A Study Of Discourse In STEM Cooperative Learning

Under the wave of scientific education reform,STEM education is developing rapidly.Cooperative learning,as the main form of teaching organization in the STEM classroom,has greatly enriched classroom discourse,and makes the discourse research attract widespread attention.This study explores the teacher-student discourse in STEM cooperative learning,in order to provide some advice for teachers on how to guide STEM cooperative learning groups.The study continued to observe a senior STEM teacher's classes for nearly a year,and adopted a mixed research method: quantitative discourse analysis,class observation and student interviews,in order to deeply explore how does the teacher use reflective prompts,how do students think of reflective prompts,what is the relationship between teacher's prompts and students' responses,as well as the characteristics of teacher-student discourse in STEM cooperative learning.The results show that:(A)When guiding cooperative group,STEM teacher use reflective prompt frequently,not only are students willing to accept reflective prompt,but also they are able to get effective reflection.(B)Different types and levels of prompts and responses are clustered.High-level prompts are more likely to trigger high-level responses,although they are the main cause of “silence” or “impasse”.Students generally believe that difficult questions are more valuable to them.(C)Teachers often give guidance when "problems" arise in a group,and teacher-student conversations usually end with a teacher's high-level prompt,but the teacher usually doesn't expect to get answer,which intended to trigger follow-up discussions.(D)Students can construct concepts and improve the level of response in a continuous conversation.Finally,this study proposes some suggestions about how to provide effective guidance for STEM cooperative learning groups:(A)Pay attention to the development of students' ability in STEM classroom,use reflective prompts to inspire students to think independently;(B)It is not necessary to pursue the consistency of questions and answers one-sidedly,but to give higher level prompts appropriately.(C)Create an equal atmosphere between teachers and students and encourage students to participate actively in conversation.