Exploring the cognitive processes in teacher candidates' collaborative task-based lesson planning

The study explored cognitive processes and dialogic moves involved in designing task-based lessons by analysing 45 Chinese language teacher candidates (TCs)’ collaborative discussions. The findings showed that TCs engaged in macro- and micro-level cognitive processes. The dialogic moves, especially challenging and building on others' ideas, facilitated the analysis processes in which TCs developed and refined the lesson plans from the perspectives of pedagogy, students, and context. The research highlights the importance of teacher education in fostering teachers' abilities to develop lesson plans through multi-faceted analysis and engage in in-depth discussion by utilising dialogic moves of challenging and building others’ ideas. Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.