Geographical Hypothesis Generation Ability Of High School Students In Real Situation

In recent years,the classroom teaching of the new geography curriculum has focused on gradually focusing on the education of the nature of science,using teaching methods such as scientific inquiry to improve the level of scientific thinking and creativity of students.“Geography Curriculum Standards for General High Schools(2017 Edition)”clearly propose the cultivation of students’ core literacy in geography,and scientific inquiry is an important way to cultivate students’ core literacy.It has been shown that hypothesis is an important part of scientific inquiry,and therefore students need to be actively encouraged to identify problems and formulate hypotheses.In fact,countries around the world are emphasizing the development of students’ "hypothesis formulation ability",but the existing research on students’ "hypothesis formulation ability" mainly focuses on the quality and quantity of students’ final hypotheses,but less on the thinking process of students’ hypothesis formulation.Therefore,it is necessary to study the thinking process of students’ geographic hypothesis formulation,analyze the components and cognitive characteristics of students’ hypothesis formulation ability on this basis,and lay the foundation for the development of students’ hypothesis formulation ability in geography teaching.Based on the theory of cognitive psychology and "proposing hypothesis",this study uses real-world geographic problems as a research task to test students’ ability to formulate geographic hypotheses,collects information on the thinking process of high school students in proposing geographic hypothesis,and on this basis analyzes the cognitive characteristics and ability level of high school students in proposing geographic hypothesis.The Findings indicate that:(1)the cognitive processes of high school students’ geographic hypotheses in real-world geographic problem situations can be classified into three categories,namely conceptualized cognitive mode,formalized cognitive mode,and knowledge construction cognitive mode.Overall,high school students are prone to produce formal cognitive patterns,but have difficulty producing knowledge-constructing cognitive patterns.(2)The three types of proposed geographic hypothesis cognitive patterns differed greatly in terms of identifying geographic elements,activating the amount of subject knowledge,and the level of elemental relevance,with the level of elemental relevance being the core element in distinguishing the three types of patterns.(3)There is no significant difference between the levels of geography hypothesis-raising ability of high school students in different grades,and there is a significant relationship between the ability to raise geography hypotheses and academic achievement in the sophomore year,while there is no significant relationship in the senior year.Based on the result of this research,instructional interventions to develop the ability to formulate hypotheses included:(1)assumption formation and validation activities to enhance geographic hypothesis capacity,(2)use task sheets to provide specific processes such as element association and hypothesis validation,(3)problem situation for hypothesis formation and verification should consider the background knowledge of the students.