Research On The Understanding Level Of Scientific Inquiry Among Science Proficient Teachers In High School

A new round of reformation of college entrance examination,as well as the revision of high school curriculum standards and the compilation of new textbooks have been carried out in China.The achievement of students' scientific literacy can not be achieved without scientific inquiry.Scientific inquiry is still the main theme in the field of science education.As the leading force in classroom teaching,teachers' understanding of scientific inquiry will affect students' "doing" and "understanding" inquiry directly,and ultimately affect the achievement of scientific literacy.As the backbone of the school,proficient teachers,also affect the growth of novice teachers and the overall development of school teaching.It is very necessary to carry out the investigation and research on the level of science teachers' understanding of scientific inquiry.This study uses the open questionnaire on scientific inquiry,an improved version of the new version of the VASI(View About Scientific Inquiry)questionnaire,developed by American science education experts Norman Lederman and Judith S.Lederman.In this paper,27 science proficient teachers from a high school in a county city in Hebei Province were selected as investigation objects,in order to preliminarily understand experienced teachers' understanding of scientific inquiry,find typical features,and the main problems.The ultimate aim is to promote the professional development of teachers.According to researches,currently,the overall level of science proficient teachers' understanding towards scientific inquiry is not high,there are differences existing on high school science proficient teachers' understanding on science inquiry in eight dimensions,there are differences existing on high school science proficient teachers' understanding on science inquiry on three different levels,and hereafter are the following characteristics:Dimension three(inquiry procedures are guided by the question asked)and Dimension eight(explanations are developed from a combination of collected data and what is already known),the overall level of understanding is higher,and most teachers have developed an informed understanding;Dimension one(scientific investigations all begin with a questionand do not necessarily test a hypothesis),Dimension five(inquiry procedures can influence results)and Dimension six(research conclusions must be consistent with the data collected),the overall level of understanding followed,among them,three different levels of understanding of Dimension five are evenly distributed,there is a big gap between informed understandings and naive understandings and there also is a big gap between mixed understandings and naive understandings on Dimension one,the same as Dimension six;Dimension two(there is no single set of steps followed in all investigations(i.e.there is no single scientific method))and Dimension four(all scientists performing the same procedures may not get the same results),the overall level of understandings is lower,and the very little understanding is informed,and about half the understanding is mixed;Dimension seven(scientific data are not the same as scientific evidence),the overall level of understandings is lowest,and what is not well understood,most are naive.Two major problems are found: high school science proficient teachers' understanding on science inquiry have limited access,and not the same;the deviation of the high school science proficient teachers' understanding on science inquiry may be changed.Therefore,the author comes up with some suggestions on how to improve high school science proficient teachers' understanding on science inquiry in the following three aspects: direct way(make clear the learning goal of understanding scientific inquiry in the process of doing inquiry),explicit way(write the theoretical knowledge of understanding scientific inquiry into science normal students' teaching materials,science curriculum standards,etc.)and reflective way(Enhance teachers' attention to understanding scientific inquiry).This study aims to find out the typical characteristics and main problems from high school science proficient teachers' understanding on science inquiry,and put forward some suggestions for reference basing on the conclusions,and also pave the way for further research.