Practical Research On Cultivating High School Students’ Higher-order Thinking Skills In Biology Based On SSI Teaching

The 20 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China once again emphasized the importance of the strategy of developing the country through science and education.Science,technology and education are inseparable and mutually reinforcing.The rapid development of science and technology has brought new opportunities and challenges,the information age has put forward higher requirements on the choice of talent’s way of thinking.The huge amount of information fully tests people’s higher-order thinking skills to analyze information,evaluate ideas and create solutions,we need to develop higher-order thinking skills to seize opportunities in the future talent competition.In order to promote the development of thinking and avoid the solidification of thinking,the optimal reform of education needs to let learners get out of the "ivory tower" to face the reality and try to apply theoretical knowledge to solve real problems.Socio-scientific Issues(SSI),which are controversial,realistic and contemporary,have begun to receive much attention in China in recent years,they are closely linked with natural sciences to develop thinking skills in the process of constructing knowledge and group decision-making.Theoretically,it is feasible to teach SSI to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills.This study puts the theory into practice and combines the content of the high school biology selective compulsory 1 "Homeostasis and Regulation",aiming to verify the effectiveness of SSI teaching in developing high school students’ higher-order thinking skills in biology and to provide practical ideas and case references for front-line biology teachers to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills.This study used literature research method,questionnaire survey method,interview method and experimental research method.By reviewing domestic and foreign literature and related books,defined the concepts of "higher-order thinking skills" and "SSI teaching",we studied the current status of related research at home and abroad;the author distributed questionnaires to analyze the level of higher-order thinking skills in biology of high school students,interviewed front-line biology teachers to summarize the cultivation consciousness of higher-order thinking skills and the current state of SSI teaching practices,and to draw conclusions from the survey.Instructional designed and practiced based on the SSI content in Homeostasis and Regulation.In order to verify the effect of SSI teaching,we conducted pre-test and post-test for the experimental class and the control class with questionnaires and self-designed post-test papers,drew up a breakdown of higher-order thinking skills level to evaluate the post-test results,and compared the results of the two classes.The difference between the scores of the three dimensions of analytical skills,evaluation skills and creative skills was compared to be significant.The results of the study and survey showed that: 1.students’ initiative to summarize biological knowledge points is weak,they are not good at citing and actively questioning,their ability to ask questions and create experimental solutions is limited,and there is a certain thought-function fixation phenomenon.2.in general,students’ analytical skills are at an intermediate level,slightly stronger than their evaluation skills and creation skills,and a certain gap appears at the transition stage from analysis to evaluation,indicating that students need to conduct relevant training to promote thinking progression.3.the first-line biology teachers did not have a good understanding of higher-order thinking skills and SSI teaching,and considered limited class time and heavy workload to be the biggest difficulties in practice,but agreed that it was necessary to develop students’ higher-order thinking skills and were willing to try to use SSI teaching mode to develop students’ thinking skills.After the SSI teaching practice,the following conclusions were drawn from the analysis of the data:1.SSI teaching is conducive to the development of high school students’ higher-order thinking skills in biology,and all three dimensions of students’ higher-order thinking skills were significantly improved.2.The SSI teaching model has some practical potential.Based on the teacher interviews and practical conclusions,the author proposed feasible suggestions for SSI teaching: 1.SSI teaching should grasp the length of time and depth of inquiry and be skillfully integrated with course content;2.Teachers need to be facilitated to learn to understand the scientific nature of SSI so as to better guide students’ discussions;3.SSI contextual materials have greater application for training in the high school review phase.