Impact of the Interactive Learning Environments in Children’s Prosocial Behavior

Abstract

Prosocial behavior consists of a set of behaviors that are beneficial to others in the form of sharing and helping. It includes aspects such as solidarity and friendship, and it fosters development and positive psychological functioning; it also improves classroom and school climate. Interactive learning environments may play a crucial role in creating affordances for students to develop prosocial behavior. This study analyzes the impact of two educational interventions based on egalitarian dialogue (Dialogic Literary Gathering and Interactive Groups) on prosocial behavior among fourth grade elementary students. A quasi-experimental design has been carried out, in which measurements have been taken before and after the intervention. Results show that students involved in the Dialogic Literary Gatherings increased significantly their level of prosocial behavior more than those in the control groups. However, no significant differences have been found between students in the experimental and control condition, when considering Interactive Groups. These results have important educational implications for creating conducive learning environments for the development of prosocial behavior.

Implications for Social Impact of Dialogic Teaching and Learning

“…Classrooms based on dialogic teaching and learning have proven that teachers do not need to choose between fostering students' academic achievements or social cohesion. Rather, evidence on some of the dialogue-based practices presented in the previous section shows that developments in instrumental learning, competences, and skills, when boosted through egalitarian dialogue, influence prosocial values such as solidarity and friendship (Villardón-Gallego et al, 2018); and that, at the same time, when such values are developed, instrumental learning and academic attainments are propelled. Therefore, one dimension promotes the other, and vice versa.…”

“…This shift in educational psychology has influenced multiple advancements in the creation of scientific knowledge on the diversity of instructional practices based on dialogic teaching and learning which have contributed to several improvements: developing language and communication skills (van der Veen et al, 2017;Teo, 2019); promoting critical thinking and reasoning (Mercer et al, 1999;Teo, 2019); learning science and mathematics (Soong and Mercer, 2011;Díez-Palomar and Olivé, 2015;Alexander, 2018); boosting social inclusion and democratic values such as solidarity and friendship (Valero et al, 2017;Villardón-Gallego et al, 2018;Rios-Gonzalez et al, 2019); or empowering students to become agents of social change (García-Carrión and Díez-Palomar, 2015), among others.…”

Student teachers volunteering in pre-service programmes in successful schools: Contributing to their successful training

“…The previous quotes from the volunteers describe their impressions about the children's progress. They illustrate how this improvement is also extremely connected to the involvement of other social actors, such as families and people from the neighbourhood and specially with nonacademic members, because they contribute to other very positive aspects, for instance being a reference person for children of their same ethnicity or socioeconomic situation (Villardón-Gallego et al, 2018). This positive dynamic also had a significant impact on their training from another point of view.…”

“…The findings presented in this article are consistent with the contributions described above but also provide new elements that are primarily connected to volunteer achievements through interactions with non-academic individuals involved in the community. An interaction that shows both the improvement of children's learning and the improvement of the learning and values of the volunteer university students, (Villardón-Gallego et al, 2018).…”

Communicative Methodology: Contributions to Social Impact Assessment in Psychological Research

“…That illustrated the impact of CM drawing on the DIH postulate, in order to generate dialogic knowledge (Table 1). Ultimately, children engaged in higher order interactions (Hargreaves and García-Carrión, 2016) and developed solidarity-based relationships in classrooms where they felt valued and included (Villardón-Gallego et al, 2018). The implementation of the CM allowed for assessing the social impact during the whole research process, enabling improvements to expand it.…”