The purpose of this study was to examine an effective teaching strategy of problem-solving dialogue which was carried out in class hours by the small group of elementary school students. For this, the current status of linguistic interaction of elemen...
The purpose of this study was to examine an effective teaching strategy of problem-solving dialogue which was carried out in class hours by the small group of elementary school students. For this, the current status of linguistic interaction of elementary school students' problem-solving dialogue was examined and then the teaching method was worked out. The effective teaching strategy was presented as a method of experiment and research.
In order to grope after an teaching strategy that was appropriate for domestic situation, the investigator examined the current status of education of small group's problem-solving dialogue and elementary school students' problem-solving dialogue and then looked into its problems. Although the small group dialogue was presented in Korean language curriculum and Korean language textbooks, it was far from interactive dialogue and therefore could not provide much help to the improvement of small group dialogue-related communication ability in reality. However, teachers applied the small group dialogue to nearly all the cognitive curricula more than once per week and sensed the necessity of guidance for the methodology of small group communication.
As for the modality of elementary school students' small group dialogue, the detection of problems was not realized systematically and therefore dialogue was not carried out efficiently in general in the step of problem detection. And their dialogue was susceptible to the conditions of project fulfillment. In the exploration step of problem solving methods, the exploration of learning strategy had great influence upon the contents of dialogue. When the sequence of dialogue was fixed, dialogue didn't proceed dynamically. In the step of problem-solving, the mutual negotiation-oriented cognitive composition of meaning was active in the exploratory dialogue, but the joint composition of meaning was not taken place in the competitive dialogue and the achievement of learning was unsatisfactory as well. In the step of assessment, participants' confirmation of contents was taken place and the expression of satisfaction and sharing the sense of fulfillment were observed. Based on these findings, the stepwise educational contents of small group dialogue for problem-solving were groped after.
On the other hand, in the step of problem-solving, the cognitive meaning composition-related communication strategy was examined in order to find out an efficient strategy. In addition, by examining the relationship between these strategies and learning fulfillment, a core strategy of problem-solving was looked into and then the factor of teaching/learning was extracted.
Based on the above study findings, the educational methodology of small group's problem-solving dialogue was examined. The educational content of small group's problem-solving dialogue was classified into the contents of teaching/learning of problem-solving dialogue for project proceeding, relationship maintaining and cognitive composition of meaning. By presenting the contents of guidance and strategies of dialogue in every area, together with related examples of dialogue and methods of guidance, the contents of guidance were established in detail.
As for the educational model of small group's problem-solving dialogue, the model of dialogue was established as 'problem detection → thinking of problem-solving methods → problem-solving → assessment. And the model of teaching/learning was established as 'scaffold setting → project presentation → [carrying out small group's problem-solving dialogue] → checking.
As for the effective methods of guidance for small group dialogue, cooperative learning method and self-leading learning method were examined and then made children carry out dialogue by making themselves familiar with the control function of communication techniques of cooperative learning. In addition, by using the self-checking method which was based on the self-assessment model of self-leading learning, the plan of teaching/learning was presented.
Two 5-year classes at an elementary school were established as an experiment group and a control group and then applied the problem-solving educational methodology to the experiment group, thus educating them and verifying its effects. Study findings showed that small group's learning of problem-solving dialogue was effective upon the improvement of solving capability of learning projects and ability of dialogue. In addition, the problem-solving dialogue-oriented teaching/learning method seemed to promote the discourse of question, response, idea organization and idea sophistication and effective for the dialogue of exploration as well.
This study seems to be meaningful in that it concretely presented a strategy of small group dialogue with which children could consider others, cooperate with them and cultivate the attitude of problem-solving, and teachers could carry out the education of small group communication effectively.