A Research On Fostering Students' Meta-modeling Knowledge In Senior Middle School Biology Study

Meta-modeling knowledge is a kind of knowledge about modeling,including people's understanding of the nature, utility, and evaluation of models, their understanding of the process of modeling, and how this understanding is used in their reasoning or conceptual change with models.Integrate with meta-modeling knowledge in teaching can promote students'understanding of nature of science,nature and purpose of modeling, nature , purpose ,utility , and application of models.But, students should possess prior knowledge about models and modeling before the model-based teaching and learning.Then, students can get a meaningful learning, they can actively engage in the study with the using of models and modeling, they can experience the process of how the knowledge genarated and understand the nature of science, at the same time they can mater the methods of science and improve their inquiry ability and creative thinking; at the same time, fostering students'meta-modeling knowledge accord with curriculum revolution's claim.In this article, we just focus on how to foster students'meta-modeling knowledge by biology teaching in middle school.In this article, we know the senior middle school students'meta-modeling knowledge by data studies, questionnaire method and experimental method, with the statisticing and analysing of the questionnaire,we get that:( 1 )the senior middle school students'meta-modeling knowledge are in a low level, students'understanding of models and modeling are blurred;(2) in their opinions,models constructed by scientists are true and never change; (3 )they don't know how important the models are, they hardly use models and modeling in their studies. According to those, we foter students'meta-modeling knowledge with history of the life science, concept map,cooperative learning in biology teaching, and we found that: (1)Combine history of the life science and modeling with explicit instruction and suggestive teaching can improve students'understanding of the nature of models and modeling effectively.(2) Think tools would be helpful to foster students'meta-modeling knowledge, the students also can use them to express, integrate and re-construct knowledge.,thus,they can master thinking and methods for science ,and they can construct some abstract models gradually.(3) Critical thinking and dialetical thinking are important for students'to understand that models are used to explain and predict things, and models will change with science's development. These provide guidance for teachers'teaching in senior middle school: we can improve students'understanding of models and modeling by foster their meta-modeling knowledge; we can prepare the students for modeling ahead; we can provide new ideas for curriculum revolution in middle school biology study.