Fostering Students’ Dialogic Engagement with the Use of Visual Learning Analytics as a Teaching Assistant Tool in Primary School Classrooms

Abstract

Using visual discourse tools can be a valuable approach for teachers to foster academically productive talk in the classroom. However, teachers often pay considerable attention to highly engaged students and fail to create sufficient opportunities for less engaged students to participate in classroom dialogue. This study seeks to enhance learning by incorporating social network analysis to elucidate students’ levels of engagement in classroom discourse. Over a three-week period, this study analyzed both overall and individual student’s dialogic engagement in the classroom. The results demonstrate that as teachers purposefully lead class dialogue and limit their own speech, students gradually speak more. Additionally, those who initially speak less are given more opportunities to engage in classroom dialogue. These results emphasize the significance of using visualization tools to assist teachers in orchestrating and optimizing classroom dialogue.