Inquiry Learning In High School Biology Teaching Practice

As an important teaching method, the inquiry learning has been widely recognized and practiced in the middle and high schools. The ability of organizing biological classes using inquiry learning is now a basic requirement for biology teachers because the emergence of the new biology curriculum and curriculum syllabus.However, the teachers are facing the challenges of how to design inquiry leaning activities and instruct the students to fulfill their goals effectively.In this study, I have conducted a systematic analysis of how to implement inquiry learning in biology, the classroom teaching and practicing approaches. The approaches that have been applied are learned from some articles, documents,and also by questionnaire and practice studies. The attention has been mainly focused on the following aspects: First, to analyze the theoretical bases for how to implement inquiry learning in biology teaching in high schools. Second, to investigate and analyze the status quo of inquiry learning in current biology teaching and teachers' understanding of it. Third, to analyze the characteristics of the compiling of the new curriculum and dig out the contents that are suitable to carry out inquiry learning. Fourth, to develop inquiry learning activities in teaching practice and sum up some tactics that can be used in inquiry learning in biology classes of middle school and sort out some cases. Finally, conduct an experimental study.It was indicated in the investigation that most of the teachers indeed understood the importance of inquiry learning but they worried about the difficulty to develop inquiry learning in their own classes. The pressure comes mainly from the following factors: inadequate funds for teaching resources, insufficient experimental facilities,the difficulties to get the experimental materials, the uneven development of teaching assessment system, lack of coordination among different departments of the schools and the inflexibility of the teaching time. Those are the major barriers to the implementation of inquiry learning. In addition, teachers and students have problems of their own. For example, some teachers have insufficient teaching resources and they don't have enough time to perform the role well. As for the students, the main problem is that they have too much workload and their inquiry learning ability is limited. So the numbers of the teachers who try inquiry learning in practice are quite few.It is shown in the study of the new biology curriculum and the New Biology Curriculum Syllabus that the new textbooks reflect the concepts of the new syllabus and there is a great deal of knowledge that is suitable for inquiry learning. The textbooks highlight the elements for the inquiry learning, independent learning and cooperative learning of the students.It is indicated in the teaching practice that teachers play a key role in the implementation of inquiry learning in biology classes of high schools. It requires the teachers should do a lot of preparatory work before class. They should have a sound understanding of the syllabus, textbooks, students and process design meticulously. In the class, they should choose the content that can arouse students' interests to learn and create atmospheres for students to participate in. Teachers' questions should be enlightening and summarizing while guidance should be relevant and direct. When deviation occurs, teachers should provide instruction and correction in time, but it should not replace students' own thinking. So in a word, teachers have heavier responsibilities if inquiry learning is applied in class and therefore their importance seems more significant. Implementing inquiry learning in class can help train and enhance students' inquiry abilities such as observation, communication, predication, hypothesis building, variable control, experiment design, information collection,data analysis. Students will learn to apply the knowledge to their pratice and therefore solving the problems. It can be concluded that the ability to solve problems trained by inquiry learning in biology will help students in high schools improving their learning attitude, learning motives, learning desires and their ability to rise questions, collect information, solve the problem and draw conclusions,more important to help them a lot in academic performances.