Online Talk in a New Zealand Primary School Context: Investigating the nature of interactions in an online literacy discussion group

Abstract

Discussion, particularly that utilising dialogic methods, is a teaching method that can support achievement, engagement, and build student agency (Lyle, 2008; Muhonen et al., 2018; Omland & Rødnes, 2020; Sedova et al., 2019). Teachers are increasingly moving such discussions online as greater amounts of learning at school are being conducted using computers and via the internet. Online talk in primary schools has had less investigation undertaken into its details and effects up to this point. However, online talk has been found to be beneficial for students’ learning (Ocker & Yaverbaum, 1999). It seems likely the use of online talk will become more widespread in the future therefore this study sought to discover the nature of interactions present in the context of an online literacy discussion group for students and their teachers from Year 5 to 8 across four New Zealand primary school classrooms. The purpose was to obtain baseline data of what was occurring in, as well as what is understood about, online talk for the New Zealand primary teachers and children in the study. A clear picture of online talk in New Zealand primary schools was not widely known to the point of this study. Data from this study could be used in future research to see if the findings are generalisable or as evidence when supporting teachers who will be working with primary school students in online literacy discussions. This research consisted of a small-scale case study of the #NZReadaloud, a pre-existing literacy programme, over six weeks in mid-2020. A private online group on the education platform Edmodo was established where 14 students and four teachers participating in the study could discuss a text being read aloud in their classrooms. These discussions, along with eight follow up interviews were analysed to seek patterns and draw conclusions about the nature of online talk in this context. The first phase of this study comprised online discussions on Edmodo. Key findings from transcripts of these discussions were that talk was one of three styles: closed, evaluative, or interactive. Results showed that students from one classroom participated the most and in the most interactive way. Their posts displayed higher-level interactions, including frequent questioning and connections to others’ contributions. Other students’ posts, from two of the other volunteering schools, were mostly limited to sharing finished work. One teacher stood out as the most prolific poster, but contrastingly her students did not contribute as much to discussions or in ways demonstrating higher-level thinking. Semi-structured interviews with all teachers and four students made up the second phase of the study. Responses from interviews were analysed alongside discussion transcripts to see whether what participants said matched their actions. It was found online talk was viewed as beneficial for learning and enjoyable by all participants. This did not align with the amount and nature of the talk that was displayed in the online discussions. Reasoning behind this was hypothesised through data analysis and reviewing literature on the subject. Knowledge of what effective online talk consisted of and how to teach and encourage its use by students was lacking in specifics. Online talk was not an expectation and students had many other options for activities as part of their literacy programme.