Practical Research On STSE Integrated With Chemistry History To Promote Students' Critical Thinking Development

Critical thinking is the basis and prerequisite for cultivating creative ability.Both the new curriculum standards for high school chemistry and the newly released "China College Entrance Examination Evaluation System" emphasize the importance of contextual situational activities in promoting the development of students' thinking and cultivating high-quality talents,while complex situational activities are mainly derived from social development,historical facts,and frontier of science and technology.The teaching situation of STSE(Science,Technology,Society,Environment)integrated with chemical history meets the requirements of the new curriculum standards and the college entrance examination evaluation system.However,there is a lack of teaching models that effectively integrate STSE and chemical history into the classroom to improve students' critical thinking and scientific literacy.Therefore,we explored to construct a teaching model of STSE integrated with chemical history and to promote students' critical thinking and scientific literacy development.The results of critical thinking survey before teaching practice show that the critical thinking level of the surveyed students is not high.Most students are at a middle and weak level,and few students are at a strong and very strong level.The results of the survey on the status quo of STSE and chemical history teaching show that students rarely have access to these contents due to factors such as heavy learning tasks,increased difficulty of high school chemistry,and the less frequent integration of STSE and chemical historical materials into teaching.Majority of students look forward to more rich and interesting STSE and chemical history materials and hope that teachers can appropriately add chemical history and STSE content when teaching chemical knowledge.Therefore,the teaching model of STSE integrated with chemical history is constructed based on the analysis of the content of STSE and chemical history in the textbooks and the content in college entrance examination chemistry,the understanding of the new curriculum standards(2017 edition)and the reference of related documents.The teaching model is mainly divided into four links.They are "Creating a situation,triggering thinking","Reviewing history,designing experiments","Clarifying opinions,drawing conclusions","Summary reflection,applied learning".This teaching mode was applied to the teaching of elemental compounds.After the teaching practice,the students were investigated for critical thinking and learning gains.The results of comparative analysis before and after teaching practice show that the critical thinking and academic performance of the experimental class were significantly higher than those of the control class after teaching practice.Majority of students believed that they improved in terms of memory of specific facts,stimulation of learning interest,conceptual changes,and understanding of scientific methods.After teaching practice,the results of teacher interviews also show that they hold a positive attitude towards teaching model of STSE integrated with chemical history applied to elemental compound knowledge.They believe that the teaching model can promote students' understanding of elemental compound knowledge,increase students' interest in learning chemistry,and change the previous dull classroom atmosphere.Teaching practice shows that the teaching mode of STSE integrated with chemical history can improve students' critical thinking and scientific literacy as well as cultivate students' interest in learning chemistry.This provides a reference for frontline teachers to effectively integrate STSE and chemical history into the classroom.