| The ultimate goal of science education is improving students' scientific literacy,which includes scientific knowledge,scientific thinking,scientific inquiry skills,and social responsibility awareness.With rapid social and economic development,pre-service biology teacher education plays more and more important role in reaching this goal.Experiment is a key approach for developing scientific knowledge and skills,intelligence,scientific thinking and scientific attitude.Experiment pedagogy courses are served in most normal universities in China,but research indicated that pre-service biology teachers are not well-prepared for being qualified for experiment teaching in secondary schools due to the lack of experiment teaching,indicator system,which serves as the criteria or guidelines for cultivating pre-service biology teachers' experiment teaching capabilities.This study includes three objectives:(1)to identify the difficulties and demands during biology experiment teaching at the secondary school,so as to clarify experiment teaching competencies for pre-service biology teachers,(2)to formulate the evaluation indicator system of experiment teaching through literature review,developing indicator draft,experts and biology teachers review,and(3)to develop an effective program based on the evaluation indicator system to improve experiment teaching competencies of pre-service secondary biology teachers.The results are as follows,1.Most of the in-service biology teachers are not qualified to prepare and design experiments.Survey indicate that only 7 experiments out of 50 at the secondary biology curriculum,and 5 out of 33 at high school curriculum are chosen to teach at more than50% schools.It was found that the earlier the experiment appeared in middle school textbooks,the higher the rate of opening out.2.Constructing of "the index system of the pre-service teachers' experimental teaching ability".step 1,the indicator system framework was proposed through literature review.Step 2,the index system was initial construction through two rounds of expert consultation and argumentation.Step 3,the questionnaires were administered to both in-service and pre-service biology teachers,and the data were analyzed with AMOS structure model.At last,the indicator system was developed with 2 dimensions,6 sub-dimensions,and 17 indicators.The results showed that the evaluation indicator system was reliable and effective.Finally,the weight of each indicator was determined by expert weight assignment.Both pre-service and in-service biology teachers think experiments play vital role in cultivating students core competencies.Moreover,biology teachers are generally willing to experiments in biology class,but being incapable of teach experiments results in rare opportunities to learn biology through laboratory experiments.It is urgent to further explore the methods and ways to cultivate the experiment teaching competencies of pre-service biology teachers.3.According to teachers PCK framework and "The Indicator System of the Laboratory Teaching competencies of the Pre-service Biological Teachers",the program of Training Pre-service Biological Teachers Experiment Teaching Competencies was developed and administered with the pre-service biology teachers from Southwest University.Pre and post tests were conducted.Results show that the program could improve student teachers' experiment teaching competencies.The evaluation indicator system was used in students' self-assessment,and the results are consistent with that of the teachers.This indicates the evaluation indicator system is reliable and effective to evaluate student teachers' experiment teaching competencies.Nowadays,the biology curriculum reform is constantly Cultivating Students' the Core competences through Experiment,but most biology teachers still lack the ability of experiment preparation and experiment design.Therefore,the programs for improving the experiment teaching competencies of pre-service biology are urgently needed. |
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