Effects of Collaborative Small-Group Discussions on Early Adolescents' Social Reasoning

• In Event: Poster Session 3
  In Poster Session: Students' Learning Strategies and Interventions

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine the influence of small-group discussions on early adolescents’ social reasoning development. A total of 148 fifth-grade students (80 males and 68 females) from six classrooms in a public school in Taiwan participated in a pre-post control quasi-experimental study. Students who experienced five Collaborative Social Reasoning (CSR) discussions generated more domains of social knowledge and more solutions to a complex social issue arising from the story in a post-intervention essay task, compared to the active-control group who learned the same content through a Read-aloud approach. Holistic scorings of student essays suggested CSR students presented social reasoning with more clarity, coherence, and complexity, and had more balance between intuitionist and rationalist modes of reasoning.

Authors

• Tzu-Jung Lin, The Ohio State University

• Wei-Ting Li, National Taiwan University of Technology & Science

• Ying-Ju Chiu, National Taiwan University of Technology & Science

• Yu-Ru Hong, National Taiwan University of Technology & Science

• Chin-Chung Tsai, National Taiwan Normal University

• Seung Yon Ha, The Ohio State University