A Survey On The Status Of Value Recognition In High School Chemistry And Teaching Suggestions

The national policy of reforming college entrance examination system influences students' course selections.Using chemistry as an example,as an elective subject,its importance in the high school curriculum system is weakened.The control-value theory points out that students' choices of courses and careers are closely related to their perceived value of the subject.Based on the above hypothesis,this study includes three parts: the first section reviewed previous literature and constructed different dimensions for students' perceived value of chemistry;Based on the above classification and the specific content of high school chemistry curriculum(i.e.,the unit of organic compounds),the second section developed questionnaire items and interview questions.Survey data was collected from 292 senior high school students while qualitative interview data was collected from nine in-service chemistry teachers.The factor analysis of survey data showed that high school students' perceived value of this unit can be divided into three dimensions: application value,cognitive value and social affective value.Using multivariate analysis to further compare group differences,we found that there were no significant gender differences in three factors.However,there were significant differences for students with different grades and test scores.The interview data showed that high school chemistry teachers had their own opinions towards the value of chemistry.They also admitted the importance of integrating related content in everyday classroom teaching.However,high school chemistry teachers did not have sufficient knowledge of specific teaching strategies to achieve this goal.Based on above survey and interview results,in the last section,this study gave an example of lesson plan about how to develop classroom activities which demonstrated the value of chemistry.These findings have implications for teachers and educator for future research about developing value-based lessons plans for high school chemistry curriculum.