The Study On The Learning Progressions Of Understanding The Core Ideas Of Matter For Students In Compulsory Education

The implementation of key competency,the curriculum development based on core ideas,and the reform of learning progressions in teaching and evaluation have been becoming the driving force to promote the curriculum reform of basic education.Learning progressions,based on phenomena,facts and evidence,has been become a new research paradigm of science education,both nationally and internationally.On the basis of Scientific Epistemology,Concept Transformation Theory,Cognitive Framework Theory and Concept Formation Theory,Five levels of students’ learning progressions of core ideas of matter through literature research method,educational measurement method,comparative research method and phenomenography theory,taking students in compulsory education stage as the research object,are presupposed and verified in this study.On the whole,the following research tasks were completed:(1)based on the science curricula documents of Grades 1-9 in nine countries or regions,three dimensions of learning progressions of understanding the core ideas of matter were established from the perspectives of ‘composition and identification’ ‘nature and application’ and ‘change and transformation’.Then,the Landscape approach to developing learning progressions was adopted so that the core ideas of matter for students in compulsory education were selected.(2)the presupposed theory model of learning progressions of understanding the core ideas of matter for students in compulsory education was constructed.(3)according to the presupposed five levels,31 items were developed,which were verified by the Clonbach’s Alpha by SPSS 24.0 software.Additionally,the Reliability and Validity of items and students,Separation,Measure,Model S.E.,Infit and Outfit,Unidimensionality,Wright Map and Point Measure Correlation by Winsteps 3.72.0 were verified,and then the items were amended,finally,29 items were formally established.Consequently,510 students from fifteen primary and secondary schools in eight provinces were evaluated.learning progressions of understanding the core ideas of matter for students in compulsory education was established.(4)based on the learning progressions,its application value in curriculum development,textbook compilation,progressive teaching design and student evaluation were analyzed in the Eighth Chapter.The main findings of this study were as follows:Firstly,from the perspective of composition and identification,the students’ understanding levels of the core ideas of matter in compulsory education has progressed from the general perceptual characteristics,such as physical properties and changes such as shape,size,quantity and color,to chemical properties and changes.However,the students’ understanding levels are not absolutely increasing according to the incremental grade stage,and there are a degree of fluctuation.On the whole,the students’ understanding levels of the core ideas of matter increases with the incremental grade stage.There are three key phases that the students’ understanding levels of the core ideas of matter make a qualitative leap in these three phases: Grades 3-4,Grades 7-8 and Grade 9.In terms of substance composition,the students’ understanding levels of the core ideas of matter in compulsory education from macro to micro,such as understanding quantity,area,volume,mass and density,to understanding the molecular and atomic structure of substance.Secondly,from the perspective of nature and application,generally,with the increase of their grade stages,students’ understanding levels of the core ideas of matter is more accurate and scientific,and they can use scientific language to correctly characterize various properties of substance,such as melting,sublimation,acid-base reaction,etc.,which is more and more obvious in senior grades.The concept of specific heat capacity is studied in Grade 9 in China,but it was not involved in Grades 1 to 9abroad.The research found that the learning content of science curricula for students in compulsory education in China is more complicated.Thirdly,from the perspective of change and transformation,the Grade 1-2 students have great limitations in understanding the core ideas of matter,which poses a great challenge to the compilation of teaching materials.Although students have elementary concepts of chemical change in Grade5-6,they can not really understand chemical change in structure and composition until Grade 9.Therefore,the curriculum development of science textbooks should fully consider the learning sequence and higher-order thinking of students.the curriculum development of science textbooks in China traditionally pays less attention to quantitative research.The sequence in which the contents of textbooks are presented to students is a problem worthy of research,which needs to be further deepened and broadened.We should support the research of various learning progressions from the perspective of policies support so as to make a service for the curriculum development of science textbooks.Through quantitative research,it is found that a large proportion of students from Grade7 to grade 8 have been able to understand substance from the perspective of chemical properties and changes,and these students have a high level of correct cognition.Therefore,it may be more beneficial for students to understand the core ideas of matter to set up the chemistry course in Grade 8 in line with students’ cognitive practice.The teaching design of scientific content should focus on the lower anchor,upper anchor and progressive sequence of students’ learning.To blindly present all kinds of scientific contents to students with configured teaching materials sequence may cause a vicious circle for disadvantaged students.Through the quantitative research,it is found that although the students’ cognitive level increases with the grade rise,the students in Grade5-6 and Grade 7-9,especially,show great differences in the understanding level of matter core ideas so that a large class size is not conducive to the progressive design of scientific content,on the contrary,a small class size may be conducive to the learning progression design.In addition,ascribed to the differences in family background,individual differences,learning environment and effort level,students’ understanding levels of the core ideas of matter is irregular.However,the generality and fuzziness of traditional evaluation was solved by evaluating the students’ levels through learning progressions.