Research On Application Of Peer-Instruction In Physics Teaching Of University

Under the driving of the new curriculum reform, how to promote students’ effective learning, improve students’ability of comprehending the physical concepts and analyzing and solving problems has become an important research topic in the college physics teaching. Practices have proved that Peer-Instruction based on the traditional teaching method can effectively promote students’concepts comprehension. This paper is based on the empirical study of a university physics class in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, Central China Normal University, which employed Peer-Instruction for half a semester. Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS)13.0was adopted to compare the results of mid-term test and the final test to explore how Peer-Instruction helped to improve students’ability to comprehend concepts, to reason logically, to analyze and solve problems, and to learn automatically. And then correlation analysis between the measures taken in the Peer-Instruction and the mid-term test performance as well as the final test performance was carried out respectively. This study expected to explore a suitable Peer-Instruction for college physics classrooms, and to provide some enlightenment to college physics teachers and researchers. This paper is composed of five parts:The first part mainly introduces the background of the research, the research status of Peer-Instruction, the significance, the main idea as well as the research methods.The second part mainly presents some theories adopted in this research, including education teaching theory, educational psychology and educational media theory. To be more specific, Bloom’s Theory of "Mastery Learning", constructivism theory and communication theory are introduced.The third part is the introduction of technological basis of concept teaching in Peer-Instruction, which includes the information tools in Peer-Instruction implementation, the design strategy of key concept tests in Peer-Instruction, the implementation process and the integration strategy of concept teaching in Peer-Instruction.The fourth part is the core of the paper, which introduces the practice of Peer-Instruction in college physics concept teaching. Starting from the research design, both qualitative and quantitative methods were employed to analyze the effect of the classrooms where Peer-Instruction was implemented. Analysis was also carried out from the following three dimensions:the diagnosis evaluation, the formative evaluation and the summative evaluation. Then the effect of Peer-Instruction in college physics classroom was analyzed in the summative evaluation by comparing the mid-term exam and final exam performances, conceptual understanding and problem solving ability of the control class. Finally, correlation analysis was taken between Peer-Instruction measures and the mid-term exam and final exam performances, trying to figure out the possible factors that might affect the Peer-Instruction effect.Part five, the conclusion and reflection of this research, sums up the practical conclusions and provides the suggestions for researches on the implementation of Peer-Instruction.