A Comparison of the Characteristics of Students' Verbal Interactions and Teachers' Help in Small Group Thinking Science Activities in Korea and in the U.K.

Thinking Science의 모둠별 활동에서 나타나는 한국과 영국 학생들의 논의와 교사들의 도움 특성 비교

The purposes of this study were to analyze the within-group verbal interactions in Thinking Science activities and compare the characteristics of verbal interactions shown by the pupils as well as the differences in help by e teacher in Korea with those in the UK. For the purposes of this study, 16 pupils from comparable groups by cognitive level were selected from both countries. Verbal interactions and teacher help during group discussions were audio/ video taped and the types of students' interactions were classified into interactions related to problem solving, management of classroom loaming and others. The results of this study showed that the verbal interactions in Korean groups were more activated than those in the UK groups. However, the percentages of high level interactions such as metacognitive questions, elaborative suggestions and logical argumentations were higher in the UK groups than those in the Korean groups. Observation of the within-group activities revealed that the pupils of both countries shared some common ground in the following ways; neither recognized the need to formulate the hypothesis in the process of inquiry and that the procedures of discussion were dominated by the pupils of higher cognitive level as the discussion proceeded. It was also observed that the pupils in the UK were considerate in response to the questions posed by both their peers or the teacher, while the pupils in Korea were influenced by their prior knowledge in the subject. Analysis of the teacher help during the inquiry activities showed that the tendency fur the teacher to emphasize the process rather than the product in the procedures of discussion and the extent he/she allowed the pupils to think and consider were closely related to the characteristics of the teacher himself/herself and was found to be a point of commonality in both countries. However, the teachers in the UK revealed the tendency of trying to propose the task to the pupils in concrete and systematic ways and guide the discussion based on the thinking of the pupils, while those in Korea tried to use strategies designed to draw out active verbal interactions among the pupils.