A Study On The Microscale Laboratory In Scientific Inquiry

Nowadays in the tide of international science curriculum reformation, scientific inquiry is the hottest topic. Every country puts it in the core position of curriculum and emphasizes that scientific inquiry is the key to science learning. Scientific inquiry is stressed to be the important goal of curriculum as well as the major contents of curriculum. Chemistry education is a significant part of science education. The basic goal of chemistry curriculum is to improve students' science literacy, while the key to realize it is to carry out the activities of scientific inquiry positively. The characteristic of chemistry, which is "on the base of experiment", determines that chemical experiment is the base of scientific inquiry, and is an important form of inquiry. It play a major role that other methods cannot be beyond to fulfill the aim of improving students' science literacy. The new curriculum of chemistry underlines that students are required to themselves do the experiment, inquire the course of knowledge and understand the chemistry. However, the investigation shows that teachers in the middle schools of our country are still playing an extremely dominating part. The phenomenon that teachers demonstrate the experiment and students listen to and recite it is very serious particularly in the schools of the developing areas, which is due to for the most part the shortage of experimental resources. The initiative of students is limited in the situation of chemistry experimental teaching based on demonstration (or instruction) as major methods, and the certain part of students even choose to give up participating actively the process of experimental teaching. Obviously, one of the important factors that restricts to implement the new curriculum of chemistry on the occasion of new curriculum is the shortage of experimental resources and backward of experimental conditions. It is urgent to deal with the realistic problem.Mcroscale laboratory is a new method and technology which has developed rapidly for over two decades, and is a fresh measure advocating the idea of Green Chemistry recognized in the field of international chemical laboratory with its extraordinary advantages, sound teaching functions and teaching effects. It possesses many characteristics, for example, it can economize reagents and save time, and it also can be operated and carried easily and conveniently with low cost, safety and environmental protection, while its most conspicuous characteristic is to make everyone practice it. Therefore, on the current occasions, microscale laboratory may make up to some extent the shortage of resources about chemical laboratory in middle schools and the limitations of macroscle laboratory in terms of carrying out students' practical laboratory. And it provides powerful support for middle schools to implement scientific inquiry. But the problem is how to use microscle apparatus and relevant operating way of micro laboratory for carrying out the activities of scientific inquiry during the concrete practice on chemistry teaching. Thus, we do the researches of microscle laboratory in scientific inquiry under my supervisor's suggestion. According to the researches on scientific inquiry and the related theories of microscle laboratory, we suggest some ways for topic choosing, and design the inquiry principles and some conducted forms. We also propose some ways for the implementation of scientific inquiry program based on microscale laboratory and carry out an experiment in a Grade One class in Guilin No.1 Middle School. In this program, activities are based on the content of senior chemistry textbook, which mainly refers to Chapter Two and Chapter Four in Grade One textbook. In the teaching of chemistry, we carry out some scientific inquiry based on microscale laboratory in the following three ways: letting students themselves do experiment in the chemistry lesson with teacher's instruction; organizing after-class activities on scientific inquiry with certain topics and assigning homework on scientific inqui...