On the road to participatory pedagogy: A mixed-methods study of pedagogical interaction in Chinese kindergartens

This study investigated the pedagogical interactions between teachers and young children in six sampled Chinese kindergarten classrooms. Altogether 4320 turns of dialogue were coded from 27 videotaped pedagogical activities, and the 12 class teachers were surveyed and interviewed. The results revealed a unique Chinese pedagogical interaction that is a fusion of participatory and transmissive pedagogies: teachers directed the interactions with open-ended questions and whole-class dialogues, whereas children responded with short answers based on the learning content. This was reported by the teachers to be associated with the joint influence of related child, teacher, and cultural factors.