Research On Application Of Cooperative Learning To Senior High School Biology In New Curriculum Reform

Beginning from the USA in the1970s, cooperative learning has beendeveloping quickly with outstanding achievements, and has becomeone of the successful classic examples in the contemporary teachingreform. Based on teamwork, cooperative learning is a strategic systemwhich features interactions and interchanges among students. As isproved by masses of researches and practice at home and abroad,not only can cooperative learning obviously improve students’ scores,but also it can help develop their psychological characters and socialskills. In the new round of curriculum reform of basic education, theministry of education demands that students’ learning methods shouldbe transformed and that cooperative and independent inquiry learningmethod should be advocated.At present, many theoretical and practical researches have beenfocused on cooperative learning. However, few of them have beenapplied to daily teaching activities, which only occasionally appear indemonstration classes. That is mainly because, for lack of the theoriesand further education of cooperative learning, many teachers will giveit up when meeting lots of difficult problems they can’t solve.Meanwhile, they are also worried that this learning method will in turnhave a bad effect on student’s scores in exams and school’s enrolmentrate. As a biology teacher devoted to develop students’ learningabilities and improve their scientific literacy, the author tries to adopt other’s strong points and transform the traditional teaching methods,hoping to innovate the teaching method of cooperative learning inbiology class.By literature review, this essay theoretically elaborates cooperativelearning’s basic theory and the present situation of research on it athome and abroad. Through questionnaires, the present learningsituation of Senior Two students was acquired. By analysis of the data,the importance and feasibility of cooperative learning wasacknowledged. In the teaching practice, four kinds of effectiveteaching methods were designed to be applied to two classes of thesame level, which are stratification-cooperation,construction-cooperation, independence-cooperation andexploration-cooperation. In the end, cooperative learning is proved tobe greatly effective to the improvement of students’ biology learningabilities and the development of their interest in it. Cooperative learningis an ideal classroom model for all-around development education,which matches the demands of the society.