An Analysis on Cultivating Scientific Thinking of Normal Students in the Concept Teaching of Cell Biology
WANG Baojuan1, XUE Miao1, XIA Xingquan1, FANG Dawei2, WU Zhiqiang3, CHEN Dongsheng1*
Scientific thinking is an essential component of the core literacy in biology, and as a foundational course in the Biology Science (Teacher Education) major, Cell Biology offers a rich array of experimental facts and conceptual foundations to foster students’ scientific thinking. This paper first emphasized the necessity of employing conceptual teaching to achieve both knowledge transmission and the cultivation of scientific thinking in the education of prospective biology teachers. It then explored the scientific thinking methods reflected in conceptual construction and provided detailed arguments for teaching strategies such as concept map, history of science, modeling, and critical thinking to develop prospective teachers’ abilities in induction and generalization, deduction and reasoning, modeling and model-building, as well as critical and creative thinking. Finally, it validated the effectiveness of conceptual teaching in improving students’ performance in Cell Biology and their scientific thinking skills through the establishment of a teaching evaluation system and analysis of its implementation outcomes. Therefore, this study successfully developed a conceptual teaching paradigm that integrates knowledge transfer with the cultivation of scientific thinking, which provided an effective strategy for the education and teaching of biological science majors in Cell Biology courses at normal universities, and also serves as a reference for curriculum reform in other disciplines.
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