Teacher–student interactions in blended synchronous classrooms of rural China

Blended Synchronous Classrooms (BSCs) have been extensively implemented in rural areas across China to provide students with access to high-quality digital educational resources. Teacher–student interactions form the fundamental backbone of any classroom, especially in blended synchronous learning environments, where effective interactions are critical to achieving educational success. However, there remains a significant gap in understanding the distributions and sequence characteristics of these interactions in such contemporary classrooms. To address the gap, this study analysed the interactions among 19 rural primary school students, two onsite teachers and two online teachers within BSCs. The findings revealed that (1) “Lecturing”, “Giving directions” and “Teachers’ use of technology” occurred with higher frequencies; (2) a typical initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequence emerged, characterized by “Asking closed questions”, “Response proactively” and “Teachers praise or encourage or Teachers accept or use student’s ideas” in BSCs; and (3) online teachers often adopted different teaching methods to organize and carry out teaching in English and Science lessons. These findings suggest that BSCs are predominantly teacher-centred, with students’ agency not being sufficiently emphasized. It is necessary to develop personalized interactive tools to enhance student engagement and cultivate more flexible questioning skills for teachers to support students’ deep thinking.