically,primary science teaching mode of is constructed effectively.The research mainly includes three parts:Part one,establishment of SHOT structure model.Firstly,Discussing from theory and found that the core structure of higher order thinking was creative thinking and critical thinking,so factor analysis was used to analyze the factors of the international higher order thinking scale or questionnaire,and the result verified the rationality of theoretical analysis.Secondly,through exploring the relationship between SHOT and scientific knowledge and scientific inquiry,SHOT structure model was established.The model’s dimension one is the core structure of higher order thinking,namely creative thinking and critical thinking,dimension two is science thinking performance,namely problem finding,project design,evidence collecting,information interpretation,object application,product improvement,and reflective assessment,dimension three is four major content areas of science curriculum.Three dimensions constitute a three-dimensional structure model which reflecting SHOT is a systematic structure.This model provides a theoretical basis for the development of the evaluation tool and the construction of the teaching model.Part two,assessment of elementary school students’SHOT.Firstly,according to SHOT structure model,the X,Y and Z axes of the model are decomposed and combined to guide the exploitation of scientific high-order thinking items.Secondly,combining some items to form tool of elementary school students SHOT test.Thirdly,Rasch Model is used to’verify the reliability and validity of the evaluation tool through two rounds of revision,and finally a good evaluation tool is formed.Fourthly,264 primary school students were surveyed using a formal version of the evaluation tool.Using SPSS 22 and Winsteps 3.72.3 to analyze the data,the results showed that(1)primary school students’ SHOT can be divided into four levels,SHOT is gradually improved from level 0 to level;(2)the proportion of students with high level of SHOT is gradually increased from junior grade to senior grade,difference of SHOT between junior grade and middle grade students is not significant,but SHOT of junior grade students is better than junior grade and middle grade students;(3)at high level,girls’ SHOT is better boys,but at high grade,boys’ SHOT is better girls.Part three,cultivation of elementary school students’SHOT.Three science teaching modes are established,including science concept teaching,science inquiry teaching and science problem solving teaching.Combined with the content of science courses,the experimental class and the control class of grade 5 were selected to carry out the quasi-experimental study for one academic year in the experimental school(September 2017 to June 2018).Research shows that(1)students’ SHOT in the experimental class showed an obvious upward trend with latent growth curve model(LGM)Analysis which reflected that teaching intervention had significantly increased SHOT in one academic year;(2)Students in the experimental class had higher SHOT than the control class,and the difference was significant.In this study,SHOT structure model,evaluation tools,teaching and higher order thinking differences were discussed comprehensively,and research summary was made from higher order thinking core components,domain specific assessment,and cultivation.