The Research Of Geographical Cognitive Structure Construction On High School Geography Teaching

Aus"ubel once said: If all educational psychology can be summed up into onlyone principle, I will conclude it into a sentence: the most important and only factorinfluencing learning is whether the learners have already known what to learn andwhat has already been learned, and thus the teaching procedure should be designedand carried out according t"o this principle. Obviously, the first step of teaching is to’understand students, and students existing cognitive structures are the importantbases for teachers to apply personalized teaching.In addition, cognitive psychologyshows th’at students learning process is essential process of the establishment andimprovement of their cognitive structure. Therefore, every teacher in the teaching of’geography should be committed to develop students good geographical cognitivestructure, which will help students learn contents the knowledge completely andlearning transfer. There is a great significance to improve student’s learning abilityand geographic literacy.In the meantime, it meets the requirement of the newcurriculum which is aimed at learning the useful geographic knowledge for thelifelong development. According to the actual teaching situation, I have found tharhigh school students felt quite difficult in studying the physical geography, and theiracademic performance is not ideal, which is not only because the physical geographiccontent is hard to learn, but also because students have not built up a goodgeographical cognitive structure. In order to promote the effectiveness of high schoolgeography teaching, this paper will base on the cognitive structure theory to surveyth’e characteristic of high school students cognitive structure with various methods,adopt some purposeful instructional strategies to help students establish a goodgeographic cognitive structure, as well as improve the geographic academicachievement. This paper will be divided into the following several parts:First of all, in the prolegomena, the author appraises the present research of thegeographic cognitive structure and offers the research contents and research significance which refers to the blank field of the present research.Secondly, this paper combines the correlation theory of cognitive structure,Improves the connotation of the geographic cognitive structure, offers thecharacteristics and the cognitive function of the good geographic cognitive structure,and analyses the constructive mechanism and the influential elements ofconstructing of the geographic cognitive structure.Furthermore, this paper uses the method of measurement of the cognitivestructure. On the basis of the high school natural geographic knowledge, the paperapplies the investigation method which combines the concept map examination andthe item analysis to investigate the depth and breadth of geographic cognitivestructure of senior high school students in a certain Shanghai key high school, thendraws some relevant conclusions, and also the author analyzes these reasons withthe combination of questionnaire.Finally, according to the theory of cognitive structure and findings, combiningwith the defects of current geography teaching, this paper presents the teachingstrategies of good geographic cognitive structure in physical geography teaching by:1)focusin’g on the students original geographic cognitive structure;2) using a variety ofteaching methods to optimize the geographic cognitive structure;3) paying attentionto the teaching of the structural knowledge and improving the geographic cognitivestructure;4) strengthening the geographic variant exercises and enhancing thegeographic cognitive structure.Through the above research,丨hope to make senior high school geographyteachers pay more attention to the geographic cognitive structure, and provide themajority of geographical educators with a theoretical basis and strategies forreference.