Redox Reaction Teaching and Learning for Enhancing Students’ Ability in Constructing Scientific Explanation through Action Research
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Abstract
This study aims to enhance senior high students’ ability to construct scientific explanations for redox reactions, a sub-topic in electrochemistry. Methodology was conducted based on the self-study research and reflective-based research in which the first author research on his teaching. This idea relates to the spiral research processes that consist of many cycles of Plan, Act, Observe, and Reflect (PAOR) as a long spiral at two schools in a province in Thailand but different districts. Participants included 39 school 1 students and 31 school 2 students. School 1 was conducted along the 2nd semester, November to March, of the academic year 2017. School 2 was conducted along the 1st semester, May to September, of the academic year 2018. The instructional strategy of this study was designed based on three theoretical ideas, i.e., Vygotsky’s (1978) internalization process, Johnstone’s (1991) chemical representations, and two explanation models: the deductive nomological (DN) model proposed by Hempel and Oppenheim (1948) and the claim-evidence-reasoning (CER) model proposed by McNeill (2006). The instructional strategy was proposed as four stages. After being implemented in classrooms, some elements of the rubric score to measure the students’ scientific explanations have been revised based on the reflecting step of the action research process. Moreover, the details of adjusting the worksheets and other media were discussed. Also, this study reported how students learn to construct their explanations scientifically.
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