An Action Research Into Research Study In Senior Middle School Chemistry Instruction

The present study is carried out as an.action research, which is widely used in social sciences study recent years. The subjects are 3 classes and their chemistry teacher of a certain senior middle school of Gansu Province, China. The subject and researcher vary throughout the whole research either as an "insider" or "outsider".The data involved in the action research was collected by means of interview, questionnaire and material object from January, 2000 to June, 2003.Two trains of thought were adopted in the present study. One is centered on the description of the teacher as the researcher, which is about how to find out the problems and then how to solve them during the course of action research, and also, about how to reflect on their teaching. Face-to-face interview and questionnaire are applied. The other is focused on the teacher as the participant lector. By communicating with the subject students, the teacher formed her ideas of "factors affected students' growth", "students' view of cooperation", "problems from students' view". The teacher started to reflect the problems occurred in the research study. All this aims to facilitate then the change of the teacher's behavior as well as that of the students' learning approach.The process of this study involved 4 case studies.Case1 Use questionnaire and interview methods to describe the phenomena. This can turn the teacher's attention of "knowledge" to the students themselves, and later, to the influence of students' former personal experience and background on their "active participants" during the research study.Case2 According to the analysis of questionnaire and interview, the researcher analyzes the students' response and differences in the research study as a result of their different experiences and background. This case study may attract the teacher attention on "positive inter dependence " and "individual accountability in group learning".Case3 Through the analysis after interview and questionnaire, the teacher turned to realize the nature of the "problems" in the research study. Resulting from the students' different views on "problems" the teacher pays more attention to how to activate student's "intrinsic motivation" and "intuition thinking ".Case 4 According to the description of questionnaire, the students are class- filedand analyzed. The teacher's review and criticism reflection on research study are later proposed. Through interview, the students' view towards the role of their teacher and evaluating exam in the process of research study was narrated. A further analysis was performed by the researcher.The practical significance of this study lies in the 4 cases above, which will provide the senior middle school teachers some help for their application of research study. The theoretical significance is to advocate the idea that research study should be done as a dialogue between teachers and students, not just for developing a curriculum.