Inquiry Teaching Design Research To Promote The Transformation Of Junior Secondary School Students' Acoustic Concepts

The conception converse is a hot topic in current educational studies. But how to converse students'concepts effectively has been no easy task for science teaching and research. Preconception which is universal and persistent hinders the establishment of scientific concepts in a way. Nevertheless, teachers may consider it as one of significant teaching resources. The experimental teaching targeted at preconception is more beneficial to promote students' conception converse. This study, with grade 1 students of junior middle school as its subjects, endeavors to get insights into the students' preconception about acoustics in the approach of documentation and interview. Exploratory experiments are designed taking the advantage of the exploratory resources in acoustics in Xinhua Scientific Exploration Field, in which an integral exploratory lesson plan is executed in practice, aiming to help converse the students'wrong preconcepts about acoustics. This experiment helps to establish a scientific concept of acoustics and trigger students' interest in science exploration.The section of acoustic is not a key unit in the course of physics for junior middle school, neither is it paid sufficient attention to. However, some concepts related to acoustics have been difficult in teaching. Finding a suitable way to deal with these difficult points is particularly important to the teaching of acoustics, especially to sections related to the production and transmission of sound, which are fundamental to further study the nature of sound. Thus a better way to understand the nature of sound and other related concepts is to set up a wave model of sound.This study utilizes the approaches of documentation and interview to record students' preconcepts about sound. An integral exploratory lesson plan is designed and conducted in teaching. When the teaching is finished, a test will be given to students to get to know their conception conversion. Finally, the conversed concepts and the students'preconcpets about acoustics will be compared. Subjects of this study are 96 students in two classes of grade one in Guangxi Guilin Baoxian Junior Middle School. A comparative analysis before and after the experimental teaching is made, from which a few conclusions are arrived at as follows.Firstly, inquiry teaching helps students establish scientific concepts about sound and abandon the false preconcepts.Secondly, students undergoing exploratory teaching build a better wave model of sound, thus abandoning the original concrete model of sound.Thirdly, inquiry teaching helps create a sound class environment and encourages scientific exploration and creativity.This research also comes up with some suggestions for the acoustic teaching in junior middle school.Firstly, while teaching the chapter of The Production and Transmission of Sound, we had better choose ordinary sound phenomena in daily life as examples.Secondly, multimedia, acoustic sensors and oscilloscopes are helpful instruments for students to sense the model of sound wave directly, which provides a foundation for understanding some concepts in acoustics.Thirdly, a well-designed problem context can trigger students' interest effectively and make it helpful for students to establish connections between acoustic theories and ordinary life so as to resolve ordinary problems with theory they have learned.