A Study On Cooperative Learning To Improve The Quality Of Rural Senior High School Biology Review

Today, with the rapid development of science and technology and elaborate division of labor based on specialization,the ability to cooperate with others has become a basic skill to human’s survival and development.However, the education system in China is still primarily based on traditional teaching, which is especially true in the rural middle schools, where competitive teaching method is generally accepted, leading to ignorance of team cooperation and students’lack of cooperative consciousness and skills there.Ordinary High School Biology Curriculum Standard (experimental edition) brings up four basic theories of the new curriculum of Biology for senior students: increase students’scientific quality in Biology; be proper for all students;advocate inquiry-based learning; focus on the connection with life.To better implement and carry out these ideas, cooperative learning is one kind of teaching method which can adopted, because it emphasizes students’ emotion, stresses the process, and takes all students into account, and also because it needs students to be fully initiative and gradually cultivate their thinking on their own experience.Cooperative learning developed from America in the1970s. Although its appearance in China is a little late, it’s accumulated much experience through many educators’ exploration and practice.Despite the rapid process of China’s inquiry into the cooperative learning, it remains to be further explored in terms of senior3students’ Biology review lessons in rural middle schools. This article is based on the new curriculum standard of Biology for senior middle school students, using senior3students’first round review in rural middle schools as the breakthrough point, to issue a questionnaire and experimental research based on cooperative learning in Biology.The questionnaire includes three aspects: students’ understanding towards cooperative learning; their interest in learning Biology; their cooperative consciousness and skills.The experimental research carries out its integrated practice of cooperative learning mainly by making use of the method of contrast, with the experimental class adopting the cooperative learning of the new curriculum teaching method, while the control class employing traditional Kaiipob’s four-step teaching mode.The result of the questionnaire shows that in the investigation towards the current situation of cooperative learning,the pretest result of experimental class is52.90, posttest result is58.60; the pretest result of the controlled class is53.20, posttest result is53.85; pretest t-value is0.342, p-value is0.728; post t-value is6.314, p-value<0.01.In the investigation towards students’interest in learning Biology, the pretest result of the experimental class is52.45, posttest result is57.84, while the pretest result of the controlled class is52.93, posttest result is51.43; pretest t-value is0.488, p-value is0.621; the posttest t-value is6.158, the posttest p-value<0.01.In the investigation towards students’cooperative consciousness and skills,the pretest result of the experimental class is56.02, posttest result is61.69, while the pretest result of the controlled class is55.97, posttest result is56.31; pretest t-value is0.044, p-value is0.965; the posttest t-value is5.245, the posttest p-value<0.01.The result indicates that implementing the teaching method of cooperative learning in Biology of senior middle high school will enhance students’understanding towards cooperative learning, boost their learning interest in Biology and cultivate their cooperative learning consciousness and skills.When students experience the sense of achievement and happiness in cooperative learning, they will be more initiative in cooperating with others, seeking other ways to improve their skills. The experimental research result shows that in the pretest the scores of the students of the experimental class and the controlled class are respectively54.33and53.87, the p-value being0.840; in posttest1, the scores of the students of the experimental class and the controlled class are respectively35.81and34.57, p-value being0.548; in posttest2, the scores of the students of the experimental class and the controlled class are respectively42.66and40.47, p-value being0.271; in posttest3, the scores of the students of the experimental class and the controlled class are respectively46.07and41.77, p-value being0.072;in posttest4, the scores of the students of the experimental class and the controlled class are respectively47.98and41.55, p-value being0.0007.The result indicates that implementing the teaching method of cooperative learning in Biology teaching for senior3can improve students’Biology scores.Further compare of the discrepancy among the number of students of high and low scores discovers that the discrepancy of low scores is more obvious, which illustrates that cooperative learning has more effective and obvious effect on students with learning difficulties.Once students’ good learning attitude,method and ability are formed, it will not only increase students’scores in Biology, but also it will impel students’stress on Biology learning, leaving a virtuous circle. Therefore, with more experiment posttest carried out, the score discrepancy between the experiment and controlled class will larger and larger.There are two innovative points in the experiment research. The first is that the research object is students in rural middle school, who are different from students in urban areas, without a strong base and learning habit; the second is that this research abandons its focus on traditional cooperative learning mode, instead on the effect of cooperative learning on senior3students in their first-round review, so that the efficiency of cooperative learning can be tested and find out the cooperative learning mode which is suitable for senior3students’first-round review.