Research Of Middle School Chemistry Basic Concept Learning Condition

Chemical concepts, which middle school students mainly learn, arethe foundation of the building and development of the subject ofchemistry. The understanding and mastering of chemical concepts is theessential condition to improve students' logical thinking ability. Untilnow the previous research on concept is usually about the generalstructure of it and little attention is paid to the structure of the concept ofdifferent types or different quality. The previous research in China onchemical problem solving deals relatively little with chemical conceptlearning condition. The present research applies qualitative approach andstarts with the learning property of basic concept in chemistry. Withcognitive and constructivist theories as its theoretical underpinnings, weconduct a research on the concept of electrolyte from the angle of thestructure of concept so as to find the learning conditions which arehelpful to the students' autonomous construction of the concept ofelectrolyte.The thesis explores the theoretical underpinnings of teaching andlearning basic concepts in chemistry and the difficulties that studentsmeet with when they are learning basic concepts in chemistry. And the aqualitative research on learning conditions of basic concepts in chemistrywas conducted with a particular example, which finally prove the generalexistence of learning conditions and suggest how to provide proper learning conditions to learn concepts.We pre-conducted the research in Senior Grade 1 in 2003 inChanglian Middle School. According to the results, we designed threeways of teaching the concept of electrolyte and then conducted theresearch in Senior Grade 1 in 2004 in the same school. The results of theexperiment show that the learning conditions required for students tolearn the concept of electrolyte are 1) students must have a clear pictureof all the concept that help structure the concept; 2)whether studentscan transform the concept of conduct electricity into dissociate inelectrolyte is the most difficult and key point of forming the concept; 3)the complete construction of the structure of the concept is theprerequisite of the further understanding of the concept.The findings enlighten us for our teaching and learning in manyways. First, the teacher should find out the learning property of theconcept and have a clear picture of the structure of the concept. Then theteacher learn about the students' preparation job and demand for learningand provide proper learning conditions that can satisfy the demand of thestudents. Finally the students form the new concept through autonomousknowledge construction.