Characteristics of primary school mathematics classroom discourse for cultivating higher-order thinking: Analysis based on classroom videos of Chinese primary school expert teachers

Abstract

Classroom discourse is an important medium for cultivating higher-order thinking, which in turn is the value orientation of classroom discourse reform. To reveal the classroom discourse rules for students’ thinking progress and refine the classroom discourse characteristics for the cultivation of students’ higher-order thinking, this study conducted a combination of qualitative and quantitative, static and dynamic analyses of teacher-student discourse in the classrooms of Chinese primary school mathematics expert teachers from four dimensions of discourse opportunity, discourse form, discourse function and dialogue mechanism, aiming at presenting the thinking orientation of discourse, tracing the progression of students’ thinking, and exploring how teachers implement discourse interactions to advance thinking. The findings revealed that in primary school mathematics classrooms oriented towards the cultivation of students’ higher-order thinking, both expert teachers and students co-created and co-shared equal and sufficient discourse opportunities, and students visualized their thinking in multiple interactions; expert teachers only issued a limited number of higher-order questions that triggered discussion and followed up with guided feedback on students’ responses, so that students’ thinking collided with each other's responses; and expert teachers constructed discourse chains based on students’ rememberable responses and scaffolded by timely follow-up questions to help students advance their thinking.