Implementing A Four-Tier Diagnostic Test To Assess High School Students’ Biological Preconcepts

The General High School Biology Curriculum Standards(revised in 2017 and 2020)put forward the curriculum concept of "focusing on big concepts" and "paying great attention to the attainment of core literacy in biology",and "helping students form concepts of life through the learning of big concepts".The curriculum concept of "content focus on big concepts" and the requirement of "paying great attention to the achievement of core literacy in biology" and "helping students to form the concept of life through the learning of big concepts" emphasize the importance of concept teaching in high school.In the process of learning concepts,students need the training of scientific thinking and the improvement of scientific investigation ability,so that they can better solve related problems and develop core literacy.Many biological facts and principles are described and interpreted through scientific concepts.In teaching practice,students’ learning of scientific concepts often has unsatisfactory results,mainly because students’ existing former concepts are not transformed into scientific concepts.In this way,it is crucial to explore students’ pre-concepts.In this paper,we design a four-step diagnostic tool for the chapter "Energy Supply and Utilization of Cells" in the General High School Textbook-Biology-Compulsory 1-Molecules and Cells,develop an outline of a cognitive interview,collect students’ preconceptions,explore the general rules and methods of concept transformation,and make suggestions for teaching concept transformation.The purpose of this study is to explore the general patterns and methods of concept shift,and to propose relevant suggestions for teaching concept shift in order to promote concept teaching in high school biology to a certain extent.The study focuses on the chapter of "Energy Supply and Utilization of Cells",and firstly,we explain the reasons for choosing the topic from three aspects: the importance of concept teaching,the advantages of the cognitive interview technique,and the value of the four-tier test paper.In the literature review section,the relevant concepts involved in this study are defined,and the current status of research on pre-concept diagnosis at home and abroad is summarized,so as to determine the main content of this study.This study uses a four-tier test paper combined with a cognitive interview technique aimed at exploring students’ preconceptions.After defining the principles and preparation process of the four-tier test paper,the process of designing,preparing,revising,and finalizing the four-tier test paper is elaborated:(1)Defining the content.To clarify the concepts and their descriptions,we developed a concept description table for the chapter "Energy Supply and Utilization of Cells";we sorted out the relationships between concepts,constructed a concept map,and related the knowledge involved in the proposition to the concept map.(2)Obtain students’ previous concepts.By reviewing relevant literature and collecting previous research results;conducting interviews with front-line teachers and students;designing semi-open-ended questionnaires with objective multiple-choice questions and open-ended responses based on the interview results for collecting rationales.(3)Develop a four-tier test paper.Combined with the research results of the previous study,we designed a two-way itemized list of the four-tier test paper,developed the four-tier test paper,took some students for interviews after the test,and invited experts to critically review the test paper,analyzed the reliability and validity of the test paper,found problems and improved the four-tier test paper until it was finalized;reviewed relevant literature,sorted out the teaching strategies for concept change,and conducted targeted teaching of the collected former concepts,so as to make teaching suggestions.The four-tier test was developed with 12 questions covering the concepts in the chapter of "Energy supply and utilization of cells".After the test paper was prepared,tested,reviewed and modified by experts,the reliability coefficient of the retest reached0.973,indicating that the stability of this test paper is good;the content validity of the four-point scale yielded a correlation coefficient of 0.920,and the expert review opinion was approved,indicating that the content structure of this test paper is good.Through the statistics of the survey data of the four-tier test paper and the compilation and analysis of the results of the cognitive interviews of students,more pre-conceptions of students were diagnosed.This study further improves the four-tier test paper pre-concept probing tool;it shows that the four-tier test combined with the cognitive interview can reveal students’ pre-concept situation more comprehensively than a single score evaluation;the researcher can select appropriate teaching strategies for targeted teaching based on the pre-concepts probed,improve classroom teaching efficiency,help students construct biology concepts,and develop subject core literacy.