Escola Dom Bosco de Nossa Senhora do Carmo (Ming Tak College), Freguesia de Nossa Senhora de Fátima, Macau, China

Abstract: At present, most chemistry classrooms in Macau’s senior high schools suffer from four entrenched problems: the abstract nature of theory-based teaching; the high time and material costs of traditional experiments; the disconnection between teaching contexts and local life in Macau; insufficient tiered development of students’ learning profiles; and a narrow, rigid approach to competency assessment. As a result, students memorise formulas and concepts mechanically, experimental inquiry remains superficial, and the core objective of cultivating scientific literacy is difficult to achieve.This paper innovatively constructs a four-dimensional innovative instructional design system of “Local Contextual Anchoring + Micro-experimentation + Tiered Inquiry Implementation + Whole-process Competency Assessment”. Breaking away from the traditional paradigm that separates theory from experiment, the model draws on local resources such as Macau’s livelihood scenarios, urban chemical industry, and marine ecology, while streamlining large-scale experimental procedures and promoting lightweight micro-experiments. Verified through one semester of classroom-based comparative practice, this instructional design effectively reduces the abstraction of chemistry knowledge, enhances students’ experimental inquiry ability and scientific thinking, and provides a brand-new, practical paradigm and theoretical reference for raising the quality of Macau’s senior high school chemistry classrooms, innovating experimental teaching, and grounding competency-based classrooms.

Keywords: senior high school chemistry in Macau; innovative instructional design; micro-experiment teaching; contextual anchoring; scientific literacy; tiered inquiry