A Practical Study On Developing Students' Critical Thinking Based On The History Of Biological Sciences ——Take The Example Of Molecules And Cells In Compulsory 1 Of The Human Education Edition Of Senior Secondary Biology

In the new round of curriculum reform,the development of students' critical thinking has become an important goal in the teaching of biology.Although many educators are aware of the importance of developing students' critical thinking,front-line teachers still pay less attention to developing students' critical thinking in classroom teaching,and there are fewer relevant cultivation strategies and models,and research needs to be further strengthened.Considering that the history of biological sciences is rich in creative ways of thinking and flexible and diverse scientific methods,the development of students' critical thinking can be well promoted through appropriate utilisation.Therefore,this study focuses on the development of students' critical thinking through teaching with the history of biological sciences,providing front-line teachers with actionable teaching solutions through specific teaching cases and attempting to make some teaching suggestions for the development of students' critical thinking.Firstly,this study had compiled and analysed the research on critical thinking and the history of biological sciences at home and abroad through literature,sorted out the relevant theoretical foundations and teaching models,and summarised the measurement tools of critical thinking;secondly,a survey on critical thinking dispositions and skills was conducted on students in four science parallel classes in the senior year through questionnaires,and they were divided into experimental and control groups.The data were statistically analysed and found that the development of critical thinking dispositions and skills was at an intermediate level and that both dispositions and skills needed further development and improvement,and that there was no significant difference in the level of critical thinking development between the experimental and control groups.In addition,semi-structured interviews were conducted with some teachers in the internship schools to understand the current situation of frontline teachers' teaching using the history of biological sciences and developing students' critical thinking.The results of the interviews showed that teachers tended to consciously and purposefully intersperse the content of the history of biological sciences in the teaching process of biology to enhance students' interest in learning,but did not dig deeply into the way of thinking embedded in the history of science,and teachers are widely aware of the need to cultivate students' critical thinking,but their understanding of critical thinking is not comprehensive enough and only rests on the level of questioning and criticism,and teachers' own understanding of critical thinking needs to be strengthened.Finally,in view of the above research results,the author thought about how to use the history of biological sciences to develop students' critical thinking,proposed a teaching model based on the history of biological sciences to develop students' critical thinking,and used it as a basis to design a feasible teaching plan to implement teaching for students in the experimental group,while students in the control group were taught mainly by lectures.After one semester,the development of critical thinking dispositions and skills of the two groups of students was investigated again and the statistical software SPSS 26.0 was used to analyse the differences.Statistical analysis of the data revealed that:(1)in terms of critical thinking disposition,the overall level of students in the experimental group improved significantly(P = 0.012 < 0.05)and was also significantly better than the overall level of the control group(P = 0.049 < 0.05),mainly in the "truth-seeking" and "openness" dimensions,while there was no significant change in the control group.(2)In terms of critical thinking skills,the experimental group improved significantly(P = 0.030 < 0.05)and significantly better(P = 0.044 < 0.05)than the control group overall,mainly in the "deductive" dimension,while there was no significant change in the control group.The results of the study suggest that the development of students' critical thinking can be enhanced to a certain extent by consciously cultivating students' critical thinking in Biology teaching,and that the author's proposed teaching model of cultivating students' critical thinking based on the history of biological sciences is effective and promotes the development of students' critical thinking,but further research and improvement are needed.Finally,by summarising the teaching experiments,the following teaching suggestions are made on how to use the history of biological sciences to cultivate and develop students' critical thinking:(1)change traditional educational concepts;(2)explore teaching strategies to cultivate critical thinking;(3)dig deeper into the history of biological sciences;(4)encourage students to analyse,evaluate and improve the experiments of some scientists;and(5)increase the number of "calibration" teaching sessions.