A Primary Study On The Conjecture And Hypothesis Thinking Activity Of The Middle School Students

Proposing conjectures and hypothesis is not only the core link of science inquiry, but also the students'first step of self-judgment in understanding things (phenomena) and the most dynamic stage of making students'thinking dispersive. For improving the science inquiry-oriented teaching & learning, it's very important to understand how the students conduct their conjecture and hypothesis, what factors affect the students'conjecture and hypothesis and what the major difficulties students have when conducting conjecture and hypothesis. Therefore, as for developing students'thinking ability, improving Physics teaching in middle school and pushing forward the compulsory educational reform, it's of great significance to study on the conjecture and hypothesis thinking activity of middle school students. Generally, students conduct their conjecture and hypothesis according to the knowledge they have already known. In order to show the true situation of conjecture and hypothesis thinking activity of middle school students when they are doing scientific activities, this study takes the physics subject as the background, the students of grade 3, junior middle school and grade 2, senior middle school as research subjects. We use a well-knitted questionnaire and clinic interviews which is combined with two true question situation to examine the students who are selected from 4 middle schools in Dongkou County of Hunan Province, the study has a comprehensive and detailed first-hand materials. The results of thorough analysis and research on the information from the above mentioned interview show as the following.(1)the middle school students conduct their conjecture and hypothesis by strategies as analogy, observation and experiment, intuition and imagination, reasoning, deduction and induction, among which, the first 3 are most frequently adopted. And many students use different thinking strategies to propose conjecture and hypothesis on the same question.(2)Generally, there is no obvious difference between grade 3 of junior middle school and grade 2 of senior middle school in proposing conjecture and hypothesis, especially on the depth and quality of conjectures and hypothesis, while the former propose more conjectures and hypothesis and prefer to imaginal thinking, the latter are better in understanding the essence of the questions.(3)There are no obvious difference between boys and girls, especially on the depth and quality of conjectures and hypothesis, while the boys propose more conjectures and hypothesis and are braver to inquire the questions. (4)Students of ordinary middle schools do as good as those from key middle schools and some of them even do better. Students'scores of physics tests affects the quality and quantity of their conjecture and hypothesis, those have got high scores propose better conjecture and hypothesis. (5)In the true question situation, most students can improve their conjectures and hypothesis by "conjecture and retort". Through experiment, observation and inquiry, they can propose conjectures and hypothesis from different angels, they even can query their own conjectures and hypothesis, give up the unreasonable ones, and propose more reasonable ones by revision and supplementation.(6)The conjectures and hypothesis proposed by middle school students are superficial, unilateral and ambiguous.(7)Middle school students'conjectures and hypothesis are affected by former impression, false understanding, improper analogy and knowledge structure, and unawareness of hidden factors and lack of dispersive thinking. In short, through investigation and research, we find out that the level of middle school students'conjecture and hypothesis are to be improved by teaching. This paper is a primary study on middle school students'conjecture and hypothesis thinking activity on basis of pedagogy, psychology and theory of modern physics pedagogy. With the author's teaching experience, the paper proposes some pieces of teaching advice, providing reference to cultivate and improve students'ability of conjecture and hypothesis in middle school physics teaching.