Learning outcomes are typically measured by academic achievement, yet achievement measures are often claimed to be weak in terms of assessing critical thinking, creativity and knowledge application. Increasing these aspects is essential for gaining desirable learning outcomes, and is seen by many scholars as a goal for classroom dialogue. Thus the study considers both academic achievement and cognitive abilities to account for learning outcomes.
In the Chinese high schools that were studied, male students were more likely to score highly in mathematics and physics subjects than their female counterparts. In the English examination it was female students who usually showed better academic achievements. It is suggested that this is caused by gender differences in cognitive ability (Hedges & Nowell, 1995), and this implication is supported
by this study’s findings. Mathematics and physics in high school have a very high requirement for reasoning, especially in the analysis of quantities and figures (Fennema, Sowder, & Carpenter, 1999). This study found that boys achieved a significantly higher level of quantitative analytical ability than girls. Thus, it was understandable that boys and girls had varied achievements in different subjects. Additionally, students in high and middle ranking schools generally showed similar performances in academic achievement and cognitive ability but significantly surpassed those in the lower ranked school. This suggests that, in China, school matters to high school students’ cognitive development and learning, and selecting a school with a fair rank seems to be essential.
The significant correlations between academic achievement and aspects of cognitive abilities indicate that students’ academic scores can partly reflect their level of cognition or vice versa. Students’ mathematical achievement is closely related to their quantitative analytical ability, figure analytical ability and figure practical ability. Physics achievement were correlated with most of the cognitive abilities involved in analysis, creativity and application. English achievement only relates to verbal analytical ability. Referring to the average scores of the three subjects, students generally performed best in English, followed by mathematics and then physics. The relationship between academic achievement and cognitive ability can probably be used as an explanation. A much greater variety of cognitive abilities is needed to achieve a good score in a physics test than in an English test; thus it is understandable why the mean for physics is much lower than that for English. Another interesting indication is that the test paper designed by the Chinese education agency is not merely an examination of memorization of content in textbooks but also takes a comprehensive account of students’ cognitive ability. In general, the ability to analyse problems is emphasized in the exam tests of all three subjects, while the ability to apply knowledge and propose creative ideas is considered to a lesser degree.
5.4 The relationship between participation in classroom dialogue and learning
outcomes
Classroom dialogue is viewed as an essential tool for teaching and learning, and heavily related to academic performance. The discussion about whether participation in classroom dialogue facilitates learning, and the effects of different forms of participation, still continues. This study focused on high school students in mainland China, a group that has rarely been studied before, and found that these students’ learning outcomes were significantly correlated with, and at the same time could be predicted by, their participatory performance in classroom dialogue.
To be specific, two forms of participation have been taken into account in relation to learning outcomes; namely, talk and attentive listening. According to the review conducted by Howe and Abedin (2013), a number of scholars hold a belief that contributing more and higher-quality talk are
essential for achieving an ideal learning outcome, and there is empirical evidence of the benefits of talking obtained from the primary and secondary school students who were chosen as the research focus. The similar benefits also applies for high school students, as they are found to be more likely to achieve high academic scores in mathematics, physics and English, and to show quantitative analytical ability, when their talking shows a higher level of accuracy and cognition. Additionally, talking more frequently is also likely to facilitate English achievement. This is probably because talk in classrooms impels students to pay careful attention to course content and encourages them to think actively, as contributing to talk requires “organizing concepts, formulating arguments and counter arguments, and responding thoughtfully and critically to diverse points of view” (Davis, 1993, p. 63). Through this process they may solidify their memorization, deepen their understanding of course contents and their increase problem-solving ability, which then leads to better academic performance. Moreover, classroom talk in these Chinese high schools was characterized by a high level of analysis. Students would talk about their reasoning processes and give an explanation of how they solved problems. When used in mathematics or physics lessons it is understandable that talking in classroom dialogue promotes quantitative analytical ability. Noticeably, the quality of talk was more important for mathematics and physics learning compared to its frequency. This implies that, compared with contributing more talk, teachers and students should probably pay more attention to the accuracy and cognitive level of talk, and fully exploit a question or a topic to develop students’ thinking. This is especially true in a whole-class context where limited opportunities arise for each student to talk.
Another explanation is that positive predictions of learning outcomes from verbal contributions may be affected by students’ previous academic performance. Some students who like to be involved in dialogue through talk may have originally been high academic achievers, and they may continue to keep their superior status in learning. It may be arbitrary and inaccurate to state that all high academic achievers are likely to talk a great deal and make high levels of contributions; nevertheless, this group as a whole certainly contributed a higher quality of talk than those who achieved low scores. This is especially true in Chinese high school contexts, where students usually need to refer to content in textbooks or that delivered by teachers to support their ideas when answering teachers’ questions. This means that students should have a good basic knowledge and a sound level of cognition to analyse and solve problems if they want to contribute to talk, particularly with respect to the subjects mathematics and physics. High attaining students are certainly more capable of answering or asking questions than those attaining low scores. Moreover, given that high school learning in China emphasizes accuracy, low academic achievers may worry about being criticized by their teachers if they give a wrong answer. Additionally, a short time was often left for students to think before an answer was needed, and students who had a solid mastery of knowledge, namely high academic achievers, should be more able
to come up with an appropriate answer within a limited time. Given the above three factors, students who had previously had higher learning outcomes were more capable and prepared to talk in classroom dialogue.
Two possibilities arise from making a verbal contribution. One is that a student may be suited to learning through talk, and therefore talking more (e.g. answering more questions, being more involved in discussion and raising questions) and contributing a high quality of talk after careful thought further promotes his/her thinking, understanding and learning. The other possibility is that a student may prefer not to talk but sometimes takes on the responsibility for being a so-called ‘good student’, for example answering questions when necessary so that the teacher will not feel embarrassed. Given that this kind of situation is not abundant, answering a question or two in one lesson may not exert much influence on his/her learning, and they continue to achieve high learning outcomes. Due to the characteristics of the participants, as described in Section 3.3, previous academic scores could not be obtained before observing class participation. Future studies may need to take account of the learning outcomes both before and after students’ class participation. Nevertheless, my study adds empirical evidence to the discussion concerning whether classroom talk would facilitate learning. In the past, many scholars and teachers have held a belief in the benefits of talking, and they have called for the involvement of most or all students in talking actively in class (e.g. Dallimore et al., 2010; Mercer & Littleton, 2007). However, relatively few studies have been capable of providing positive empirical evidence (Howe & Abedin, 2013; Mercer, 2008). Moreover, many scholars have taken an interventionist approach and the dialogic teaching methods have been designed specially, which are extremely rare in normal classes (see e.g. Mercer & Littleton, 2007). There is a great need for empirical evidence to show the positive effect of talking in normal classroom settings. My study has filled in this gap by providing statistical evidence that talking, especially high-quality talk would facilitate achievement in mathematics, physics and English. With this knowledge, scholars and teachers would probably be more confident about endorsing the value of talk.
Apart from talk, students can also be silent participants in classroom dialogue, and I found that the more time a student spends listening, the better he/she would do in mathematics and physics subjects. The finding implies that ensuring a certain amount of listening to teachers’ course delivery and other peers’ thoughts tends to help with high school students’ learning in mathematics and science. This is probably because when remaining in attentive silence, students can settle down to learn from others’ ideas, assimilate new information and have time to reflect on information deeply. All of these are necessary in mathematics and science learning as these subjects have high requirements for critical thinking and mastery of pre-existing knowledge and methods such as formulas and disciplines. This finding is similar to a very recent piece pf research done by O’ Connor et al. (2017), who identified no
significant differences in learning outcome between vocal and silent participants in classroom dialogue. However, it is notable that spending much time in listening may not help with English academic achievement, possibly due to its subject features. People are usually required to speak and communicate more to gain practice in language learning.
So what do these results mean for research and practice? Previously, many scholars only considered talk when studying participation in classroom dialogue, and when a positive relationship was found with learning they gave the advice that all students should be encouraged to talk actively in classroom dialogue (e.g. Dallimore et al., 2006). Similarly, in practice, it has been found that many teachers worry about students who remain silent and try to include most or all of their students in each discussion (see O’ Connor et al., 2017). This makes productive and deep dialogue less likely to happen (O’ Connor el al., 2017). Now it is known from this study’s findings that ensuring a certain amount of time in listening is likely to provide similar learning benefits in mathematics and physics from dialogic interaction as those produced by participation through talk. An implication for practice is that, in mathematics and science classes, teachers probably could leverage more freedom in an attempt to create productive dialogue; for example, carrying out in-depth discussion around one topic rather than simply following the IRF steps in order to include most students in talking. In the short run students can learn by choosing to participate either through talking or listening, and “one can be chosen over another without harming a student's chances of understanding or learning” (O’ Connor, et al., 2017, p. 12). Over the long haul a culture of interactive dialogue should be in place. The role of teachers probably needs to move away from an authoritative position. A more equal and democratic relationship between teachers and students needs to be constructed. Teachers should try to create an atmosphere that facilitates interaction, values diverse ideas and encourages discussions, so that those prone to talking will have the courage to express their opinions in front of the class.
5.5 The relationship between thinking style and participation in classroom
dialogue
In these Chinese high schools, students’ participation in classroom dialogue was closely related to, and at the same time could be predicted by, their thinking styles. Whether students engage in dialogue through talk or choose to remain attentively silent in order to listen is predicted by their thinking styles. This finding supports and extends that achieved in the earlier MPhil. Also, in the past, many individual characteristics have been related to classroom dialogue (see Howe & Abedin, 2013), but relatively few studies have been concerned with thinking styles. The findings obtained in both my MPhil and PhD studies confirm that thinking style is one of the individual differences that affects whether and how
students participate in classroom dialogue. Thinking style, together with other factors, contributes to the understanding of why some students tend to talk while others remain silent.
Students who showed a preference for participating in classroom dialogue through talk were more likely to be those characterized with a Liberal-Group style. Students characterized by a Liberal-Group style tended to be talkative and were likely to make a high level of verbal contributions. They generally answered more questions initiated by teachers and raised more questions. Their contributions tended to have a high level of accuracy, include content from textbooks to support ideas, and reflect information more critically. Moreover, many of these students expressed an unwillingness to learn by merely listening to others talk, as remaining silent in class brought them less desirable learning experiences. This interpretation may be justified as follows. The Liberal Group is positively dominated by liberal, legislative, judicial and hierarchical styles. The first main component is a liberal style, which makes people express a favour of new ideas and thoughts. When students have unique answers to teachers’ questions or new ideas to solve a problem, they are more likely to have a desire to share with others rather than keep them secret, which may make them talkative. Additionally, the liberal style arms students with a preference for exploring the unknown and pioneering new methods. Thus, the talk contributed by liberal students may be more than a replication of course content but shows a process of speculating and extending knowledge. Another main component of the Liberal Group is the legislative style. Students relatively legislative are not willing to learn by passive rote; instead, they are likely to come up with their own ideas and develop their own individual ways of perceiving learning content. Thus they are very likely to contribute to talk in front of their class, instead of remaining silent and passively accepting ideas. At the same time, when talking in class, they are very likely to justify and explain how they arrived at a solution, which endows their talk with high value. Acting as an essential component of the Liberal Group, the judicial style may impel students to get into the habit of evaluating, comparing and analysing learning content. This helps students to come up with correct and thoughtful answers (Zhang, 2004), which seems to make a major contribution to high- quality answers and comments. The fourth main component of the Liberal Group is the hierarchical style, which allows people to cope with several tasks in an orderly manner. This enables students to take notes, memorize and think at the same time as coming up with an answer and then organizing language to talk in class. With the characteristics of its main components explained, it is understandable that a combination of the liberal, legislative, judicial and hierarchical styles predicts more frequent and high-level talk, while leading to weak willingness to learn by listening.
In contrast, students characterized with an Internal-Group style generally talked little and their talk tended to show a low level of correctness and was less likely to show reasoning process. They were less likely to respond to teachers’ initiations by raising their hands, although an answer might be
formulated in their minds, and they rarely asked questions in class. Nevertheless, this does not mean that students dominated by the Internal-Group style were less attentive to course content and classroom dialogue, as they spent a considerable amount of time listening, and rated themselves as having desirable listening experiences and high achievements through listening. The Internal Group is positively associated with an internal style, but negatively associated with an external style. Students characterized with an internal style prefer to think and work alone rather than communicate with others,
and thus it is not surprising to see lower talkativeness on their part in class. It usually takes time for this kind of student to internalize and transform information received from the outside into their own ways of understanding. Teachers usually leave a very short time for students to think before inviting them to give an answer. When this kind of students contribute a talk, it seems likely that they have not understood or thought about the problem properly, which may make their contributions less accurate and thoughtful. In this situation, such students choose to remain attentively silent to listen to others’ talk, which may allow them space to understand problems deeply and think critically. An external style is characterized by enjoying communication and working collaboratively with others. Students who had a low tendency to this style may be less likely to express their ideas in public, discuss or argue with their peers. The above seems to be a reasonable justification for why the students characterized with an Internal-Group style were more likely to be involved in classroom dialogue through listening than talking in front of the class.
Similarly, students dominated by the Conservative-Group style were also likely to be silent participants for the reason that they tended to perceive remaining attentively silent in order to listen as more comfortable and likely to result in a high learning achievement. Conservative, executive, monarchic and oligarchic styles have high loadings on the Conservative Group. The conservative style is typically described as resistant to change, and taking longer to get used to new methods and learn new knowledge. Given the short time allocated for each question, students characterized by a conservative style may not be capable of responding in a timely manner or they may intentionally make use of silence to digest learning content. Similarly, students who are relatively executive tend to receive information passively and follow instructions, and thus it is not surprising to see them show a preference for remaining as attentive listeners. Students dominated by the monarchic style focus on one task at a time, and remaining attentively silent in class which may allow them to concentrate on taking notes and teachers’ course delivery. Unlike the hierarchical style described above, people characterized by an oligarchic style easily become disorganized when coping with multiple tasks. They may feel overwhelmed by coping with teachers’ questions at the same time as taking notes, and it is