Practical Research On Cultivating The Critical Thinking Of Senior High School Student Based On STEAM Education Concept

With the world going to a new era of deep globalization,the demand for innovative talents is becoming more and more urgent for China.The critical thinking plays a crucial role in cultivating innovative talents.The latest "Biology Curriculum Standards for General High Schools(2017 Edition and2020 Revision)" issued by the Ministry of Education also emphasized the importance of the critical thinking in scientific thinking,particularly for the development of high school students.With the reformation of curriculum,education and teaching concept or principle and textbook compilation have been improved a lot in China,however,there are still many problems in biology teaching practice,such as teachers’ cramming style of teaching in class,students’ mechanically learning the knowledge by rote,lack of attention to students’ personal firsthand experience in teacher,lack of thinking and questioning in students.Fortunately,the STEAM education concept is characterized by its interdisciplinary integration to cultivate students’ ability to solve practical problems,and the process of practical problem solving is the very process of formation for critical thinking.The formation of the STEAM education concept,the status of the research on the critical thinking,the relationship between STEAM education concepts and critical thinking,and their applications in biology teaching were reviewed through reading the related literature.Comparative analysis found that the studies on experimental teaching based on STEAM education concepts in senior high school biology teaching in China were relatively less,and there is almost no research on cultivating senior high school students’ critical thinking.Therefore,the study attempted to use problem-based learning as the main teaching method and apply the STEAM education concept to the teaching process to improve the critical thinking of high school students.The interviews and questionnaires was done for the teachers and students in the objective school of the research to investgate the current status of teachers’ understanding of STEAM education concepts,the level of students’ critical thinking,as well as how much attention was the school and teachers paid for cultivating the senior high school students’ critical thinking.The investigation revealed that critical thinking level of students was not high and there was significant difference for individual;only a few teachers had some initial and incomplete understanding for STEAM education concepts;most of the teachers had clear recognization for the importance of critical thinking in promoting students’ integrated development,and also paid a lot of attention on the cultivation of critical thinking,but suffered from the lack of effective teaching methods.It was learned from the interviews that teachers highly valued and had great expectation for the new teaching idea of integrating STEAM education with high school biology teaching to cultivate students’ critical thinking.Based on the preliminary survey,combining the STEAM education concept and the learning situation analysis of the students,two teaching cases were designed,"Generation and Transmission of Nerve Impulses" and "Mitosis and Meiosis".To implement the teaching experiment,Class 8 and Class 9 of Senior Two were taken as test(teaching based on STEAM education concept)and control(teaching traditional method),repectively,and one semester lasted for the experiment.At the end of the semester,questionnaire of California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory Chinese version(CTDI-CV)was used for the post test and students’ scores of examination were collected,to analyze the impact of STEAM education on level of critical thinking and acquisition of biological knowledge for high school students,respectivly.The research results showed that it was feasible to integrate STEAM education concept into teaching of high school biology;the STEAM education concept was effective in cultivating critical thinking for high school students;it had no significant impact on students’ acquisition of biological knowledge for teaching based on the STEAM education concept.In summary,the combination of STEAM education concept and teaching of the high school biology had certain effects on cultivating students’ critical thinking,however,it is not achieved overnight and requires long-term adherence to achieve the desired effect.