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University of Tennessee, Knoxville TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Doctoral Dissertations Graduate School 5-2018 Preschool Children’s Cooperative Problem Solving during Play in Everyday Classroom Contexts: China and the US Meilan Jin University of Tennessee, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss Recommended Citation Jin, Meilan, "Preschool Children’s Cooperative Problem Solving during Play in Everyday Classroom Contexts: China and the US. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2018. https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/4940 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations by an authorized administrator of TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange. For more information, please contact [email protected]. To the Graduate Council: I am submitting herewith a dissertation written by Meilan Jin entitled "Preschool Children’s Cooperative Problem Solving during Play in Everyday Classroom Contexts: China and the US." I have examined the final electronic copy of this dissertation for form and content and recommend that it be accepted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, with a major in Child and Family Studies. Mary Jane Moran, Major Professor We have read this dissertation and recommend its acceptance: Samara D. Akpovo, Robyn A. Brookshire, Hillary N. Fouts, John G. Orme Accepted for the Council: Dixie L. Thompson Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (Original signatures are on file with official studentecor r ds.) Preschool Children’s Cooperative Problem Solving during Play in Everyday Classroom Contexts: China and the US A Dissertation Presented for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Meilan Jin May 2018 Copyright © 2017 by Meilan Jin All rights reserved. ii Acknowledgements I would like to express my deep gratitude to my advisor and mentor, Dr. Mary Jane Moran, for her countless and invaluable support and guidance to improve various aspects of this dissertation. Her encouragement and critical perspectives motivated me to challenge myself to think critically about every decision I made in the trajectory of pursuing my doctoral degree. I would like to thank Dr. Hillary N. Fouts for her thoughtful comments and suggestions throughout the dissertation. I also want to thank Dr. John Orme for his valuable advice and assistance in my statistical analyses. I would like to thank Dr. Samara Madrid Akpovo for serving my dissertation committee and for her support of my research. I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Robyn Brookshire for her support in helping me recruit US participants in my study as well as for her insightful thoughts about the dissertation. I would like to thank the Department of Child and Family Studies at the University of Tennessee for their support and assistance. I would like to express my deep gratitude to the children, parents, teachers, and preschool directors and staff in the two research sites for their participations as well as their support in the process of data collection. I want to thank my friends Xuan Ma, Daniela and her husband Isaac and their son Ian, for their encouragement and support throughout this journey. Finally, my deepest gratitude to Taixie Jin and Shunnu Xu, my parents, and Yanling Jin, Chunjie Pi, and Zhiyan Pi, my sister and her husband and daughter, for their endless love, encouragement, and support. Although we are in different countries, we always know that we love each other and love our family. iii Abstract There is value in studying young children’s cooperative problem solving (CPS) during play in different cultures since children in our society will continue to face problems that are not unique to a particular culture, but also relevant to people from other countries. Cognitive development theory and sociocultural theory contend that play contexts can support children in the construction of their knowledge through explorations with different play materials and engagement in social interactions with peers during CPS experiences. However, there is a lack of research studying children’s CPS during play in their everyday preschool classrooms, and particularly, cross-culturally. Therefore, this dissertation, that includes three manuscripts, was designed to investigate (a) preschool children’s different patterns of engagement in play and CPS in Chinese and US preschool classrooms and (b) their teachers’ beliefs about their roles and pedagogical decisions for supporting children’s CPS in particular settings in these two cultures. In the first manuscript, a systematic literature review was conducted framed by PRISR, and it was found that there is a lack of cross-cultural studies that have investigated (a) preschool children’s CPS during play in their everyday classroom contexts and (b) teachers’ roles in children’s development of CPS. These research gaps were addressed in the second and third manuscripts by conducting (a) a 10-month, ethnographic informed observational study in a Chinese kindergarten and a US preschool center that included (b) semi-structured, teacher interviews with the integration of the visual stimulated recall approach. The data and findings are presented, based on over 960 minutes of (a) 16, four- and five-year-old children’s video recordings, (b) six classroom teachers’ interview transcriptions from two early care and education centers, and (c) the researcher’s field notes and journal entries. Findings support that there were cultural and gender differences in children’s engagement in their types of play iv (constructive play, fantasy play, and rough-and-tumble play) and CPS (debating and mentoring). Further, teachers in both cultures showed similarities and differences, within and across the cultural contexts, in their beliefs and pedagogy regarding their image of the child, their role as teachers, and their arrangements of classroom environments. v Table of Contents Chapter 1. Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 2 References .................................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 2. Young Children’s Cooperative Problem Solving during Play in Everyday Classroom Contexts: A Systematic Literature Review ............................................................. 9 Abstract .................................................................................................................................... 10 Introduction ............................................................................................................................. 11 Theoretical, Contextual, & Developmental Considerations ............................................... 13 Theoretical Considerations ................................................................................................... 13 Preschool Classroom Contexts ............................................................................................. 14 Play as Context ..................................................................................................................... 16 Cooperative Problem Solving ............................................................................................... 17 Methods .................................................................................................................................... 20 Four-Phase Search Procedure ............................................................................................... 20 Results ...................................................................................................................................... 32 Participant Demographics ..................................................................................................... 32 Research Strategies ............................................................................................................... 36 The Measured Behaviors of Cooperative Problem Solving ................................................. 41 The Summary of Eight Study Findings ................................................................................ 46 Discussion ................................................................................................................................ 49 Limitations ............................................................................................................................ 52 Implications for Research and Practice ................................................................................. 53 References ................................................................................................................................ 54 Appendix A .............................................................................................................................. 75 Appendix B .............................................................................................................................. 79 Chapter 3. Understanding Preschool Children’s Cooperative Problem Solving during Play in Everyday Classroom Contexts: China and the US .............................................................