Learning Progression Of Particulate Nature Of Matter And Its Guidance Of Designing And Measuring Scientific Modeling Proficiency

"Particle Nature of Matter(PNM)" is one of the fundamental ideas in chemistry,as well as physical science.Crafting and delineating students learning path of PNM plays a vital role in diagnosing and promoting student science learning.To date,research on learning progression(LP)shift from developing and validating LP to application.In particular,the filed focus on measuring student scientific proficiency based upon LP.Scientific modeling proficiency is crucial for student science learning.Diagnosing,evaluating,and promoting student scientific modeling proficiency is one of the main focuses of measuring student core competencies,which has a reciprocal relationship between teaching reform towards core competencies.However,although the research on students’ scientific modeling proficiency has been a hot topic in international science education for a while,the majority studies of Chinese scientific modeling are still at the initial exploratory stage that focuses on modeling instruction,and few of them have paid attention to modeling proficiency measurement and evaluation.This study is set up to explore LP of student understanding the PNM across 3-12 grade,which is integrated and developmental across the primary school,junior high school and senior high school.Based upon the LP and integrated development theory,I further investigate how to develop instrument to measure student modeling proficiency and employ the instrument to evaluate Grade 3-12 student modeling proficiency under the “PNM” core idea.Specifically,the research questions include: How to develop and validate the LP of PNM across Grade 3-12? How to develop assessment tasks to measure student scientific modeling proficiency based upon the LP of PNM? And what is the level of student ability of integrating PNM and modeling to solve problems and explain phenomena using the developed assessment instrument? To answer the research questions,this study adopts a variety of research methods.Theoretical research is mainly based on the review and analysis of relevant literature,as well as the content analysis and comparison of domestic and foreign science curriculum standards and mainstream textbooks.The empirical study used crosssection and cross-grade questionnaire test,Rasch model method and a variety of quantitative statistical methods.This study has three research tasks.Research tasks 1 and 2 are the construction of hypothetical learning progression of PNM and its’ empirical validation,respectively.The HLP was constructed based upon the review and analysis of relative science standards and research.The HLP mainly includes three stages(primary school,junior high school and senior high school),and eight advanced levels.See Chapter 5 for a detailed explanation.After constructing the HLP,this study empirically tested the HLP of PNM according to the development of the basic principles of scientific measurement and evaluation(the fourcornerstone model)and the test and measurement tool(the Rasch model)(See Chapter 6).The development and validation of the instrument was tested and revised using the Rasch model of item response theory.Through empirical test,the LP of PNM is revised from the original three stages and eight levels to three stages and seven levels.Level 8 in the original HLP has been deleted,and level 5 and level 7 in the HLP have been redefined and revised.Empirically tested after learning the advanced,the elementary school level 1 based on a large scale to know substances,Level 2 in the middle school is based on the elements to know substances,level 3 is based upon particle types and movement to know substance,and level 4 is based on the combination between atoms to know substances,as well as the high school level 5 is to know substances based on molecular inter-atomic forces,Level 6 is based on interactions between atoms and level 7 is based on "configurational relations".All the parameters of LP after empirical test meet the standards,the measurement tools have good reliability and validity,and the learning progression after empirical test is supported by sufficient empirical evidence.The third research task is to the development of core competency-oriented scientific modeling tasks under the ELP(see Chapter 7).This study selects scientific modeling practice as the practice carrier,takes the global validity theory as the theoretical basis,and adopts ECD and CCD integrated framework.Based on the learning progress of the PNM in primary school,junior middle school and senior high school,this paper develops the test questions of scientific modeling ability under the concept and evaluates the scientific modeling ability of the students across the three stages.The process of test paper development mainly includes Domain Analysis and Domain Modeling.The quality of the developed scientific modeling questions based on learning progression is tested and analyzed by the indexes of separation degree(question and subject),reliability(question and subject)and the graph of question difficulty and subject ability.The results show that the questions are of good quality.In this study,the integrated scientific modeling ability of primary,middle and high school students as well as students of different genders was further measured and evaluated by using the integrated scientific modeling ability assessment tool guided by the advanced learning of the grand concept of "matter particle".It is found that the ability level of primary,junior and senior three students is different,which is embodied in the average difference of students’ ability performance in each stage.The ability of middle school and high school students in applying the PNM to scientific modeling to explain real problems is significantly higher than that of primary school students,but there is no significant difference in ability performance between middle school and high school students,which is related to the efficiency of samples.Overall,students’ ability to integrate PNM with scientific modeling to solve practical problems needs to be further improved.This study is an attempt to study the learning progression from the concept ontology research to the integration ability learning progression and highlights the core competencyoriented in the integration ability learning progression,aiming to provide some ideas for the current development of students’ subject core competency assessment.Overall,there are three innovative points in this study.Firstly,this study attempts to place the big concept of PNM in the three stages of primary school,junior high school,and senior high school under one framework for the first time,to realize the coherence and integration design of the three stages,and to point to human development.The concept of PNM developed in this study has a certain effect on curriculum design,teaching design and student evaluation.Secondly,this study tries to develop the competency-oriented test questions based on learning progression to integrate students’ scientific modeling ability,which can provide technical support for the measurement and evaluation of students’ core literacy under the current background and provide some ideas for the evaluation of literacy.Thirdly,the accomplishment evaluation based on the integration of scientific modeling ability of the learning progression of the big concept of PNM is conducted in this study,which provides some initial ideas for the evaluation of core accomplishment,some thinking on how to guide the evaluation of learning progression,and some reference for the realization of cross-learning and long-term accomplishment evaluation monitoring of students.