A Primary Study On Students Coordinate Theory And Evidence In Science Learning

A considerable amount of research has shown that before students receive formal science education, they have all kinds of concepts to explain natural phenomena. Those ideas will have a great effect on learning scientific conceptions. Therefore, how to improve conceptual change from the pre-conceptions to scientific conceptions has been an important problem in educational psychology. The study about students how to coordinate existing theory and new evidence in the process of conceptual change can help the teachers create the context for students to conceptual change with pertinence, train students'scientific thinking, and improve students'science literacy. With the method of clinic interview, the study test 106 students in total coming from Grade 5 and 6, Grade 7 and 8 and Grade 9 in the context of"visual formation". It attempts to find out the ways,age-related trends and the impact of counterexamples, prediction and explanation in the process of the coordination of theory and evidence.The test is divided into three stages: the stage of selecting a theory; the stage of using those explanations to generate a prediction about phenomena and the stage of explaining phenomena and evaluating theories.It discovered that the ways in which the students related explanations (theories) and evidence were consistent with evidence, inconsistent use with the evidence, knowledge of behavior of phenomena, knowledge of explanation for the behavior of visual formation and other responses. In the process of coordinating theory and evidence, most participants can distinguish between theory and evidence. In general, with the increase of age, the number of participants who consistently used of evidence increased significantly, the number of participants who inconsistently used of evidence, knowledge of behavior of phenomena, and other responses all decreased, there was a significant increase trend in Grade 9 based on knowledge of the explanation for the behavior of visual formation, because the participants of Grade 9 have learnt the knowledge of the study. With the age grow, the students'ability to consistently coordinate theory and evidence improved.In the stage of explaining phenomena and evaluating theories, there were 52 students who correctly explained the experimental phenomena through two ways: one way was through knowledge of explanation of visual formation; the other way was through the consistent use of theory and evidence. There were 8 participants of Grade 9 who correctly explained the phenomena, accounting for 15.4% of the participants who correctly explained phenomena. There were 44 participants correctly interpreted the experimental phenomena by the way of consistent use of evidence, accounting for 84.6% of the participants who correctly explained phenomena. Comparing the percentages, it concluded that it was helpful to train the students'ability of consistent use of evidence for changing from preconception to scientific conception, and changing the current ineffective status of concepts teaching.When there is partly or completely different between the phenomena of the experiments and the prediction, it was regarded as meeting counterexamples. In the processing of task, upon encountering counterexamples, the participants had seven possible responses: ignoring the counterexample, rejecting the counterexample, excluding the counterexample, holding the counterexample in abeyance, reinterpreting the counterexample, accepting the counterexample and making peripheral theory changes and changing the theory. However, only a response of them results in the students changing the existing theory. In this study, 65.1% of the participants encountered counterexamples, and 34.9% of them did not counterexamples. Among the participants who encountered counterexample, 56.5% of them correctly interpreted the experimental phenomena, 43.5% of them did not correctly interpret. Among the participants without encountering counterexamples, only 17.2% of them correctly interpreted the experimental phenomena, 82.8% of them did not correctly interpret. With the Chi-square test of the frequency, it showed that the test P value was 0.000, far below 0.01. Therefore, it concluded that the appearance of counterexample had significantly promoted students to establish a scientific concept.Qualitative analysis of the counterexample of has a positive impact on students'correct interpretation. In general, the positive impact is as following: comparing with the participants without counterexample, first of all, the participants who encountered counterexample commonly spent more time on observing the experimental phenomena; secondly, they had a more active reflection on the existing theory, thirdly, they was more likely to change the existing choice to reconcile theory and evidence.In the face of the counterexample, changing theory was an effective way of the coordination of theory and evidence, but other six responses had an active influence on building up scientific concepts, therefore, teachers should look on them impartially. Prediction and explanation also promoted an interaction between theory and evidence.Finally, this thesis reviewed other aspects such as tools, program design and data analysis of the study etc., and according to the result of this research, it offered some reference suggestions to the study and teaching of science education.