Study On The Effect Of Combining Lecture, Experiment And Cooperative Learning For Students Conceptual Change

Conceptual change is an important field in science learning and teaching. It is shown that the effect of combining several instruction strategies is better than that of single instruction strategy for conceptual change, especially when several strategies such as lecture, experiment, teacher-led discussion, nonrefutational text, and audiovisuals are included. This study is to test for conceptual change, whether the effect of combining lecture, experiment and cooperative learning is better than that of only combining experiment and lecture. Moreover, in order to discover the process and mechanism of cooperative learning for conceptual change, the conversations videotaped in cooperative learning were also analyzed. The results have shown:1. As a whole, the performance of the students in experiment class is better than that of students in control class on both near-transfer and far-transfer problems.And there is significant performance difference between the nonunderstanding group in experiment condition and the understanding group in the control condition.Therefore, for conceptual change of students, the effect of combining lecture, experiment and cooperative learning is better than that of only combining experiment and lecture.2. On near-transfer problems, there is no significant performance difference in the groups of average students and below-average students respectfully in experiment and control conditions. However, for above-average students, the performance of the students in experiment condition is better. On far-transfer problems, there is no significant performance difference in the groups of average and below-average students respectfully in experiment and control conditions. However, for above-average students, the performance of the students in experiment condition is better. Therefore, for conceptual change, combining lecture, experiment and cooperative learning is more effective for above-average students than average and below-average students.3. Dialogues produced in the cooperative learning can be divided into four categories, that is, explaining, questioning, supplying help and asking for help. They happened throughout the process of cooperative learning. In the process of cooperative learning, students can discover more misconceptions of their own and correct them more effectively, which lead to a result that for conceptual change of students, the effect of combining lecture, experiment and cooperative learning is better than that of only combining experiment and lecture.4. The dialogues of explaining, questioning, supplying help, which are proposed...