Practical Research On Learning Progressions Of Important Concepts Of Biology In Junior High School

“Content focuses on big ideas” is one of the basic concepts of the curriculum proposed in the “the Biology Curriculum Standards Compulsory Education（2022 Edition）”.The big ideas are highly abstract and general,and they also contain important concepts,secondary concepts,and et al.The reform of secondary school biology curriculum advocates the core connotation of the big ideas as the outline,and weaves the relevant important concepts and secondary concepts into a conceptual system.In recent years,many researches have been conducted in China and abroad on the issue of how to set up the curriculum through important concepts and secondary concepts to help students form big concepts.Among them,“Learning Progressions”（LPS）as a brand-new direction and hotspot,is gradually becoming one of the key teaching contents related to big ideas.The main research topic of this study is “Carbon-Oxygen Balance in Green Plants and the Biosphere” in Chapter 5 of Unit 3 of the textbook“Biology（Volume 7,Grade 1）” in the PEP edition,and the following research work has been carried out:（1）Determine important concept system: determine the important concept system of the subject content by“the Biology Curriculum Standards Compulsory Education（2011Edition）”,sorting out the content of textbooks and issuing questionnaires to outstanding teachers,research staff at the front-line;（2）Build the learning progressions’ hypothesis of the theme of “Green Plants and Carbon-Oxygen Balance in the Biosphere”: divide the advanced dimensions of the theme according to the identified important concepts;Based on the relevant content of the primary school textbooks,determine the starting point of each advanced dimensions,based on the development level of scientific concepts proposed by Yuying Guo,and under the guidance of front-line teachers,progression levels for the secondary concepts contained in the three dimensions of the subject are classified;（3）Verification of learning Progressions’ assumptions: development learning as an evaluation tool for learning Progressions’ hypothesis,the second grade students are selected for the test,and the correct rateconcentration of each question reflects the current cognitive level of students’ understanding of the concept,and tests the hypothesis of learning Progressions;（4）Practical research on the learning Progressions of important concepts on the theme of “green plants and carbon-oxygen balance in the biosphere”: the control class is taught in a conventional teaching mode,and the experimental class is taught by learning Progressions teaching design based on the important concepts.Compared the test scores of the experimental class and the control class on the subject content,the effectiveness of teaching practice was analyzed combined with teacher interviews.The main research results are as follows:（1）The important concepts of the topic "Green plants and the carbon-oxygen balance in the biosphere" are identified,and on this basis,assumptions about the three dimensions of "photosynthesis of green plants" "respiration of green plants" and "carbon-oxygen balance" are proposed for the learning progressions.（2）After testing the learning progressions hypothesis and revising the hypothesis,combined with the research results of the existing literature on the mythical concepts that students are prone to generate in the process of learning this topic,supplement the learning progressions,and determine the learning progressions of the theme-“Green plants and the carbon-oxygen balance of the biosphere ”.（3）After the practical research,the experimental class scores were higher than that of the control class,and the difference was statistically significant（p<0.05）.Both student learning outcomes and teacher interview analyses indicate that applying the learning progressions of important concepts to junior high school biology teaching could promote students’ effectiveness in teaching important concepts.This study shows that applying the learning progression of important concepts into junior middle school biology teaching can effectively promote students’ mastery of concepts.Therefore,when designing the teaching activities,based on the learning progression of important concepts of related content,teachers should be organize important concepts to design coherent science courses,promote students’ understanding of concepts and the construction of concept systems,and improve the effectiveness of teaching.