From Transmissive to Participatory Pedagogies: A Mixed-Method Investigation of Pedagogical Interaction in Shenzhen Kindergartens

• In Event: 1-033 - A Cross-Societal Comparison of Teacher-Child Interaction in Hong Kong, Shenzhen and Singapore Early Childhood Classrooms

Integrative Statement

Transmissive pedagogy is a kind of direct communication of the teaching content from the teachers to the learners and has dominated early childhood education in China. In 2001, China launched the Teaching Guideline for Kindergarten Education to implement a pedagogical and curricular reform, aiming to promote the progressive education, constructivism, and participatory pedagogy. However, this reform has encountered with a great deal of resistance as Chinese teachers have been accustomed to teacher-directed instruction and transmissive pedagogy. Few studies have been conducted to evaluate the effects of this pedagogical reform. Therefore, to examine the actual pedagogical interactions in Chinese kindergartens thus to ascertain whether the reform is successful or not, we conducted this mixed-method research in a coastal city in China – Shenzhen.

Stratified random sampling was used to collect the data. Three kindergartens located in Shenzhen, representing low-, middle-, and upper-middle levels of socioeconomic status were selected. In each kindergarten, pedagogical activities in K2 (4-year-old) and K3 (5-year-old) were observed for one consecutive week, resulting in six classes and 27 activities. The 12 class teachers who mainly conducted instruction in participating classrooms were interviewed and invited to complete a questionnaire after the observation. Teachers’ pedagogical activities were videotaped for a full week in the selected classrooms, with a focus on teacher-child pedagogical interactions. Furthermore, The Cam-UNAM Scheme for Educational Dialogue Analysis (SEDA) (Hennessy et al., 2016) was used to code teacher-child communicative acts. The modified version of The Classroom Literacy Environment Index (CLEI) (Li, 2000) was used to analyze teachers’ beliefs and teaching practice. Based on the teachers’ responses to questionnaires and their real teaching practice, the interview protocol was developed to elicit the relationship between teachers’ thinking and their classroom practice. In the quantitative analysis using SEDA, 27 classes were observed and coded, resulting in 4,320 turns of dialogue in total.

Evidence revealed that teacher-initiated, open-ended questions and dialogues dominated the instruction. However, children’s answers to questions were mostly guided to the learning content delivered by the teachers. The teacher-child dialogues mostly followed the pattern that teachers invited ideas and children returned with simple oral responses, which is a typical transmissive pedagogy. Further analysis on the survey data found that children’s age, teachers’ qualification and working experience, and the type of academic subject were related to the features of pedagogical interactions. Lastly, analysis on the interview data indicated that: (1) most interactions were initiated to transmit the information, whereas very few were about analyzing and reasoning; (2) the teachers appreciated the participatory pedagogy but actually performed it in a transmissive way; and (3) children’s characteristics, teachers’ professional development, parental expectation for their children’s academic attainment, and the social and cultural roles of teachers jointly influenced the actual pedagogical interaction.

Authors

• Runke Huang, The University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author

• Weipeng Yang, Singapore University of Social Sciences
  Non-Presenting Author

• Hui Li, Macquarie University
  Non-Presenting Author