Research On The Relationship Between Teachers’ Discourse Strategies And Students’ Scientific Reasoning Learning

Scientific reasoning learning is a common concern of the learning sciences and science education research.It is related to the development of students’ thinking and is of great significance to improve the quality of science education.The quality of teachers’ discourse is related to the learning effect of students’ scientific reasoning.However,how teachers should use discourse strategies more effectively in strengthening students’ scientific reasoning is still a problem for current researchers.The mainstream mode of classroom teaching in China is whole-class teaching,and the international research on the relationship between teacher’s discourse and students’ scientific reasoning learning in whole-class dialogue is mostly theoretical,but the empirical research deep into the classroom is rare.Therefore,this dissertation attempts to focus on the whole-class dialogue and deeply inquire the relationship between teachers’ discourse and students’ scientific reasoning learning in order to find out the mechanism of teachers’ discourse strategies on students’ scientific reasoning learning,and find out the effective teachers’ discourse strategies to promote students’ scientific reasoning learning.For this purpose,this dissertation studies two questions:(1)What are basic types of teachers’ discourse strategies in the classroom teaching scientific reasoning in China? What are the types?(2)What is the relationship between different types of teachers’ discourse strategies and students’ scientific reasoning learning?Based on the socio-cultural perspective of learning,the theory of “Styles of scientific reasoning” and the essence of scientific reasoning learning,this dissertation first summarizes the basic elements of scientific reasoning teaching,and puts forward "the development model of students’ scientific reasoning in the teaching context".Then,according to the external role of scientific reasoning learning,this dissertation distinguishes the functions of teachers’ discourse strategies from the cognitive level,and identifies two types of teachers’ discourse strategies that promote students’ scientific reasoning learning,namely "Push Reasoning Process type"(abbreviated as type Ⅰ)and "Involve the Nature of Science type"(abbreviated as type Ⅱ).On this basis,combined with literature research and logical deduction,this dissertation constructs a "model of the relationship between teachers’ discourse strategies and students’ scientific reasoning learning".After theoretical deduction,three research hypotheses are formed.Taking the excellent teaching cases of scientific reasoning in China as the research object,the following three specific research tasks are empirically explored:Sub study 1: the relationship between the teachers’ discourse strategies of type Ⅰ and students’ scientific reasoning learning;Sub study 2: the influence of the teachers’ discourse strategies of type Ⅱ on students’ scientific reasoning learning;Sub study 3:the moderating effect of teachers’ discourse strategies of type Ⅰ.In the empirical research part,nine excellent scientific reasoning teaching cases were selected from 225 excellent courses of Shanghai Municipal ministry level in the project of "one teacher one excellent lesson,one lesson one excellent teacher" of the Ministry of Education by the way of purposive sampling.The mixed research method was used to carry out classroom discourse analysis.In the first sub-study,talk moves was used as the analysis unit to encode teacher and student’s discourse separately.Cluster analysis,correspondence analysis and content analysis were used to test the relationship between the teachers’ discourse strategy of type Ⅰ and students’ scientific reasoning learning.In the second sub-study,episodes were used as the analysis unit to encode teacher and student’s discourse separately.Ordinal logistic regression model,content analysis and other methods were used to test the influence of the teachers’ discourse strategy of type Ⅱ on students’ scientific reasoning learning.In the third sub-study,based on the results of the first sub-study,teachers’ discourse strategies of type Ⅰ are divided into two dimensions: level and complexity.Grouping regression analysis and content analysis were used to test the moderating effect of the level and complexity of teachers’ discourse strategies of type Ⅰ.The main conclusions are as follows.Firstly,appropriate teachers’ discourse strategies can effectively promote students’ scientific reasoning learning in the whole-class dialogue.The teachers’ discourse of "Involve the Nature of Science type" plays a key role in promoting students’ scientific reasoning learning,and the teachers’ discourse of "Push Reasoning Process type" plays a moderating role in it.Secondly,when teachers use discourse strategies that involve ontic knowledge,procedural knowledge and epistemic knowledge,and combine discourse strategies that calling for detailed explanation,presenting key knowledge,asking students to reflect,and leveraging others’ claim,the teaching effect is better.This dissertation theoretically breaks the limitation of the single classification of teachers’ discourse strategies,and makes up for the lack of separating the learning process of scientific reasoning from the basic connotation of scientific reasoning.In terms of research methods,the dissertation establishes a measurement index system based on the socio-cultural perspective of learning to represent scientific reasoning learning,introduces the scientificity of students’ oral language as empirical variables,and uses a variety of data analysis methods,such as correspondence analysis,ordinal logistic regression,grouping regression,etc.,to expand the related research of whole-class dialogue.This dissertation suggests that scientific reasoning should be brought into science classroom as a special teaching task and goal,and a more academic and open discourse pattern should be established.The important role of teacher is to promote effective classroom dialogue.Therefore,teachers should create a discussion atmosphere of respect and tolerance,design guidance for classroom dialogue around the forms of knowledge which necessary for scientific reasoning,and consciously adjust the use of discourse strategies,pay attention to the comprehensive use of discourse strategies that play a high-level role in promoting scientific reasoning learning.