ICI Promotion Ceremony ║Associate Professor Shi Yuchen: Classroom Debate and the Development of Students’ Thinking

The promotion ceremony and academic report of Dr. Shi Yuchen was held on the afternoon of April 2. An Guiqing, Cui Yunhuo, Ke Zheng, Liu Lianghua, Liu Junyan, Lei Hao, Shi Yuchen, Wu Gangping, Wang Zhe, Wang Tao, Xiao Sihan, Yang Jiuquan, Zhang Wei, Zhou Wenye attended the ceremony. More than 50 graduate students from the Institute of Curriculum and Instruction (ICI) and other relevant departments of the Faculty of Education participated in the activity. The ceremony was presided over by Professor An Guiqing.

On behalf of all the colleagues of ICI, Prof. Cui Yunhuo extended a warm welcome to Dr. Shi Yuchen and presented her with a commemorative plaque for her promotion.

Brief Introduction of the Report

Dr. Shi Yuchen first introduced the origin of her research interest. She first got to know classroom debate research when she was studying at Harvard University, at that time, she was involved in a research project named “Catalyzing Comprehension through Discussion and Debate” of Professor Catherine Snow. After she got master’s degree from Harvard University, she found that she was particularly interested in how to cultivate students’ complex reasoning skills. She then studied for her doctorate under Professor Deanna Kuhn, a famous American developmental psychologist. Professor Kuhn has been developing dialogic debate curriculum since the 1990s, focusing on the development of high-level thinking such as argumentation skills and speculative thinking.

Subsequently, Associate Professor Shi Yuchen shared three studies she carried out after her doctorate graduation.

The first study is a four-month argumentative intervention curriculum conducted in a junior high school in Chengdu in 2017. She introduced the contents of the curriculum and shared the published results.

1. The second is a month-long controversial teaching intervention on Morality and the Rule of Law in a junior high school in Shanghai in 2019. By using the film Dying to Survive as the intervention, the study encouraged students to explore relevant social issues in depth.

2. The third study is an issue-based teaching project of Morality and the Rule of Law in the fourth grade of a primary school in Shanghai started in the spring of 2021. This study adopts quasi-experimental design to explore the promoting effect of issue-based teaching on the cultivation of students’ thinking ability, the quality of classroom discussion and debate.

3. Associate Professor Shi Yuchen also shared her experience of conducting classroom intervention research in China and the United States over the years. Through cooperation with domestic front-line teaching staff, she further strengthened her research goal: provide a fairer and more qualified Chinese program for educational research and practice based on global perspectives.