A Study Of High School Students’ Ability Of Chemical Graphical Representation

In modern society,the use of images poses great challenge to people’s graphical representation ability.In the "Chemistry Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools(2017 edition)" issued by the Ministry of Education of China,"understanding diagrams" and "using diagrams to represent or explain" have been put forward many times in the requirements of quality level and subject core literacy.Therefore,the ability to understand,use and construct chemical images is one of the important abilities in chemistry.It is of great value to evaluate students’ ability of chemical graphical representation.Based on the background,the purpose of this study is to understand the status quo of high school students’ chemical graphical representation ability and provide reference for teaching graphical representation.First of all,this study investigates relevant literature,and defines the connotation of chemical graphical representation ability.In this study,two dimensions of graphical representation ability are proposed:the ability of understanding images and constructing images.Then,based on the analysis and comparison of learning quality evaluation theories,this study uses SOLO theory to evaluate students’ graphical representation ability,and divides students’ ability into five levels.Excluding the pre-structural level,this study set two ability states in each level,and finally formed evaluating framework of chemical graphical representation ability which contains two dimensions,five levels and nine states.Based on the evaluation framework,the evaluation tool is developed and the scoring standards are formulated.The small sample of students are pre-tested.Then,this study conducted expert consultation to confirm that the reliability and validity of the evaluation tool meet the requirements.297 students from H School in Shanghai were selected for the formal evaluation.After analyzing the data,the following conclusions were reached:(1)Students’ ability in the two dimensions of graphical representation ability shows normal distribution.The students at Multi-structural level account for the highest proportion,followed by Relational level and Uni-structural level.The students of Pre-structural level and Extended abstract level account for less.(2)At the level of Relational and Extended abstract,which represents a high level of ability,the students account for 40.4% in understanding images dimension and only 21.2% in constructing images dimension.It’s indicates that the students’ ability of understanding images is significantly higher than the ability of constructing images.(3)In the dimension of constructing ability,70.1% of students are in the unstable state,and significantly higher than 49.5% of the dimension of understanding images.It’s indicates that students lack stable ability to construct different types of chemical images.(4)There is a significant difference in the proportion of students’ ability of constructing images between the Multi-structural level and the Relational level,indicating that the qualitative change of students’ ability in constructing images from the Multi-structural level to the Relational level is more obvious than the ability of understanding images.This study puts forward the following suggestions:(1)developing graphical representation ability step by step;(2)paying attention to the content features of images;(3)Flexibly using different types of image;(4)Guiding students to observe images and developing their ability of understanding images;(5)Broadening students’ thinking direction and developing their ability of constructing images.