On the afternoon of May 20, 2024, Christine Howe, a world-renowned developmental psychologist and professor emeritus of the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, was a guest speaker at the Daxia Forum, where she shared an academic report entitled "Group Cooperation, Teaching and Learning: The Key Role of Dialogue" in the lecture hall of the Yifu Building of East China Normal University.

This forum was hosted by Associate Professor Shi Yuchen, assistant director of the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction of East China Normal University. The report attracted the active participation of many experts, scholars, and educators.

Before the report officially began, Director Cui Yunheng presented Professor Christine Howe with the appointment letter of Honorary Professor of the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction and delivered a speech for this forum.

Report Content

Professor Christine Howe's report is divided into three parts, integrating her research over the past 30 years. The first part revolves around students' group activities, the second part teacher-student interaction in the classroom, and the third part the teaching process after the group activities.

In the first part of the report, Professor Howe first talked about the definition of group work and its research history in the UK. Professor Howe particularly highlighted the experimental methods in her explanation, especially the experimental design that included pre-tests and post-tests.

Professor Howe pointed out that the positive impact of group activities on learning depends on the mode of group dialogue: when students participate in discussions of different viewpoints and compare, analyze and evaluate different task solutions, it may be more conducive to learning than providing direct feedback to students.

The second part of the report mainly involves two questions: How to verify the role of teacher-student dialogue in classroom learning? How to distinguish this role from other influencing factors?

Professor Howe introduced in detail an empirical study she conducted in 2019 and focused on sharing her research conclusions:

✪ The dialogue mode between teachers and students is closely related to classroom learning and education-related attitudes.

✪ When students have a high level of participation, high levels of elaboration and querying can improve academic performance.

✪ High levels of elaboration can improve learning attitudes.

✪ Reasoned dialogue between teachers and students has no significant effect on learning outcomes.

The third part of the report focuses on"post-group work" and mainly discusses how to make students truly benefit from group activities. Professor Howe mainly introduced two methods: one is to break the original group and communicate and share across groups; the other is to share the results of the group with the whole class.

Finally, Professor Howe summarized the report from three perspectives: group cooperation, "post-group activities", and teacher teaching. She said that group cooperation can help students of all ages make progress in subject learning and general reasoning ability. In addition, in order for students to truly benefit from group activities, teachers should choose challenging tasks or tasks that easily lead to conflicting opinions.

In the question-and-answer session, Professor Cui Yunhuo first expressed his high appreciation for Professor Howe's report, and discussed with Professor Howe on group activities and classroom dialogues in different disciplines. Professor Howe also further shared her experience and suggestions on specific implementation. This Daxia Forum ended successfully in a warm and pleasant atmosphere.