| Curriculum Standards for Science Education in the current ongoing reform of China's elementary schools clearly states that scientific inquiry should be put at the core of the science learning and it is both the goal and the way of learning. So how to implement scientific inquiry course effectively has become a hot issue. Scientific inquiry is a process of children's development of exploring nature, embodiment of the hypothesis deduction which is a branch of scientific method, promotion of the students'internal construction, the unity of the scientific nature and educational nature. Looking inside into the existing literature and the teaching cases, the research on the scientific activity, especially on the process of scientific inquiry is rare, although there are many discussions on the scientific inquiry learning and teaching issues related to scientific exploration. The misunderstanding of theory results in teachers'confusion in the teaching practice process, which affects the implementation of scientific inquiry teaching effectiveness.Researches in this paper focus on the process of scientific inquiry in elementary school science classes through analysis on the cases of scientific research and teaching literature. On the base of related study, the basic process, all stages and the links between the mutual relations of the elementary scientific inquiry are extracted with factor analysis approach. And from this perspective the paper could point out implementation essentials and provide some guidance and help for the actual conduct of scientific inquiry teaching.The paper has five chapters.Chapter one describes the origin of this study, as well as the purpose and methods of the research. This part analyzes hot issues, meanings, values, research and its implementation in the education field nowdays, and concern about the need for scientific inquiry process. This part also describes the significance of the study from the theoretical and practical perspective and presents research ideas and methods. Chapter two briefly describes the research actuality of the scientific inquiry at domestic and abroad, and explains the concept of"Inquiry","Scientific Inquiry","Inquiry Learning","Inquiry Teaching", which provides the basis for subsequent research.Chapter three extracts the basic stages in the process of the elementary scientific inquiry. This chapter analyzes the possibility of the process from the fundamental factors, describes the scientific inquiry process from three types, and determined the elementary scientific inquiry stage in the process and the basic link using factor analysis.Chapter four discusses the implementation keys from the process and relationships between the various stages of scientific inquiry. This chapter contains three sections, which is hypothetical stage, the exploratory stage, the conclusion forming stage. Each section is sorted in basic aspects of the mutual relations, supplemented by a description of teaching cases.Concluding remarks of this study was to summarize the main contents and conclusions. |
