Practical Research On Improving Students' Scientific Inquiry Ability In Junior High School Biology Class Embedded Performance Assessment

Performance assessment is a way to evaluate the comprehensive ability of students in real situations.It is used by many country and international evaluation projects to evaluate the ability of scientific inquiry.In the new educational situation,performance assessment is considered as an important way to implement core literacy.The design and application of performance assessment focusing on core qualities is considered to be the focus of future disciplinary evaluation.Although performance assessment is mentioned or suggested in the curriculum standards in teaching activities in China,it is seldom practiced in practice.How does performance assessment fit into the classroom? This study will explore the implementation of performance assessment in the class,and study its impact on junior high school students' ability of scientific inquiry.The results of the research enrich the application cases of performance assessment in biology teaching in China,and provide reference for teachers to design and implement performance assessment.The research results are summarized as follows:1.The application of performance assessment in teaching activities is feasible.After the implementation of the teaching activity embedding performance assessment,we had an interview with teacher and student.The result of teacher interview showed that the teaching activity with appropriate performance assessment was better than the traditional class.The result of student showed that the learning task becomes simple and clear,and known how to become excellent.It could be seen that the application of performance assessment in teaching activities was feasible.2.The application of performance assessment in teaching activities can improve junior high school students' ability of scientific inquiry.By comparing the changes of students' scientific inquiry ability before and after the research,the results of the questionnaire showed that the P value of the dimension of the question raised by the students in the control class was 0.038,which was a significant difference,while there was no significant difference in other dimensions.However the dimensions of raising questions and making assumptions of in the experimental class reached the extremely significant level of difference,with P values of0.002 and 0.006;and P values of the dimension of making plans and implementing plans were0.022 and 0.019,reaching the significant level of difference.The test results showed that the paired sample T test results of both the experimental and the control classes have reached a significant level of difference.Comparing the score ratio of each dimension,it was found that each dimension of the experimental class had been improved,while the control class had significantly improved in asking questions and making assumptions,and the other dimensions have only slightly changed.These results showed that,compared with traditional classroom teaching,the application of performance evaluation in teaching activities could improve junior middle school students' ability of scientific inquiry,and the teaching effect was more significant and comprehensive.3.The application of performance assessment can enrich classroom teaching methods.The interview results showed that the teaching method of embedding performance assessment could not only guide students to operate,but also made students more clear about their current stage and direction of efforts,which made teaching activities diverse.Teachers could obtain teaching information from multiple channels,and used the information to innovate teaching methods and adjusted teaching strategies in time.This showed that properly designed and effectively implemented teaching activities based on performance assessment could enrich classroom teaching methods and promoted teachers' teaching and students' learning.