A Study On Cultivating Adolescent Students’Ability Of Scientific Hypothesis

Inquiry instruction is a way of teaching which advocated by science curriculum reform, but there are a variety of non-standard phenomenon during implementation. The main reason of this phenomenon is a lack of understanding scientific hypothesis of inquiry instruction. At first. We will explore whether scientific inquiry needs hypothesis, in order to help teachers clarify nature of scientific inquiry. On this basis, we make the further study on the specific thinking process of generating scientific hypothesis and the factors of scientific hypothesis ability, with the hope of constructing the structure model of students’scientific hypothesis ability. Then, We choose students as research object in three different age stages including over12-year-old, over16-year-old and over18-year-old, and to investigate the status of their scientific hypothesis ability. Finally, we construct teaching model and teaching strategy of scientific hypothesis ability to cultivate. By experiment research, we verify the teaching model. This thesis contains seven chapters.The Chapter Ⅰ is mainly on literature reviews at home and abroad. From studies of Philosophy of science and Education and Psychology, we explore the meaning of a scientific hypothesis, the logical mechanism of scientific hypothesis formation., scientific hypothesis quality evaluation, present situation of students’scientific hypothesis ability, et al. We found theoretical foundation and some problems which need be researched from these literature review.The chapter Ⅱ is to explore whether scientific inquiry needs hypothesis. We enumerated all kinds of disputes from Philosophy of science and Science Education. Then From different perspectives including how the Brain Process sensory input, with Piaget’s cognitive theory and Mental Model Theory and Science History,et al. The results show, scientific inquiry is the activity that researchers gengrate the hypotheses while meeting problems, then make circular argumentation on the hypothesis to find the best clarifications. Hypothesis is an essential part of scientific inquiry.The Chapter III summarizes the thinking process of scientific hypothesis generation based on two scientific historical facts, and study the relationship between scientific hypothese and scientific evidence, scientific hypothesis and support theory in the science, scientific hypothese and meta-cognition.Based on these studies, we construct elements and structural model of scientific hypothesis ability.The Chapter IV is studying influencing factors of students’ scientific hypothesis ability including abductive reasoning ability and declarative knowledge according to different ages. The results found that sixth graders even with the corresponding declarative knowledge, it is difficult to generate reasonable hypotheses, because students lack of abductive reasoning ability. Students over16can generate hypotheses which based on Macro phenomenon, but they are poor in diversity of hypotheses and hypothesis which require microscopic representation. For18years old students who possess relevant declarative knowledge, they are more capable than16years old student in diversity and rationality of hypotheses, involving hypothesis which require microscopic representation, there were significant differences between the two age stages students. The older the students are, the stronger their ability of abductive reasoning is.The Chapter V mainly investigates current situation of different student’s ability of scientific hypothesis. It was found that the same age of students, the greater achievements they made, the higher level of hypothesis they proposed, and they can write more reasonable basis which will be made to support their hypothesis, There were significant differences between the two different academic achievement. For different ages, students over18who have not learnt relevant are no significant differences in levelof hypothesis than students over16,but students over18are more capable than16years old student in writing reasonable basis to support their hypotheses. For evidence use, performance of all types of students are poor and with no difference. On the whole, the level of hypothesis generation is comparatively lower, and fewer students could put forward hypotheses which require microscopic representation, much fewer could write reasonable basis to support their hypotheses.Student can’t harmonize hypothesis and evidence and reasonable basis to support their hypothesis.The Chapter VI discusses the cultivation strategy and teaching model of scientific hypothesis. Based on structural model of scientific hypotheses ability and abductive reasoning theory, the first part is to study the cultivation strategy of scientific hypotheses.The second part is to construct a scientific hypothesis generation teaching model based on the constructivist theory, to explore operation,process of the teaching mode and cite the cases to illustrate. At the same time we study the scientific hypothesis argument teaching, and design learning process for scientific hypothesis argumentation.The chapter VII is to study the influence differences made by the simple inquiry teaching (ignore the generation&argumentation of hypothesis)and by the model of scientific hypothesis generation and argumentation teaching, The result show the model of scientific hypothesis generation and argumentation teaching can improve student’science hypothesis levels and ability of evidence and theory basis to support their hypotheses. And students would do much better in coordinating the relationships among hypothesis, evidence and theory, while simple inquiry teaching could only improve the levels of scientific hypothesis proposed by students.At last, thesis summarizes some views and conclusions, these views and conclusions have important theoretical and practical significance to teachers who carry out inquiry teaching effectively and cultivating adolescent students’ability of acientific hypothesis...