Preliminary Study On The Laboratory Experiences In High Schools Of The U.S.A

The era is progressing and many nations have carried on kinds of educational reforms with full force. In the whole world, it has been the trend and common sense that the schools should put their educational ultimate aims on cultivating the young generation of action with great creativity who are armed with scientific literacy, are able to take participation with social competition and are good at solving the actual problems. Meanwhile, Laboratory experiences, which is seemed as one important way of science education in the U.S.A, has gradually revealed its function and become the indispensable part of high school's science education since their curricula and teaching reforms carried in 1970s. It is the experience of laboratory experiences in high schools of the U.S.A that boasts great referential value for China's middle schools' science laboratory teaching.The history of laboratory experiences in America's high schools could be dated back to mid-19th century when they began to copy and explore other nations' model (Germany as the example) and colleges or universities (Harvard as the example). In post-war time, due to the changed view to the nature of science in America's scientific and educational circle, the importance of scientific inquiry and laboratory experiences' being confirmed, the whole country set up an upsurge of learning and utilizing science in response to science and technology competition among the world. Since 1970s, series of educational reforms carried in the U.S.A have focused on making innovations, carrying out and developing high schools' science teaching materials and laboratory experiences.Currently, the basic model of laboratory experiences in the U.S.A has established. The major points includes the following aspects: engaging with the laboratory experiences just common to teachers, schools, school districts and local government and so on; aiming for processing of students' scientific inquiry; permeating STS education the experiences; using modern media technology as supplementary way of teaching. Influenced by the experiences, every state and school begins with construction of facilities and instrument, training of teachers in-service and engaging students with creativities in succession, with a result, high school students' scientific literacy was developed greatly and students' interest in learning science was improved notably.In the light of the experiences of laboratory experiences in the U.S.A, the current laboratory experiences reform in China should change the traditional viewpoint of science education, enforce laboratory experiences to improve students' scientific literacy, make students' scientific inquiry workable, make the process of laboratory experiences concrete as possible and make further improvement on the quality of teachers as well.