Eight Major Difficulties For High School Students To Learn Genetics: Survey, Analysis And Problem Solving Strategies

In recent years, difficult points are the common research focus in the research of teaching. But at the moment, most researchers pay more attention to the difficult points in teaching, while the researches on student learning difficulties are relatively few. The new curriculum reform is for all students, and to comply with this trend, the study selected the student learning difficulties for research. It carefully analyzed existing research results, and found two obvious problems. First, the existing research on the difficulty lacks disciplinary characteristic, and such studies tend to be empty and unpractical; Second, the range of research is either too wide or too narrow. Some focus on the whole materials in this module, thus lose the concentration; some focus on one aspect, thus too narrow and lack of systematicness. As for the two problems, the study put the high school biology genetics part as the research scope, which is necessary and urgent. It further determine the difficult points for students learning and give the reference for teachers teaching.Considering its own characteristics as well as the difficulty to determine the reliability, the study divides the difficulties into the static and dynamic difficulty to research respectively. Some innate difficulties exist in certain types of knowledge itself, so you can do some static analysis of the difficulties. But in the practical teaching, due to the effect of some objective factors, or the difference of students’ cognitive level, the same knowledge difficulties may be reflected differently, that is to say, the difficulty is dynamically changing. To determine the students learning difficulty according to the empirical facts, survey is very persuasive.The study determined the static difficulties mainly by means of literature research and questionnaire survey, and through high school biology curriculum standard, the explanation of college entrance examination, the statistics about the distribution of the examination points in the college entrance examination in recent five years and expert interpretation for the college entrance examination to provide theoretical support to the determination of learning difficulty, and by means of questionnaires for students and teachers’ measuring the final tease out the difficulties of learning genetics static, and may become the reference to dynamic difficulties. To survey the dynamic difficulties, the study made it mainly by means of test method, questionnaire survey, and classroom observation. Based on the determined staticdifficulty and years of teaching experience, the study made the dynamic difficulties questionnaire survey, and made surveys among students and teachers. The students were selected to the questions and had closed-book exams. Arranging the difficulties according to the degree of difficulties and then combining with many years of classroom observation, finally confirmed eight learning difficulties for high school students to learn Genetics.The main causes of the difficulties are connected with the characteristics of genetic knowledge itself, students’ learning problems and teachers’ teaching efficiency. So in order to understand the causes of students’ learning difficulties more clearly, the author did a questionnaire among students and teachers survey from the three aspects with 15 specific reasons, providing basis for analyzing every difficulty. Then the author made further analysis from three aspects including knowledge, students and teachers.Referring to the cause of the difficulty, based on the dimension of knowledge comprehensive and pertinence, the subjectivity of students dimension and autonomy, and teachers’ guidance and incentive dimension, and comprehensive consideration to the communion between these three and expansibility, the seven problem solving strategy is obtained, which are based on students’ cognitive law as well as understand the teaching material accurately; to diverse teaching methods, and use flexible teaching method; to use incentive evaluation reasonably and improve students’ self-efficacy; to create problem situation, and stimulate study motivation; to cultivate interest in learning, and promote knowledge generated; to use opportunely contrast classification comparison, and promote knowledge to be transferred positively; to consolidate in time, and feedback timely.