Research On Chemistry Teaching And Learning In Class In The Respect Of Cognitive Load Theory

Cognitive Load Theory takes use of interactions between information structures andknowledge of human cognition to determine instructional design. Since the theory focuses on thefunction and relationship between working memory and long-term memory, it suggests thatcognitive resources should be directed to schema acquisition and schema automation for efficientlearning.Although chemistry teachers take use of study theories to instruct their teaching in class,students still have difficulties in chemistry studying while teachers also find it is difficult topromote students’ learning.To find out problems still existing in chemistry class impeding both students and teachers togain more effective result, we take steps to observe and analyze the classes of chemistrynowadays in the respect of cognitive load theory.Firstly, we compare the factors affecting cognitive load to that work on students’ learning inchemistry class to construct the process of our research.Secondly, according to our research process and considering the higher validness havingbeen testified by Pass&van Merri nboer (1994), we work out a questionnaire in the form ofLikert scale, but we only set four levels. Then we choose middle school students and high schoolstudents totally about300to involved in the surgery and analyze their answers with SPSS16.0.That does provide us information about the chemistry class in students’ view.Thirdly, we interview several middle school teachers in non-structural form with differentgenders, ages, originals and education background through Internet. And then, we analyze theirconversation about our topics, search for their views about the phenomenon present in chemistryclass and compare their points. That helps us to know about some truly problems and reasons to them in the real chemistry class.Fourthly, we observe the authentic teaching and learning process in chemistry class. Werecord information in the forms which are established in the view of cognitive load theory andFlanders Interaction Analysis and Classification. The items of the form we used focused onpoints such as the numbers of question, the distribution of question, the range of information, thesubtitle of PPT, time spent on concept learning and exercises and so on. We concludeinformation that we record and judge it by cognitive load theory to get the researchers’ points.Lastly, we give some advice for middle school chemistry teacher about how to promotestudents’ efficient learning mainly from aspects such as how to design PPT, how to designquestion, how to organize learning materials and how to present information and so on.