Research On The Influence Of The Combination Of Illustrations And Text In Biology Textbook On Students’ Thinking Ability

Illustrations play an all-important role in biology textbooks of senior high school.With the characteristics of being scientific,concise,intuitive and informative,illustrations have irreplaceable advantages compared with text expressions.Though illustrations in the teaching materials are various in quantity and form,they can be roughly divided into three types: text description--image verification mode,image display--text hint(including graphic--text--graphic--text continuous combination)mode,image display--text request mode.Textbook illustrations are multifunctional to students,and different studies have described these functions differently,ultimately aimed at improving students’ abilities which are also diversely referred to in different literatures.Thinking ability is one that is widely referred to.As to thinking ability,it is equivalent to the level of the operation process of constructing certain new achievements.In the researches combining illustrations with thinking ability,the thinking ability can be classified as innovative thinking ability,critical thinking ability and creative thinking ability and so on.It is apparently shown from studies that one of the most important functions of textbook illustrations in the teaching processes is to improve students’ thinking ability.Cultivating students’ thinking ability becoming the focus of fundamental education,accompanying with the trend of compiling biology textbooks in middle schools,more and more attention has been paid to the study of illustrations in textbooks.At present,the researches on textbook arrangement in China mainly concentrate on the theoretical and practical aspects,but there are few researches on the graphic and text combination mode or the organization mode of illustrations in textbooks.In contrast,the relevant researches abroad are relatively deep.In addition,there is a lack of more in-depth and systematic research on the influence of illustrations on thinking ability,as well as specific operational analysis or optimization cases.As it is mentioned above,thinking ability refers to the level of the operation process of constructing certain new achievements.And we can use “Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome(abbreviated as SOLO)” classification theory originated from the Theory of Cognitive Development Stages put forward by Jean Piaget as a tool to quantitatively evaluate thinking ability.According to SOLO classification theory,thinking ability can be divided into five levels: pre-structure level,single-point structure level,multi-point structure level,association structure level and abstract extension structure level.Different levels of thinking structure have different performance characteristics and answer descriptions.For the assurance of reliability,we can conduct a "result ranking test " based on the four levels of SOLO(single-point structure,multi-point structure,association structure and abstract extension structure),and judge the rationality and effectiveness of the test system by Guttman scalgram analysis.By using the theory of SOLO classification,this thesis tries to study the influence of different types of illustrations on students’ thinking ability,and explores the cultivation of students’ thinking ability by means of literature analysis,comparative study method,action research method etc.First come a theoretical study on the functions of illustrations,SOLO classification theory and Guttman scalgram analysis,and then conduct a "result ranking test" in terms of the biology textbook(Compulsory1)published by People’s Education Press.Before testing,a pretest is necessary to judge the rationality of the completed result ranking test system.If it is reasonable,then begin the test.Obtain and analyze the results and draw conclusions and suggestions at last.The results can be shown as follows: 1)The students’ thinking ability mainly focuses on the multi-point structure and the association structure after learning text description--image verification mode of illustrations,mainly focuses on multi-point structure after learning image display--text hint(including graphic--text--graphic--text continuous combination)mode of illustrations,and focuses on association structure after learning image display--text request mode of illustrations.2)In spite of the same type of graphic and text combination mode,the influence on the thinking ability may be different due to gender disparities--the memorable type of graphic and text combination is more suitable for the augment of females’ thinking ability,while the understanding and analysis one is more suitable for males to promote thinking ability.Finally,on the basis of the results and conclusions of this study,some improvement methods are provided for the deficiencies of teaching materials:1)some knowledge points should be combined with the thinking development law and cognitive law of high school students when selecting the type of combination of pictures and texts,some notes or explanations should be added appropriately in the illustrations,the excessively complicated illustrations need simplifying and so forth.2)In the process of compiling materials and examination papers,appropriate information can be added to the illustrations or test stem information,and the ordered test questions should be closely combined with graphic information.3)Teachers can make full use of the illustration resources in the teaching materials and supplement some illustrations appropriately.In the process of teaching illustrations,when teaching students of different levels or different genders,the information of illustrations can be appropriately increased or the leading questions can be added.4)Boys should pay more attention to integrating theory with practice when learning biology,while girls need to spend more time on theoretical understanding and analysis.