The Application Of Mind Maps In Biology Teaching For Junior High School Students

The continuous deepening of the new curriculum reform is changing the way of teaching and learning.The task of education is not only to enable students to master essential knowledge and necessary skills,but also to cultivate students' ability to learn independently and cooperatively,and to promote inquiry learning to cultivate students' thinking ability.Standards for Biology Curriculum in Compulsory Education(2011Edition)pointed out that education should manage to reflect the characteristics of the times by taking comprehensive improvement of students' scientific literacy as the purpose,by changing students' learning methods,and by implementing inquiry-based learning.Mind mapping is a tool for embodying divergent thinking.By using text,symbols,pictures,and other elements to concisely summarize text information,and connecting cumbersome knowledge according to the logical relationship to stimulate students' learning Interests,mind mapping provides a way to develop their abilities of logical thinking,autonomous learning ability.The biology knowledge for in textbooks for junior students in middle schools is scattered,which is easy to cause obstacles in understanding.Such a situation may cause students to lost interest in learning biology and pay insufficient attention to biology learning,making it impossible for students to play a subjective role in biology learning.Therefore,the utilization of mind maps in biology teaching for students in junior high school provides an important option to solve the existing problems.This dissertation reported the study of applying mind mapping in biology teaching in junior middle school.We hope the results of this study will help solve the problems in teaching and improve the efficiency in learning.The first part reported the results of the survey regarding the current situation of mind maps utilization in four junior middle schools in Xinyang City.Based on the survey,we learned that teachers did not have a clear understanding of mind maps;but teachers believed that the application of mind maps in teaching was necessary and feasible.Students have a high degree of recognition for the use of mind mapping in teachers' teaching and their learning.In the second part,starting from the overview of the mind map and the theoretical basis used in teaching,the literature design method,questionnaire survey method,and experimental research method are employed in designing the study on the application of the mind map in the junior high school biology teaching.Based on the conclusions of the survey on current situations and the suggestions of biology teachers in middle schools,we prepared the mind maps of contents screened from the First half of the Biology Textbooks for Grade 7 published by People's Education Press.The third part reported the results of the utilization of mind maps in pilot teaching.In the beginning,the students were evaluated using the Biology Learning Interest Scale for Junior Middle School Students and the Questionnaire for Innovative Thinking Ability of Junior Middle School Students.Two classes of students having no significant difference in innovative thinking ability and interest in biological learning were taken as test class and the control class,respectively.In the control class,lessons were given with conventional teaching methods,while in the test class,mind mapping was used in teaching.Based on the teaching content and students' existing knowledge,mind maps were designed and utilized in the teaching of new lectures and review courses.After a semester of teaching,the effect of mind maps on teaching was assessed with the results of quantitative evaluation and examination.Conclusions were given in the fourth part.According to the results in pilot teaching,we concluded that,for biology teaching in junior middle school,the application of mind maps was conducive to students' comprehensive understanding of the knowledge they have learned.Mind map significantly increased the students' interest in biology courses and promoted the cultivation of innovative thinking ability in students.This research provides an essential reference for the application of mind mapping in junior high school biology teaching.We hope that the findings of our study will enable the majority of biology teachers of junior high school to understand the necessity of using mind maps in teaching.We also hope these findings will play a positive role in improving the current situation of biology teaching in junior high school.