On how to do a good job in scientific inquiry in physics class

At present, the curriculum reform of basic education is developing in depth, and the physics curriculum standard of compulsory education has been tried out for several years. This year, the high school physics curriculum standard was promulgated, which opened the prelude to the high school physics curriculum reform. The new curriculum standard clearly puts forward that the purpose of physics course is to improve the scientific literacy of all students; Pay attention to the same foundation in the course structure, reflecting selectivity; It embodies the times, foundation and selectivity in the course content, and designs modular courses for students to choose from, which is an important measure of curriculum reform. However, in order to truly implement the requirements of the new curriculum standards and promote the all-round development of students' scientific literacy, it is necessary to carry out in-depth classroom teaching reform, change the traditional teaching methods based on knowledge transfer, and gradually form modern physics teaching methods based on promoting students' development. This is an arduous process, which requires clear guiding ideology and the joint efforts of physics educators. Judging from the development trend and research results of physics education reform at home and abroad, we should use the concept of scientific inquiry to guide the physics teaching reform in senior high schools. At present, physics education circles have different understandings and understandings of scientific inquiry. There is a view that only by letting students go, let them find problems and do experiments by themselves, is scientific inquiry and inquiry learning. This view is a narrow understanding of scientific inquiry, which only sees the autonomy and operability of scientific inquiry, but ignores the essential significance of scientific inquiry. In actual teaching, it is impossible for us to learn every subject in this way. Therefore, how to understand scientific inquiry and how to guide physics teaching reform with the concept of scientific inquiry has become an important research topic. From the development of physics, Galileo initiated experimental research, and his research on free fall can be regarded as a model of scientific inquiry. After long-term thinking about the motion of celestial bodies, Newton finally discovered gravity and unified the motion law of the earth and celestial bodies. Isn't it a monument in the mileage of scientific exploration? The law of electromagnetic induction is the result of Faraday's experiment, while Maxwell's equations are the crystallization of theoretical thinking. Which one is not the brilliant achievement of scientific inquiry, the establishment of quantum theory and relativity, and the symbol of physical revolution? Therefore, the significance of scientific inquiry is very extensive. From the perspective of physics education, we can understand scientific inquiry from the following three levels: First, at the conceptual level, scientific inquiry embodies modern scientific ideas. Science is not a completed and solidified knowledge system, but an endless process of human exploration of nature. The scientific knowledge system is constantly developing and changing in the process of exploration, and many scientific conclusions are to be falsified and need to be revised after new evidence is discovered. Human's understanding of nature is still the same, but for students, their individual understanding needs to develop and change constantly in the process of inquiry. Therefore, the process of learning physics is a process of constantly changing the original understanding and concept of nature, and a process of consciously realizing the self-renewal of ideas. The second is the level of thinking methods. Scientific inquiry is an effective way of understanding and practice formed by scientists in the process of long-term exploration of natural laws. The most important thing is the scientific way of thinking, which is what we usually call the scientific way of thinking. Contemporary science education theory holds that there is no fixed model for scientific inquiry, but there are some distinguishable elements, such as raising scientific questions, establishing hypotheses, collecting evidence, putting forward theories or models, evaluating and communicating. These are the embodiment of scientific thinking and working methods. In physics curriculum standards, according to these elements, students are required to understand scientific inquiry and develop their scientific inquiry ability. The third is operational skills. Any experimental inquiry process needs some thinking and operation skills, such as controlling variables, using instruments, recording and processing data, etc. Therefore, except for the third level, which requires students to do experiments, the above two levels can be infiltrated into the teaching process in various ways. Second, scientific inquiry embodies the essential characteristics of physics and is an important part of physics teaching. Scientific inquiry is one of the essential characteristics of physics, but it has been ignored in physics teaching in middle schools in China. The first topic discussed by the International Sports Commission in the book Sports Research and Teacher Education is the essence of physics. The author of the article, A·P· French, pointed out: Generally speaking, the essence of science is to observe and explore the world around us, trying to determine some potential orders and patterns from known things. Physics mainly studies the inanimate world, always trying to confirm the most basic principles and unify many laws. Starting from the essence of science, he pointed out the differences and connections between physics and other natural sciences. The essential characteristics of physics can be considered to include two aspects. On the one hand, its procedural characteristics, that is, the observation and exploration of nature, reflect the * * * nature of natural science; On the other hand, it is the characteristics of the research object and the goal pursued. Taking the inanimate world as the main research field, this paper tries to confirm the most basic principles of the world and pursue internal unity. Physics is developed in the process of pursuing the unity of knowledge. In the process of scientific inquiry, it is the essential feature of physics and the first thing to be reflected in physics teaching to seek the essential characteristics of things and the thinking method of unifying laws. Middle school students' understanding and knowledge of physics is gradually formed through the learning process of personal experience. Physics class should not be a combination of listening to lectures, taking notes, doing experiments and doing exercises, but a process of constantly exploring the nature and internal relations of physical phenomena with the guidance and help of teachers, and taking scientific inquiry as the guiding ideology of physics teaching reform, which is the requirement of embodying the nature of physics and promoting the development of students' scientific literacy, and also the common trend of international physics education development. In the first wave of international science curriculum reform since 1950s, scientific inquiry, as a physical process, entered middle school curriculum and teaching. The famous PSSC textbook writes that physics presents not only dry facts, but fundamentally, it is a continuous process for human beings to explore the essence of the material world. Students need to go through the process of scientific inquiry in physics learning, which is generally recognized by the international physics education community. Although the discovery method advocated by Bruner has been questioned in theory and practice, the promotion of scientific inquiry to physics education is certain, and it has been widely recognized again in the new wave of scientific curriculum reform since the end of the 20th century. Research shows that scientific inquiry and the construction of physical knowledge are a unified process. In the reform of physics teaching, many people are worried that emphasizing scientific inquiry will affect students' mastery of physics knowledge. Guiding physics teaching with the idea of scientific inquiry is not to ignore the learning of physical knowledge, but to pay attention to the process of students' independent construction of physical knowledge. Scientific inquiry and knowledge construction occur in the same process. The essential difference between constructing knowledge and imparting knowledge is that the imparting of knowledge is top-down, the source of knowledge is teachers and teaching materials, and the receiver is students. Construction is bottom-up, and students' minds are not a blank sheet of paper. They have many preconceptions and special understandings and ways of thinking about physical phenomena and problems. These original understandings can only be truly changed through conflicts and challenges in the process of scientific inquiry, and scientific concepts and ways of thinking can be truly established. A large number of research results in physics education at home and abroad show that the process of students' learning scientific knowledge is a process of building their own knowledge on the basis of their original knowledge, and the cognitive conflicts arising from students' original knowledge and inquiry play a very important role in the construction of physical knowledge. Studying physics through inquiry is the development trend of international physics teaching at present. Take Physics Inquiry (1996) compiled by the Physics Education Research Group of the University of Washington as an example. This textbook is written on the basis of long-term and in-depth study on how students learn physics, which completely breaks the traditional mode of writing physics textbooks. In the preface, the author points out that inquiry physics consists of a series of units based on experiments, which introduce physics and materials science to students step by step. Students gain direct experience of scientific process by studying simple materials system and its interaction deeply. Students start from their own observation, develop basic physical concepts, use and explain different scientific expressions, and build models with explanatory and predictive functions. All unit designs have a clear purpose, that is, to develop students' scientific reasoning ability and provide practical activities to link scientific concepts, expressions and models with practical problems. The research on teaching strategies to help students construct knowledge in the process of inquiry has also achieved certain results. Here is a typical example to illustrate how to unify scientific inquiry and knowledge construction in the teaching process. Knedler (1987) put forward the teaching strategy based on the new philosophy of science by studying the students aged 16 19. Its purpose is not to replace students' own viewpoints with scientific theories, but to let students understand scientific theories and their own viewpoints in an exploratory way, and to learn scientific concepts by comparing the differences between daily thinking and scientific thinking. This strategy includes the following six stages: 1. Preparation: the process before teaching intervention, including preparation tools and related concepts. 2. Start: Ask an open question. 3. Implementation: including the following contents: asking questions or forming hypotheses, designing and conducting experiments, observing, discussing theoretically, and summarizing findings. 4. Discussion results: class discussion. 5. Comparison with scientific conclusions: Compare students' findings with similar historical theories or modern concepts, find out the differences and discuss the reasons for these differences. 6. Reflection: Encourage students to review the implementation process and think about special problems or difficulties. The last three steps of this teaching strategy reflect the social construction process of scientific knowledge. Students, teachers and scientists are regarded as a large group, and students can only draw individual conclusions through inquiry, not general conclusions. Through the comparison and reflection of scientific conclusions, students' individual or small group knowledge can be developed into general knowledge, so as to achieve the unity of developing scientific thinking and constructing knowledge in the process of inquiry. Fourth, scientific inquiry can stimulate students' intrinsic motivation to learn physics, so that students can learn physics courses effectively. There are differences between teachers' teaching and students' learning, which is the same problem in the international physics education field, indicating that traditional teaching methods can not help students learn effectively. Many researchers have done a lot of research on inquiry teaching, and the results show that inquiry teaching is more in line with students' understanding and development process. In physics teaching, scientific inquiry organically unifies the inquiry essence of physics subject and the inquiry process of students' learning, which embodies the essential characteristics of physics teaching. From the initial understanding, students actively participate in the process of finding explanations and answers, and truly become the main body of exploring the physical world. It is essentially different from heuristic teaching. Heuristic teaching still puts teachers in the main position, and students need teachers to inspire them, which often leads to a situation of inspiration without development. Scientific inquiry can stimulate students' intrinsic motivation to learn physics and give full play to their learning potential. In the process of inquiry, students should clearly study the problem, collect and analyze information by themselves, and make assumptions or predictions; Under the guidance of teachers, we should gain new ideas and new ways of thinking in the process of discussing evidence, comparing conclusions and comparing our own conclusions with scientific knowledge, and actively construct, revise or give up the original understanding and explanation, so as to expand our knowledge and understanding of science. This process involves the reorganization of deep thinking process structure and the construction in the sense of metacognition, which can improve students' ability of questioning, reasoning and critical thinking, enhance their control and sense of responsibility for their own learning, and thus learn physics more effectively. Inquiry teaching not only has a long history and related research in western countries, but also has been practiced in Taiwan Province and Hongkong for many years. In the reform of physics teaching in China, many teachers are also trying to explore teaching and have achieved certain results. However, due to the limitation of class hours and the pressure of exam-oriented education, the reform of physics classroom teaching in senior high schools has been affected to some extent, but the development of research-based learning and project research has played a certain role in the transformation of teachers' concepts and the accumulation of experience. V. Suggestions on the reform of physics teaching in senior high school Although the nature of students' learning science is * * *, the relevant research results of foreign countries, Hong Kong and Taiwan can be used for reference. However, the teaching process is a very complicated process, which is influenced and restricted by many factors, among which the social environment, cultural background and school conditions can not be ignored, and it is in these respects that there are huge differences between China and developed countries. Judging from the current situation in China, there are also great differences between developed and underdeveloped areas, and between key middle schools and ordinary middle schools. As a modern physics teaching mode, inquiry teaching should be the direction of our teaching reform and development, but it can't be done in one step. Under the current conditions, it should be feasible to guide the reform of physics teaching with the concept of scientific inquiry. The key lies in teachers' recognition of inquiry teaching and their sense of responsibility for effective physics teaching. At the same time, teachers' own understanding of scientific inquiry and their ability to guide students to carry out scientific inquiry are also very important. Teachers can take scientific inquiry as the guiding ideology of physics teaching according to the actual situation of schools and students, and start from the following three aspects to gradually change the traditional teaching mode and develop towards inquiry teaching. First, the idea of scientific inquiry is embodied in specific teaching methods and means. Teachers should grasp the essence of scientific inquiry, not formalization and stylization. For example, teachers' teaching, as a specific teaching method, can not only become a classroom full of knowledge teaching, but also embody the idea of scientific inquiry as a supplement to inquiry teaching. The key lies in when the teacher uses it and how to use it. Second, just like the inquiry process of scientists, students' inquiry methods are flexible and diverse, rather than a set of specific models and procedures. Teachers should pay attention to stimulate students' enthusiasm for inquiry and cultivate students' consciousness and ability of independent inquiry. Third, scientific inquiry does not necessarily require a well-equipped laboratory. Teachers should make full use of low-cost items in life and guide students to carry out inquiry activities on the basis of humility. In this way, there are more teaching methods to guide physics teaching with the idea of scientific inquiry. Students' hands-on experiment is one of the important ways, but it is not the only way. Any physics teaching content is the unity of scientific inquiry process and results, and it is also the process of finding, asking and solving problems. Only in the past teaching, the process of scientific inquiry was neglected, and the scientific conclusions were often told directly to students for them to understand and apply, thus separating the scientific process from the results. To guide physics teaching with the ideas and concepts of scientific inquiry, teachers should first create a classroom atmosphere of inquiry learning, so that students can gradually experience and realize that learning physics is a process of constantly exploring the surrounding material world with the guidance and help of teachers, constantly developing their own understanding and inquiry ability, and forming scientific ways of thinking and behavior habits. Teachers should carefully study the teaching content from the perspective of scientific development and analyze the research methods that scientists put forward and solve problems; On the basis of fully understanding students' original understanding and way of thinking, we should grasp the process of putting forward, researching and solving every important physical problem from the perspective of students' development, break down big problems into small ones according to students' reality, and finally turn them into problems that students are interested in and can solve. Provide students with instruments, data or materials needed for research, guide students to explore the answers to questions with scientific research methods and ways of thinking, and try to solve these problems by themselves or through cooperative learning. When students encounter difficulties, they can use various methods (such as multimedia teaching, etc. ) Show or reproduce the inquiry process and thinking method of physicists, thus inspiring students. In this process, students are guided to actively seek and establish the connection between knowledge and construct their own understanding of the physical world. Only in this way can the three-dimensional goal proposed by the physics curriculum standard be truly realized on students.