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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 11, No. 5

Publication Date: May 25, 2024

DOI:10.14738/assrj.115.17009.

Wu, L., Zhang, X., & Sun, L. (2024). Research on Middle School Chemistry Teaching Design Based on Real Problem Situation.

Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal, 11(5). 290-297.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Research on Middle School Chemistry Teaching Design Based on

Real Problem Situation

Liming Wu

Henan Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate Chemistry, College of Chemistry

and Molecular Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, 475004, China

Xinyu Zhang

Henan Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate Chemistry, College of Chemistry

and Molecular Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, 475004, China

Lin Sun

ORCID identifier is 0000-0003-3492-2487

Henan Key Laboratory of Polyoxometalate Chemistry, College of Chemistry

and Molecular Sciences, Henan University, Kaifeng, Henan, 475004, China

ABSTRACT

In today's society, education in our country is showing an increasing trend of

development. Chemistry, as a subject, has also made great progress. Most of the

chemistry teaching models we remember from our childhood are to instil concepts,

memorize concepts and ignore the combination of concepts with real-life

situations, resulting in a mechanized and monotonous approach to learning

chemistry. As a result, most secondary school students are not very good at

chemistry. The reason for this is that chemistry is a very logical subject, and a large

amount of chemical knowledge can be memorized by students using only one-sided

words, which is still a challenge for them to understand. However, interest is the

most valuable asset of children, therefore, this paper will be based on the existing

information, and combined with the current theoretical research and development

trend, in-depth discussion of the importance of the problem contextualized

chemistry teaching, and through practical cases to explore how to better integrate

the problem context into the chemistry classroom.

Keywords: Problem situation, High School Chemistry, Teaching design, Chemical

education.

INTRODUCTION

Chemistry is a natural discipline that explores in depth the nature of matter, the laws of motion

and their changes, which not only reveals the composition, properties and structure of

substances, but also allows the discovery of new substances, thus advancing mankind's

knowledge of the sciences and transforming them into tools for understanding and

transforming the material world. As a discipline with a long history and strong vitality, the

achievements of chemistry have become an important symbol of social civilization. However,

in our conventional chemistry teaching, students are mostly in a passive position, with teachers

lecturing directly, students taking notes and then deepening their understanding of the

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Wu, L., Zhang, X., & Sun, L. (2024). Research on Middle School Chemistry Teaching Design Based on Real Problem Situation. Advances in Social

Sciences Research Journal, 11(5). 290-297.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.115.17009

concepts and memorization of knowledge through a large number of exercises in class.

Obviously, this model is no longer applicable to today's classroom teaching, which not only

ignores the student's subjective position, hindering the ability of students to find problems,

thinking, problem solving, but also contrary to the construction of the student's knowledge

system, affecting the students' in-depth understanding of chemical knowledge, which also leads

to the learning of conceptual knowledge of the students to stay in the temporary memory level,

which is due to the students' conceptual knowledge of the conceptual knowledge of the simple

representation, and not incorporate the new concepts into the original knowledge. not

incorporate the new concepts into the original knowledge system, without forming a complete

and sound systematic structure [1].

Society is progressing and the education reform is getting better and better. Teachers should

actively communicate with students in the classroom, develop with them, and while teaching

knowledge, they should also pay attention to cultivating their thinking talent, encouraging them

to ask questions, explore, reflect, and summarize in practice, so that they can learn more

independently and individually under the guidance of the teacher. Teachers should also respect

the cultivation of students' personality, pay attention to the individual differences of students,

meet the learning needs of different students, and create an educational environment in which

students can actively participate [2]. With the continuous development of high school students'

theoretical thinking and the continuous improvement of their learning ability, their

independent learning ability and self-control ability are significantly improved, and their

observation, memory and thinking direction of things become clearer, and they begin to pay

attention to their own future development and ideal planning, and they become more proactive

and self-conscious in learning. The cognitive structure, emotion, personality and other

psychological factors of high school students form a new situation of synergistic development,

and their physical and mental development is constantly converging and maturing [3]. The

teaching mode of real problem situation encourages students to actively participate in the

chemistry classroom, contact their life related chemical experience, personal perception of the

problem situation, and further into this learning atmosphere, which will undoubtedly cultivate

students' interest in learning, and under the guidance of a problem situation, subconsciously

develop their own knowledge construction system and improve their chemical learning ability.

MEANING AND DEVELOPMENT OF PROBLEM SITUATIONS

Problematic situations refer to a learning situation in which a student, faced with a new

problem that he or she cannot understand, needs to overcome certain difficulties encountered

in learning in order to understand the problem through a number of ways. In order to get out

of this situation, it is necessary to develop new strategies for activities that have not been done

before, i.e., to complete creative activities [4]. Problem situation means that the teacher

consciously creates a variety of problematic activities to inspire the learner's thinking and

research activities, so as to achieve creative activities. "Creating situations" can cultivate their

spirit of inquiry and the ability to think independently, the teacher through the creation of the

corresponding problem situation in different parts of the better understanding of students,

knowledge acquisition, so as to achieve the purpose of "creating situations". Through the real

problem situation, put forward the students concerned about the problem, can more easily

stimulate students' interest and desire to explore, so that students' learning needs to be

satisfied [5]. Integrating real situations into the classroom is equivalent to combining students'

intuitive feelings about life (i.e. rational thinking) with abstract chemical knowledge (i.e.

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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal (ASSRJ) Vol. 11, Issue 5, May-2024

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

perceptual thinking). Students can intuitively feel and cause thinking about the problems in the

context in the concrete situation, and the learning mode of students is transformed from

passive to active, and the quality of good discovery, active thinking, and independent

investigation is formed in the process of learning [6]. The book Perspectives on Contextual

Learning established the status of contextual teaching in the western educational community,

which shows a wealth of research cases in the classroom contextual learning and evaluation of

learning effects [7]. Since entering the 21st century, the new curriculum reform has gradually

emerged, and at the same time, the application of contextual teaching in the classroom has

gradually increased, and more and more experts, scholars, and front-line teachers have

recognized the importance of teaching context [8].

TEACHING CHEMISTRY IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS BASED ON AUTHENTIC PROBLEM

SITUATIONS

Teaching context is in the educational teaching activities, students under the guidance of the

teacher actively interact with the teaching content, means and the educational environment

and other elements, so that their internal cognition, emotion and behaviour with the external

teaching scene appropriate psychological atmosphere [9]. However, the author believes that

the teaching context is more than a psychological atmosphere, more like an educational

environment, after all, the state of mind originates from the environment. Students through

independent exploration or group discussion, around the teacher's questions to collect

information, find problems, analyse the problem, explore the problem, in the process to achieve

the cultivation of students' problem-solving ability and innovation ability of the teaching mode

[10]. This teaching mode is in line with the general idea of scientific inquiry: (create a situation)

to raise the problem → conjecture and hypothesis → formulate a plan, design an experiment →

obtain experimental evidence → test and evaluation → communication reasoning and

summary. Therefore, this mode can to some extent awaken students' problem consciousness,

enhance their motivation, cultivate their scientific thinking and practical skills, and then better

achieve the teaching objectives.

The advantages are as follows:

1. Arousing students' curiosity and stimulating learning interest: the most prominent

feature of the teaching method of chemistry contextual teaching is that it can transform

boring chemical knowledge into interesting teaching scenes in teaching, and for

students, the rich chemical context can greatly arouse their curiosity and stimulate their

learning interest. Interest plays a great role in promoting students in secondary school.

Good interest in learning can stimulate the unlimited potential of students, teachers

consciously stimulate the interest of students can be a good guide for students to

participate in the classroom, encouraging students to be brave to express themselves, in

the problem solving continue to think, and cultivate learning ability. Moreover, students

learn fresh knowledge through continuous exploration and research, which makes the

learning state full and the learning process easier. Secondary school is a key period for

students to establish a correct outlook on life, values and worldview, if students can

cultivate a good interest in early, students and even the entire learning career has a far- reaching impact, not only the chemistry programme, the learning of knowledge of other

subjects have similarities and differences. Because under the influence of their good

interest in learning, they have formed their own learning habits and learning methods,

which will be very conducive to the students' learning growth in the future [11].

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Wu, L., Zhang, X., & Sun, L. (2024). Research on Middle School Chemistry Teaching Design Based on Real Problem Situation. Advances in Social

Sciences Research Journal, 11(5). 290-297.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.14738/assrj.115.17009

2. Stimulating problem awareness and developing literacy and competence: driven by an

interest in learning, students learn to think actively and to call up in their minds the

content of what they have learned that is relevant to the content of the situation. Once

this thinking process is switched on, the context begins to stimulate the cognitive

structures in the students' minds. Driven by the contextual stimulus, students gradually

perceive the obstacles that exist in the process of moving from the starting state to the

desired goal state, i.e., questioning. The "question" is generated in the "doubt",

"question" is the "doubt" specific expression, and finally the students mind Step by step,

the formation of the problem. Problem awareness is stimulated in this process, but

classroom teaching is not only to enable students to perceive the problem and ask

questions, but to be able to further solve the problem, which is also known as "problem- solving learning". When the whole problem-solving learning is completed, the teaching

process is complete, and the students' literacy and competence are enhanced in the

whole systematic learning process [12].

3. Cultivate students' ability to actively construct cognitive structure and chemistry

learning: Teachers create situations based on real problems, so that students can

independently construct knowledge in problematic situations, organically combine

existing knowledge with new knowledge, and independently understand knowledge so

as to solve problems. And then take the initiative to complete the construction of the

new knowledge system. Through the process of teacher-student, student-student and

student-media interaction, students constantly adjust and improve their cognitive

structure and scientific quality, and ultimately enable students to form their own unique

learning ability [13].

APPLIED PRINCIPLES OF CHEMISTRY TEACHING BASED ON AUTHENTIC PROBLEM

SITUATIONS

According to the characteristics of the chemistry curriculum, we can divide the problem

situation into four categories in classroom teaching: problem scenarios in new lectures;

problem scenarios in revision classes; problem scenarios in exercise classes; problem scenarios

in laboratory classes. Different types of classroom teaching, problem scenarios appear in the

timing, the form of the effect achieved is different. Problem scenarios can be a small link, can

also be a main line, throughout the classroom; can be a fact, event, can also be a topic or task.

Teachers can constructivist learning theory as a guide, combined with the actual social

production, life, scientific and technological development and other resources, in different

parts of the teaching and learning to create different forms of problem situations, the

arrangement of the teaching content into a specific problem. Thus, the problem as a "stimulus"

starting point, so that students are placed in a specific teaching situation, to create a

questioning, inquiry, discussion, harmonious interaction of the learning atmosphere, to

promote the smooth progress of teaching activities and the achievement of teaching goals [14].

The principles of application are as follows:

1. The principle of interest. Interest is a positive, a type of emotion generated by people's

intrinsic needs, which can help us to complete a task or activity better and more focused,

so as to obtain the pleasure and satisfaction of achieving the purpose. For students,

interest in learning may be affected by a variety of factors, such as strict teachers, home

parental pressure, school factors, etc. If students have an intrinsic love for learning and

want to learn, it can also inspire them to take the initiative to learn, externalize their

interest into action, and thus take the initiative to learn spontaneously. It is because of