1-146 - Employing Quantitative Ethnography and Epistemic Network Analysis to Model Emotions and Discourse in Moral Development

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

New technologies are enabling researchers to better capture the social interactions and discourse processes associated with social and emotional development. This symposium highlights two novel applications of epistemic network analysis (ENA) for research in children’s moral development. Specifically, ENA was used to examine (a) transactive discourse (Berkowtiz & Gibbs, 1983) patterns among middle school students during moral conversations, and (b) emotional responses to witnessing aggression towards peers. The studies featured in this symposium make use of ENA’s ability to find connections between theoretical constructs and create visual representations of ideas and joint activity. The first paper explains ENA and how it works, outlining the technical findings for the subsequent two examples. The second paper provides an in-depth look at the study on middle school students’ discourse. The author describes how ENA was used to zero in on patterns of high-level reasoning, and what instructional components facilitated these patterns. The third paper provides an in-depth look at the study on moral emotions and responses to aggression. The author details how ENA allowed for distinguishing experiential overlap among four responses to witnessing aggression: consoling the victim, intervening aggressively, attempting a resolution, and ignoring the situation. In both studies, ENA allowed the researchers to dig deeper into their data, and continue asking questions after initial frequency and correlation tests had been conducted. This iterative quantitative ethnographic approach (Shaffer, 2017) enabled by ENA can push the field of child development forward. We provide compelling representations of data-driven findings accompanied by strong qualitative examples.

Sub Unit

• Moral Development

Chair

• Larry P Nucci, University of California Berkeley

Discussant

• Larry P Nucci, University of California Berkeley

Individual Presentations

• Two Examples of Epistemic Network Analysis as a Method for Modeling Facets of Moral Development - Presenting Author: Brendan Eagan, University of Wisconsin

• Epistemic Network Analysis of Exemplary Transactive Discourse Patterns in Middle School History Class - Presenting Author: Robyn Ilten-Gee, University of California, Berkeley

• Epistemic modeling of moral emotions and appraisals following third-party intervention in peer victimization - Presenting Author: Karin Frey, University of Washington; Non-Presenting Author: Adaurennaya C. Onyewuenyi, The College of New Jersey; Non-Presenting Author: Zoe Higheagle Strong, Washington State University