A Primary Study On The Problems Posed By Middle School Students In Inquiring Activities With Science Experiments

Scientific inquiry refers to the many different ways by which the scientists study the nature and propose explanations based on evidence obtained through this study. Scientific inquiry also refers to the various activities through which students acquire knowledge and understand scientific ideas and understand the method used to study the natural world by scientists. Scientific inquiry is not only an important way of teaching,but also the studying content for students.Science begins with problems, scientific inquiry exactly around the problems tightly to begin and gradually go on in depth.This study,using analysis of the structure of problem from Wang xisheng for reference,divide problem posed by middle school students into three basic elements.namely,point of the problem,obscurity of the problem and answer field of the problem.Meanwhile,presupposition of the scientific problems mainly loaded on top of elements of the point of the problem and answer field of the problem,which include presupposition of the point and presupposition of the answer field.The content of this study include:(1) Text representation analysis of the problem posed by students.(2) Quantitative analysis of the problem posed by students.(3) Analyze the point to the problem posed by students.(4)Analyze the reason for error presupposition of the point and influence on Problem-solving.(5)Analyze the impact of answer field and presupposition of answer field on Problem-solving.This study,based on previous studies,Longchang County,Sichuan Province VII School 40 ninth-grade students for the test,using"the magic slope"designed by the RISE faculties at Guangxi Normal University as a experimental task , adopting the methods of students participating in inquiring activities with science experiments and clinical interview,learning results of research on "scientific problems" in philosophy of science,from the perspective of the problem structure, do research into problems posed by middle school students in the inquiring activities with science experiments from two aspects of quality and quantity,and lay certain theoretical and practical basis for the research on student's ability of posing problems and even scientific inquiry.we obtained the following conclusions:1.In the inquiring activities with science experiments,the students′text representation of the problem were found to be weak in the following three aspects:(1) Inaccurate terms.(2) Ambiguous semantic representation.(3)Students can not accurately characterize the law hidden in the inquiring activities.2.In the inquiring activities with science experiments,40 students posed a total of 190 problems.Boys posed 97 problems,accounting for the total problem 51.1℅,with an average of 5.11 problems posed.Girls posed 93 problems,accounting for the total problem 48.9℅,with an average of 4.43 problems posed.In terms of the quantity,the average number of problems posed by boys slightly more than the average number of problems posed by girls.The number of the problems posed by students is up to 10,at least 1,and the average number of problems is 4.75;There are 30 students who posed problems 3 to 6,which accounting for the total students 75℅,this indicates that the majority of the number of students posed problems 3 to 6.In the inquiring activities with science experiments,Pearson Correlation Sig.(2-tailed) between the number of problems posed by 40 students and their physics academic achievement is -0.042(p=0.79>0.05),it shows there is no significant correlation between them.3.Among the 190 problems posed by students,the points of the problems which frequency are greater than or equal to 3 have 11 species.It shows that students think positively and dare to explore in the inquiring activities with science experiments.The"Problem point two"point to"the relationship between deflection phenomenon and the magnet,the magnetic field,magnetic or geomagnetic field etc",and we think that this point to the heart of the matter of the experimental inquiry. Among the 190 problems,the frequency of"problem point two"is 22, accounting for the total number of the problems 11.6℅;Among the 22 problems which belong to"problem point two",problem-posing frequency of boys is 17,accounting for 77.3℅,problem-posing frequency of girls is 5,accounting for 22.7℅,problem-posing frequency of boys is significantly more than problem-posing frequency of girls.4.Among 190 problems posed by 40 ninth-grade students,25 presuppositions of point are wrong,accounting for 13.2% of the total number of the problems.Among the 25 wrong presuppositions of point,12 wrong presuppositions of point posed by boys,accounting for 48℅,and 13 wrong presuppositions of point posed by girls,accounting for 52℅.We can divide the wrong presuppositions of point of the problem posed by students into 16 types.Students posing 25 wrong presuppositions of point of the problem,mainly in the following three reasons:(1)In the inquiring activities with science experiments,students not actively looked for evidence to support or refute their hypothesis after having proposed a hypothesis.Students proposed hypothesis hurriedly which can only be regarded as a random guess,and are not aware of that evidence is very important in scientific inquiry.Among 25 wrong presuppositions of point,18 are in this category,accounting for 72%.(2)When new phenomenon come into collision with original hypothesis (View or conclusion),students not amend or refute the original hypothesis(View or conclusion) according to new phenomenon,just feeling very confused.Among 25 wrong presuppositions of point,3 are in this category,accounting for 12%.(3) Students′knowledge errors.Among 25 wrong presuppositions of point,4 are in this category,accounting for 16%.5.Based on the analysis of presupposition of the answer field,we further confirmed Zhang hongxia'view namely:closed scientific problems often be posed after the open problems,problem posed by student often contains a hypothesis,and it will further stimulate student to pose more problems.Finally, from the reflection of the study, based on the conclusions of this study,some referenced opinions was presented for scientific inquiry teaching in this paper.