Prompting collaborative and exploratory discourse: An epistemic network analysis study

By encouraging elementary students to work collaboratively, they can gain essential skills such as perspective taking, conflict negotiation, and asking for and receiving assistance. Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA) is an analytic technique that provides an alternative to more typical approaches to analyzing and synthesizing coded dialogue. This study used an easy-to-implement prompting intervention in the context of collaborative (pair) programming with upper elementary students to demonstrate the potential of ENA to understand the impact of the intervention. We found that intervention students—those given empiricallyderived prompts in support of collaborative and exploratory talk—asked questions, justified their thinking, and offered alternative ideas in ways that were both qualitatively and quantitatively different from control students.

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