The Preliminary Study On Senior High School Students' Scientific Explanation And Its Background

The so-called scientific explanation is a logical explanation with internal consistency that comprises current scientific knowledge and new evidences gained from observation, tests or models.Scientific explanation is the core of scientific career. To improve scientific explanation is an important goal of scientific education, but researches have shown that in real life, students' overall interpreting ability is not good enough. Especially when students face with authentic situations, students'explanations are usually based on their own assumptions and imagination, which are not proved and even are lack of scientific logic relationship. It is an important research topic of scientific education to study on scientific explanation ability. Especially, studying on students how to explain in real situations, what is the situation of students' scientific explanations level, and influencing factors of students' scientific explanation. It is a great significance for carrying out effective Inquiry activities, cultivating students' science inquisition ability, and improving students' scientific literacy to study on how to explain in real situations, how is the situation of students' scientific explanations level and influencing factors of students' scientific explanation.This research uses three similar scientific activity as a tool,such as primarily "peeing doll", examines 42 high school first grade students in total with interview method, trying to understand the students' scientific explanation skill levels in scientific inquiry activities which include studying the way they conduct scientific activities and the level of their techniques, cognitive beliefs, knowledge background, experience, gender, and the influence caused by difference between art students and physical students.This study's interpreting level applies evaluation indexes in accord with KatherineL.McNeill, JosephKrajcik's evaluation questionnaire to evaluate students' scientific explanation. The evaluation framework of students' scientific explanation is divided into three sections:statement, evidence and logic. They created a new scientific explanation evaluation questionnaire on the base of previous research achievements. According to PISA, students' scientific explanation ability can be classified into three levels:high, middle, low. Each level can be subdivided to study the subtle distinctions of students' scientific explanation level.In order to detect the reliability of the research tools, This study through two aspects with the consistency of the students' knowledge and the consistency of the interpreting level analyzes the research tools are consistent. This paper discovers that 33 students in these three activities of the explanation in the knowledge aspect present consistency, more than half of the number of overall test, which accounts for the number by 78.5%; 9 students present inconsistencies, which occupies 24.1 percent of the number of total students:It can be concluded that the three activities present consistency in knowledge. Meanwhile, researchers use SPSS statistical measurement of edition 13.0 to measure multiple samples of three groups of variance by comparing interpreting level. Owing to the result of sig< 0.05, students in these three activities are in a significant correlation explanation level. The research shows that this research tools represent consistency, which indicates that students' scientific explanation situation has certain scientific reliability in this paper. In terms of the consistency of the tool, the study found that 33 students have consistency in knowledge throughout these three activities, more than half of the number of overall tested students, which accounts for 78.5% of total; Students in these three activities have not consistency in knowledge are total in nine, whic takes 21.4% of total. It can be concluded that in these three activities the consistency of the knowledge was relatively high. Meanwhile, applying SPSS to analyze the students in the activities about their interpreting level, I found them have significant correlation. In summary, there's consistency of students in their explanation toward these three activities.According to the classification standards in this paper, the author analyzes the students in "peeing doll" activities of interpreting level status, the number and the proportion of interpreting level high are rarely. The research shows that students' overall explanation level is not high. There's only a small number and proportion of high level interpreting. The number is 10, which is only 24.1 percent of the number of total students; The lower level and middle-upper level have comparatively larger numbers of students, respectively they are 17 and 15, which take 40.4% and 35.5% of the total; The above-the-average level interpretation and high level interpretation have 18 students in total, which take 40.4% of the whole, less than a half of it; and the moderately higher and lower level interpretation have 15 students, which take 35.5% of the total number. Thus, the subjects were deduced overall level is not high explained. And in the student provides evidence and logic analysis, according to a relationship of students in scientific explanation 52.4% evidence, and put forward the scientific explanation 47.6% students do not offer evidence. In those 52.4% students, about half of all students in the evidence presented by the support of his statements can be obtained, which can put students in science and interpretation of the evidence exists some difficulty, also provide evidence to support in their presentation aspects also exist some problems.On the analysis of the reliability of the research tools to ensure that the scientific explanation of students is stable, try to annlyze the influence caused by cognitive beliefs, knowledge background, experience, gender, different majors' on students' science explaining skills。In the analysis of cognitive belief interpretation of the impact on students' science explaining skill, through the classification of the student's cognitive beliefs, the use of SPSS for the chi-square independent inspection. Test results show that the sig> 0.05. It shows that the cognitive belief has no correlation with students' science explaining skill. This indicates that the students' cognitive beliefs do not have influence in the students' science explaining skill.In the analysis of knowledge background of the impact on students' science explaining skill, through making knowledge and background questionnaire by myself, analyzed each question's incorrect answers and found that most of the students who answered incorrectly are at a low level in explaining. This shows that students who lack knowledge of the situation are not good at explaining. At the same time, by using the SPSS software to do correlation test, the test results show that the sig<0.05, which shows that the knowledge background has correlation with students' science explaining skill. This indicates that the student's knowledge backgroud do have influence the students' science explaining skill.In analyzing the impact of students' experience on the students' science explaining skill, this research found that 64.3% of the students have had relevant experience, and 35.7% of the students did not have relevant experience. It can be drawn that most of the students have had relevant experience. By using SPSS software do T tests, the test results show that the sig<0.05, which shows that the experience has correlation with students' science explaining skill. This indicates that the student's experience do have influence the students'science explaining skill.In analyzing the impact of Students major in different classes, gender on the students' science explaining skill. Through the use of SPSS software do T test, the results indicate that (sig> 0.05) the students major in different classes, students' gender do not have influence on students' science explaining skill.Finally, we reflect on the design and data analysis of the interview programme. Also, accoding to the finding of the research, author provides some suggestions to science education.