The Research On Analogy Teaching Changing Students’ Misconceptions Of ’Direction Of The Chemical Reaction’ In Teaching

Before learning new knowledge, students will form their ownunderstandings of new knowledge thorough their life phenomena or something else dueto the effects of life experiences and existing knowledge. However, the knowledge theyhave may be incomplete or inaccurate in comparison with the scientists’ understandingsof scientific concepts, and thus impedes students’ study, defined as misconception.Therefore, in teaching, only teachers fully understand the students· existingmisconceptions and help them change the misconceptions by effective methods canimprove their learning efficiencies. Scientific teaching methods can not only promotethe students·understanding of concepts, but also develop their scientific thinking ability.Thus, choosing the optimal teaching methods is a guarantee of improving the studyefficiencies.In this research questionnaires, interviews and other methods are employed toinvestigate the different levels of students· misconceptions in Direction of TheChemical Reaction· including the spontaneous process, the spontaneous reaction, therelationship between the spontaneous reaction and the enthalpy change, the relationshipbetween the spontaneous reaction and the entropy change, the relationship between thespontaneous reaction and the free energy. It is worth mentioning that the students in thisinvestigation all come from the two high school sophomore regular classes in themiddle school attached to Sichuan Normal University. Based on the analyses, weattribute the reasons to the misunderstanding of the concept connotation, the confusionof students·cognitive structure and the effects from their study experience.In order to change students· misconceptions effectively, we choose the analogyteaching among many teaching methods and carefully design an analogy teaching casein Direction of The Chemical Reaction· according to the students· misconceptions in the aforementioned content, which are from the results of the misconceptionsquestionnaire pre-testing and interview. Moreover, to examine the effectiveness that theanalogy teaching changes the students· misconceptions, we divide the research objectsinto the experimental class and the controll class, and just conduct the analogy teachingin the experimental class in this research. After the students from the two classesreceived the teaching for one lesson period and the exercise for another one lessonperiod, the misconceptions questionnaire post-testing are conducted. Results theresearch indicating as following:(1) Compared with the control class, the students in the experimental class withanalogy teaching, understanding more clearly on the concepts of the spontaneousprocess, the spontaneous reactions and the entropy. This is mainly due to that theanalogy teaching is a scientific teaching method. Making use of the scientific thinkingcharacteristic of the analogies can help students understand the scientific concepts easily.Therefore, in the analogy teaching in this study, we apply the appropriate materials tosimulate learning scientific concepts and thus help the students in the experimental classunderstand the concepts of the spontaneous process, the spontaneous reactions and theentropy and more easily and clearly.(2) Compared with the control class, the students in the experimental class withanalogy teaching have a more clear understanding about the concepts of the relationshipbetween the enthalpy change, the entropy change, the free energy and the spontaneousreaction. As the analogy case designed in the analogy teaching involves the reasoningprocesses which are converting from simpleness to complexity and concrete to abstract,repeating spirally, consolidating, analyzing and concluding. In teaching, we should paymore attentions to promote the students to experience the analogy process from thereasoning process of the analogy case to that of the enthalpy change, the entropy change,the relationship between the free energy and the spontaneous reaction. Therefore, on thebasis of analogical reasoning, the students in the experiment class possess a clearthinking path, and thus understand the relationship between the enthalpy change, theentropy, the free energy and the spontaneous reaction more clearly.In summary, the analogy teaching is effective to change the students·misconceptions in Direction of the Chemical Reaction·and the effects are apparent.As teaching and learning are essentially difficult, though the research, the studentsnot only train their thinking modes, but also enlighten the teachers to try to apply theanalogy teaching into more teaching fields in the further, as well as indicate that it should be more clear and definite to compile the textbook contents, and the influence ofthe misconceptions on the students should be avoiding to the best of our abilities.