Improving Students’ Problem-solving Ability Through Programmed Learning In Senior High Physics Teaching

The requirements of knowledge and skills, procedures and methods, emotional attitudes and values in the New Curriculum Standard have set higher goals for physics teaching. Subdivided to practical teaching, the students’problem solving ability should be adjusted and enhanced accordingly. That is, the students are supposed to not only acquire knowledge and improve their skills but feel the learning process and gain methods through it. Many problems exist in present traditional physics teaching methods, which have affected the improvement of the students’ problem-solving ability. The article aims to introduce the idea of programmed Learning, change the in-class teaching structure and promote students’ problem-solving ability.On the basis of studying relative literatures, the author explain the implication of the Programmed Learning and related studies which mainly include Watson’s behaviorism theory, Skinner’s programmed Learning theory, constructivist theory, the region of proximal learning theory and so on. Based on the theory and with experimental approach, we carried out the experiment of "Improvement of Physics Problem-solving Ability through Programmed Learning" among97senior1students. During the first semester, we used the traditional teaching methods which focus on the class explanation of the teachers and strengthened drills of the students in both the experimental and controlled classes. We found that there were no obvious differences between them and the marks of the controlled class were even better. During the second semester, the teachers explored the programmed Learning in the experimental class, using it to instruct students with the homework. While traditional way of teaching was stilled used in the controlled class. The results showed that the marks of the students in experimental class were obviously better than those of the students in controlled class no matter whether in mid-term or final exams. Then the paper probes into the experimental procedures, results as well as the effects of Programmed Learning on students’observing, analyzing, and problem-solving ability. The Programmed Learning helps to solve the problem of level differences, scene settings, and problem settings. Finally, we come to the conclusion that adopting Programmed Learning in senior high physics teaching can improve students’problem solving ability.