Investigation And Analysis Of The Difficulties Of High School Students' Chemistry Experiment Problem Solving

On the basis of cognitive psychology theory, this empirical study has examined the difficulties of high school students'chemistry experiment problem solving. Students from both grade 11 and grade 12 are tested in this study. First, we have detected problems and difference of high school students in solving chemistry experiment problems. Then we try to make students'difficulties and their reasons clear. We believe it will help chemistry teachers to make their experiment lessons rich and well-designed, choose effective teaching strategies during chemistry experiment instructions. It will also be helpful for students to construct knowledge and improve their abilities in solving chemistry problems.We have developed two questionnaires for this study as tools:1. Using the questionnaire《Chemistry basic operations and quantitative experiments testing task》, we have tested students from grade 11and 12 to define the types of difficulties students may have in chemistry experiment problem solving.2. Using the questionnaire《Chemistry comprehensive experiment problems testing task》, we have tested students in grade 12 to find their difficulties in chemistry experiment problem solving.There are totally 157 students as a sample in this study, including 98 students from grade 11and 59 students from grade 12. Students from each grade are divided into three groups according to their chemistry achievement.Findings of this study include:1. Knowledge difficulty is the main reason of these difficulties.2. The complexity of problem influences students'chemistry experiment problem solving.3. Problem context familiar or not and the way information represented also influence problems solving.4. The ability of finding implied information in problems is another influence factor.Based on the findings, we would like to give some suggestions for chemistry experiment teaching:1. Make the knowledge well sequenced to get good cognitive structure.2. Use effective excises and give students appropriate clues during their solving process.3. Improve teaching approach and give students more hands-on opportunities. We believe these suggestions will be helpful to improve students'ability in chemistry experiment problem solving.