Abstract The past few decades have witnessed a notable surge in research pertaining to the development of Chinese literacy, particularly in the relationship between vocabulary, morphological awareness, and reading comprehension. This body of work has been originally inspired by and grounded in the theoretical paradigms established through literacy research conducted on English and other alphabetic languages. While significant strides have been made in identifying the unique morphological features of Chinese, persistent conceptual and methodological issues remain. By analyzing representative approaches and drawing insights from corpus linguistics and developmental psycholinguistic research, this review critically evaluates the applicability of presumed paradigms in understanding vocabulary, morphological awareness, and their relationship to reading comprehension in Chinese literacy development. Throughout this exploration, conceptual and methodological issues related to the assessment of vocabulary and morphological awareness and the research designs for studying their relationship with reading comprehension in Chinese are identified and addressed. Directions for future research endeavors are proposed for a more comprehensive understanding of the pivotal and unique role played by vocabulary and morphological awareness and their intricate relationship with reading comprehension in Chinese literacy development.

This study aims to understand the construction of multilink causal reasoning chains during collaborative discussions in elementary school classrooms. The construction of reasoning chains was investigated in 24 collaborative discussions involving 160 underserved fifth-grade children. The effects of moment-by-moment situational influences on seven causal chain models were tracked in the discussions. A temporal analysis of chain production indicated that the construction of causal chains accelerated over the course of the discussions. The turn-by-turn analysis of chain construction revealed that once a causal chain was initiated, it was likely to continue for at least three speaking turns. Agreement among group members and support from leaders and socially centered students extended the chain of reasoning. However, refutation and disagreement stopped the chain because the group had to resolve disputed ideas in order to develop a shared understanding. Students' redirection of the topic served as a resetting mechanism for the chaining process. Once the topic was reset by a student, it was more likely for the current speaker to start a causal chain. Overall, the microgenetic analysis of the moment-by-moment exchanges within groups of children provides a more complete and precise picture of the process from which an important new intellectual competency emerges.

This chapter describes a collaborative learning format called Collaborative Reasoning (CR) that facilitates the simultaneous development of language and thought. CR features peer-led, open-format discussions, in which children exchange ideas with peers and improve each other's mental models through constructive interaction. Cross-cultural studies have suggested a dynamic relationship between the development of language and thought during CR, where each reciprocally enhances the other. Results indicate children can overcome the constraints of their own level of cognitive development, enhance their language skills, and develop higher-order thinking across various social, educational, and cultural contexts.

The joint effects of instructional approach and participant structure on children's engagement were investigated in 24 fifth-grade classrooms during a six-week unit on wolf management. 96 four-minute episodes sampled from the lesson videos were coded in 30-second intervals for individual students' momentary cognitive-behavioral engagement, momentary emotional engagement, and current participant structure. Multilevel ordinal regression analyses showed that children were three times more likely to be cognitively and behaviorally engaged and one-and-a-half times more likely to be emotionally engaged during collaborative groups than direct instruction. Children's cognitive-behavioral engagement depended upon participant structure: Children in collaborative groups were most engaged in lessons during peer interaction, whereas children receiving direct instruction were more engaged when interacting with the teacher. Children were more likely to be emotionally engaged when talking with peers, the teacher, or both peers and the teacher than when alone. The study contributes to new understanding of engagement as a function of the nature and conditions for participation in lessons.

Factors that contribute to the performance gap between underserved and mainstream students deserve special attention. Different underserved students are faced with different sets of challenges that could significantly hinder them from performing to their fullest potential in formal assessments. In this study, we sought to determine the relationships between social and psychological aspects of second language (L2) learning and their overall academic achievement with a sample of 200 fourth and fifth grade indigenous Malaysian students learning Malay as L2 in the states of Perak and Pahang, Malaysia. Using structural equation modelling, we found that Orang Asli students’ home literacy activities and L2 learning motivation contributed significantly to their L2 proficiency and overall academic performance. The major finding of this study is that home literacy activities have a significant and important role in the model established. This variable has significant correlations with both the confidence to speak in Malay and motivation to learn the Malay language, and has contributed significantly to the variances of students’ Malay language results and overall academic achievement. Given the importance of L2 proficiency in improving students’ overall academic outcomes, these results altogether indicate that parents can help provide the much-needed support for a more encouraging home literacy environment.

Collaborative Reasoning is a teacher-scaffolded, peer-led, small-group discussion approach that provides students with an environment to engage in productive academic talk. In this chapter, we conceptualise Collaborative Reasoning as an organic system in which students simultaneously develop three aspects of academic talk – academic vocabulary, relational language, and pragmatic language. We describe studies of Collaborative Reasoning that document how students learn to use academic language and suggest evidence-based teaching strategies to further promote academic language.

Fifth-grade students from two urban school districts completed an integrated unit on wolves. Classes received either direct instruction (DI) or collaborative group work (CG). Analysis of reasoning in classroom talk indicated that CG students more often used connective and contrastive words and the performative verb phrases I think and I know than DI students. Analysis of written arguments about a controversial question raised by the unit indicated that, compared to DI students, CG students included more logical connectives, contrastives, and performative verbs, produced fewer unelaborated arguments, more frequently asked rhetorical questions, and more often considered both sides of the policy issue. The study provides fresh insight into how instructional frameworks can affect how students view themselves as writers in relation to a prospective audience.

Social skills involved in leadership were examined in a problem-solving activity in which 252 Chinese 5th-graders worked in small groups on a spatial-reasoning puzzle. Results showed that students who engaged in peer-managed small-group discussions of stories prior to problem solving produced significantly better solutions and initiated significantly more effective leadership than control students. A mediation analysis suggested that it was because of effective leadership that groups who had experienced discussions achieved better problem solutions.

Children’s emergent leadership is an important but often ignored component of peer-led collaborative learning. Existing research suggests that emergent leadership develops when children are given the autonomy and space to regulate group dynamics on their own, which often assists the group to achieve better outcomes within the collaborative activities. However, it is less known whether the emergence of child leadership also promotes deeper and more connected reasoning during collaborative learning. This current study, by coding emergent leadership and relational thinking from two sets of small group discussions (25 in total), revealed that over time, children exhibited more leadership and relational thinking in the second collaborative discussion than their first one. In addition, intellectual leadership moves, rather than organizational leadership moves, were positively related to generation of relational thinking. We discuss the implications of the study to help children, particularly minority children from underserved communities, to developing leadership and relational thinking through participating in intellectually stimulating collaborative discussions.

The goal of this study was to evaluate instructional influences on the storytelling of English Language Learners (ELLs). Participants were 210 fifth-grade Spanish-speaking ELLs (mean age = 10.8) from schools serving low-income neighborhoods in the Midwest of the United States. They received a six-week socio-scientific unit involving collaborative group work or direct instruction, or were in control classes that continued regular instruction. In an essay to evaluate mastery of the instructional unit, students from collaborative groups produced significantly longer chains of reasoning (more chains with 5-8 links) than direct instruction students (more chains with 3 or 4 links), while control students were unable to display any extended reasoning. Following the unit, students individually told a story prompted by a wordless picture book to evaluate their oral English proficiency. The stories were coded for several features of basic language production, story completeness, and multi-link causal reasoning. The results indicated that students who received the socio-scientific unit told stories with more complicated syntax than the control students, while no difference in complexity of syntax was observed between students from the two instructional conditions. Stories told by students who had participated in collaborative groups contained significantly more elaboration of essential story elements than the stories produced by direct instruction students or control students. Students who had interacted in collaborative groups also generated significantly longer chains of reasoning (many 5-7 link chains) connecting story events than students in the other two conditions (mostly 1 or 2 link chains). The results suggest collaborative group work may be an effective instructional approach to foster ELLs' communicative competence and causal reasoning. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.