Effect of dialogic instruction and storybook on children’s knowledge construction

Shared book-reading activities established a collaborative learning environment to engage children in productive and purposeful activities and improve their cognitive socialization. Few studies have investigated teacher-child dialogic reading as a context for constructing knowledge. This study explored the effects of dialogic instruction on kindergarten children’s construction of conservation and conflict resolution knowledge. One hundred and twenty K2 & K3 children were recruited from two campuses of a Montessori kindergarten with similar socioeconomic backgrounds in Kunming, China. An experimental design was conducted to quantitatively explore children’s conservation and conflict resolution development. The study’s results indicated that while dialogic instruction and storybook can significantly but separately accelerate conservation construction in pre-operational stage kindergarten children, there are no significant additive effects. Unlike conservation, dialogic instruction, but not a storybook, can facilitate conflict resolution as a form of social knowledge. Copyright © 2023 EARLI.