Exploring classroom interaction with dynamic social network analysis

ABSTRACT

This article reports on an exploratory project in which technology and dynamic social network analysis (SNA) are used for modelling classroom interaction. SNA focuses on the links between social actors, draws on graphic imagery to reveal and display the patterning of those links, and develops mathematical and computational models to describe and explain those patterns. Dynamic SNA extends SNA and builds on previous research on network change. Utilizing data from six videos from the TIMSS video study and a convenience sample of five observations of one teacher in a secondary school in the south of England, a methodology for dynamic SNA was applied to classroom interaction data. The results are in two ways relevant for this journal. Firstly, they show that recent developments in SNA might be usefully applied to furthering knowledge about the dynamics of classroom interaction. Secondly, the results provide an example of the use of tablet technology for fieldwork data collection.

KEYWORDS:

• Classroom interaction
• technology
• dynamic social network analysis

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Thomas McDougal from the Lesson Study Alliance for kindly providing some data from junior high schools in the USA captured by their Lesson Note app to study the workings of the app. I would also like to thank Dr. Hazel Brown for some data processing. Also thanks to staff and students of the participating school. Finally, a big thanks to all the reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Christian Bokhove http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4860-8723

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund of the University of Southampton. Ethics approval was granted by the university, under number 9898.