Dialogic teaching practices and student performance in mathematics in Asian countries

Abstract

<p>Improving the mathematics performance of school children is an objective for many policy-makers around the world. Student-centered interactive pedagogies like classroom discussions and other dialogic interaction practices have been considered the best practice to engage learners effectively in the learning process. However, dialogic teaching practices are least used in most Asian countries that on average achieve the highest mathematics scores in international assessments. Based on this conundrum, this paper utilized a large-scale education dataset for five Asian countries, namely the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) dataset for learner data from Chinese Taipei, Hong Kong, Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore to examine the relationship between dialogic classroom interaction teaching practices and the mathematics performance of 8th-grade learners. Using a within-learner-between-subject estimation strategy to account for endogeneity, we established that learners who are taught more frequently through dialogic interactive teaching practices in mathematics classes achieve higher mathematics scores. Our results confirm that interactive pedagogies do provide learning benefits, even in countries that use them sparingly. Thus, our findings challenge the held assumption that the efficacy of dialogic classroom interaction practices is context and learning culture specific. Nevertheless, our study also shows that the highly endogenous nature of the teaching and learning environment and learner performance limits the ability of any study that uses observational data to establish the true impact of dialogic practices on learner mathematics performance.</p>