Science education in China has been carried out for more than 20 years, and some achievements have been made, but some problems still need our serious consideration. First of all, from the perspective of students' scientific literacy, which can directly judge the level and effectiveness of science education, the survey of middle school students' scientific literacy in Beijing in 2000 showed that the scientific attitude of middle school students in Beijing was correct in 60.5% and incorrect in 39.5%. 68.9% students made the right choice in scientific and cultural knowledge, and 3 1. 1% middle school students did not make the right choice. 54.2% students have good manners, while 45.8% middle school students lack good manners. Secondly, from the perspective of national scientific literacy, China has adopted the internationally accepted sampling survey method in 1992, and compared it with 14 developed countries, and found that the national understanding of scientific knowledge ranks first from the bottom. The scientific quality of students is the product of school education, and the national quality reflects the overall educational level of the country. It can be seen that there are indeed great problems in science education in China. The main reason is that there is a big gap between China's science education teaching content, teaching methods and curriculum setting and developed countries.
1 The teaching content of science education is divorced from real life.
For a long time, under the traditional elite education system, the educational function of primary and secondary schools is mainly to train outstanding students for higher-level schools. In terms of educational content, the subject knowledge system is the main part, and only the compulsory content is studied, and other contents can be studied less or not. Under the influence of this system, the content of science education in primary and secondary schools is completely divorced from daily life, "focusing on closed laboratory research and abstract problems, which leads students to understand the source of scientific theory and its role in real life, but they still don't know why." A visiting scholar said: "The combination of theory and practice is an important issue for Chinese and American schools. However, the emphasis is different. Schools in China put more emphasis on learning theory, while schools in the United States put more emphasis on learning practice. "In fact, there is no insurmountable gap between practice and theory, and technology is a bridge between theory and practice.
The teaching method of science education is authoritative and mechanical.
The teaching method of science education in China is mainly "teacher-centered, with teachers' explanations and questions as the mainstay." Students have been around teachers, textbooks and exams since the day they went to school. Listening to lectures, taking notes, reciting and doing exercises are the main learning strategies of most students. This learning strategy completely violates the significance and value of science. The "indoctrination" teaching method will only make scientific knowledge boring and miss the opportunity to learn the essence of science, that is, the scientific spirit. At the same time, this teaching method ignores the students' original cognitive structure, that is, ignores the pre-scientific concept. According to the view of constructivism, we can't get close to the real world directly if we know that some things don't involve the consistency between our conceptual schema and the meaning they represent.
3. Science education curriculum tends to be single and specialized.
From the mode of curriculum development, there are two basic forms: subject-based curriculum and comprehensive curriculum. The course of science education in China adopts the subject-based teaching method, which is embodied in the courses of nature in primary schools, physics, chemistry, biology and geography in middle schools. In the United States, since the curriculum reform in the 1960s, the integration of its science curriculum has begun, and the science education from kindergarten to grade 8 has long been comprehensive. Contemporary science is highly divided and integrated, and the teaching of subject-specific courses only pays attention to the internal logic and integrity of the subject itself, while ignoring the relationship between disciplines. In today's society, which needs a large number of compound talents and quality talents, single subject education hinders the development of students' comprehensive ability, directly hinders the overall improvement of public scientific literacy, and does not meet the needs of individuals and society.
In addition, the problem of science education curriculum in China is also reflected in the separation of science education and humanities education. The 20th century is an era in which the educational thoughts of "scientism" and "humanism" are integrated. The integration of "scientism" and "humanism" education is the inevitable result of the development of modern education and the objective requirement of social development for modern education. At present, China's science education with exam-oriented education as its main feature has a strong color of "scientism", and the goal of science education is limited to simply cultivating scientific experts and technical experts. Ignore the cultivation of its humanistic spirit.
Second, the solution
China's science education should focus on the scene of science education, that is, to teach students to use the scientific knowledge they have learned in school to understand and solve practical problems in daily life. According to the concepts of contemporary sociology of science, pedagogy of science and philosophy of science, science is not pure science, but developed in a broad social background, which is influenced by social values as well as social values. Moreover, scientific knowledge is a research achievement that depends on Du Hui's background. Therefore, many things that constitute scientific methods, judgments and passions can only be obtained if students are exposed to science in person. Based on the above point of view, this paper attempts to put forward countermeasures with situational concept as the core.
1 offer comprehensive science education courses and attach importance to technical education and humanities education.
With the development of contemporary science, science, as a system, is not only an independent discipline, but also an interdisciplinary subject formed by the interaction of independent disciplines. It exists as a subsystem of the scientific system, which shows that science education has a comprehensive trend. The advantages of comprehensive science education curriculum are as follows: firstly, there are similarities and correlations among disciplines, and comprehensive science education curriculum can make use of the characteristics and advantages of each discipline to solve complex practical problems in society more effectively; Second, the coordinated development of multidisciplinary research can produce new knowledge mutation and new scientific situation; Thirdly, making knowledge science full of life, concreteness and diversity is conducive to improving students' comprehensive quality. Therefore, in the course of science education, we should first attach importance to technical education. Science courses should offer corresponding "hand and brain" courses, such as asking students to design a method of fixing or moving objects, designing a balance to compare the weights of two objects, and designing the circuit of alarm devices. Schools should regularly carry out technical design activities to show the works designed and produced by students. The teaching of this course can refer to STS course, that is, science-technology-society teaching mode. It integrates science, technology and social knowledge into science education, expands the content of science education, makes science education involve many aspects of social life, and pays great attention to hot scientific issues. For example, in Britain, the earliest STS course, the course includes reading materials, teachers' guides, audio recordings, decision-making games, slides and statistics. Teaching materials are designed into complete sets of modules according to different age groups. Each set includes 100 ~ 120 module. When selecting materials, we not only consider natural science disciplines, but also pay special attention to the use of such three themes: (1) the same topic related to daily life and real society; (2) Important figures in the history of science and their inventions and discoveries; (3) Advantages and disadvantages coexist, and the answer is not limited to a controversial scientific and technological problem in daily life.
Science education needs the integration of humanities. Humanities has promoted the development and perfection of science education with its "hidden" characteristics. Implicit education mainly affects science education through campus architecture, culture and learning atmosphere. In the reform of science curriculum in Taiwan Province Province, "potential curriculum" has been added. At present, some primary schools in Taiwan Province Province have botanical gardens, zoos and scientific information windows. According to the idea of integration, implicit education needs to be integrated with explicit education to make science education more effective. Modern constructivism clearly puts forward the explicit teaching of scientific essence in science curriculum to realize humanistic education. Therefore, the discussion on the nature of science can be integrated into the curriculum content of history of science and philosophy of science. By introducing the background and inventors of some famous scientific products and experiments, we can understand the origin of these scientific things that have a great impact on our lives and the noble scientific literacy and anecdotes of scientists, so as to integrate students into scientific culture and stimulate students' interest in learning science through example demonstration effect.
2. Analyze and understand the students' cognitive structure, and make the teaching conform to the students' development level.
Generally speaking, students answer questions in their study according to their own ideas. In this process, students do not simply review what they have learned, but use new ideas to transform their original ideas. Because every student has a process of re-creation and re-discovery when learning knowledge, students must learn by inner creation and experience if they want to firmly master scientific knowledge. As Piaget said, "Students establish a theoretical level by absorbing and integrating the original knowledge." Hashwi summed up the results of empirical research and pointed out that students generally tend to observe those experiments that conform to their own "concepts" and ignore those that are contrary to their own "concepts". This shows that students are just trying to discover what their current "concept" allows them to discover. Therefore, according to this characteristic of students' learning, teachers should follow the following principles in science education: (1) Understand students' existing scientific knowledge level and teach according to students' thoughts. Teachers can understand students' existing knowledge level and thinking quality through classroom questioning, and then introduce conventional knowledge and concepts. According to the learning principle of constructivism, we should pay attention to: ask students to make a testable prediction; Use cheap facilities or equipment; There is a certain complexity, which enables students to propose a variety of methods to solve problems; Suitable for group activities. (2) Teachers should guide students to replace wrong ideas with correct ones. There are inevitably some mistakes in students' original knowledge structure. Teachers should realize that students' seemingly wrong or confused views just illustrate their current understanding. Therefore, teachers need to take the initiative to understand students' ideological status and prepare lessons accordingly. It is precisely because they understand students' "wrong ideas" that they can change students' ideas and form scientific thinking methods through the interaction between teaching and learning, thus gaining scientific knowledge. As many teachers with rich teaching experience have said, "preparing lessons means preparing textbooks on the one hand and students on the other."
3. Create situational teaching environment and impart scientific knowledge to students with inquiry teaching method.
American science education standard (draft) clearly points out that "scientific inquiry is the basic and leading principle of students' scientific learning". Students should learn by doing, acquire knowledge through activities and inquiry, master scientific methods, and form a scientific attitude towards nature. The effectiveness of situational teaching and inquiry learning methods in science education lies in: first, a large number of studies reveal that scientific knowledge depends on the research results of social situations. It is explored in the natural environment and social life practice under the control of the laboratory. Moreover, scientific ideas or theories can only be confirmed by scientific organizations after exchanges and tests by some major scientific and social institutions, so they are situational and social. If we ignore this feature, it will inevitably make scientific concepts and theories too abstract. Science education in Canada emphasizes that science courses need to be studied by active experimental methods, requires all students to participate in experimental activities, and requires teachers to teach scientific concepts under the background of real problems and events when possible. Second, as far as the function of thinking activities is concerned, the subject needs to critically examine the existing cognitive achievements and make bold innovations. In the process of cognition, criticism is the premise of creation, and creation is the inherent requirement of scientific critical spirit. Constructivism holds that the essence of any excellent "teaching" and "learning" is a critical relationship.
According to the advantages of situational teaching and the characteristics of thinking, teachers should do the following in teaching: First, teachers should pay attention to the times and reality of science education content, that is, scientific knowledge should keep pace with the times. Developed countries attach great importance to the content of science education, such as computer education in Britain, which is excellent all over Europe, not only early but also fast. In addition, the content of science education should be combined with the daily life of society, which is not only convenient for students to master, but also enables students to better solve problems and handle accidents in real life. First, science education courses should attach importance to experimental classes and discussion classes, and put students into real situations to study. Third, be good at using cognitive conflicts to put students in problem situations, so that the focus of learning shifts from students copying what teachers say to students successfully organizing their own experiences. Fourth, guide students to explain problems scientifically. The role of teachers is to guide and inspire students; Guide students to obtain evidence that can help them explain and evaluate scientific problems; Guide students to form explanations based on factual evidence and answer scientific questions; By comparing other possible explanations, guide students to evaluate their own explanations; Guide students to communicate and demonstrate their explanations.
The content of modern science education should be practical, the teaching methods should be objective and effective, the teaching process and courses should be flexible, and students should be a new generation with a sense of the times, rational thinking and flexible adaptability.