Friendship Effects on Socially Anxious Students’ Dialogue Patterns during Collaborative Small Group Discussions

• In Event: 1-190 - The Role of Peers in Learning across Distinct Life Stages

Integrative Statement

This study examined the extent to which social anxiety influences children’s dialogue patterns with peers in the context of collaborative small group discussions, and whether friendship mediates the relationships between social anxiety and dialogue patterns.

Dialogic instruction is far more than simply putting students into groups and encouraging them to talk (e.g., Murphy et al., 2009; Webb, 2009). To understand the efficacy of dialogic instruction for children’s learning and development, the majority of studies have focused on the cognitive mechanisms underlying dialogic interaction (e.g., Cazden & Beck, 2003; Chi & Wylie, 2014; Mercer, 2010). However, relatively fewer studies have investigated the social and interpersonal aspects of dialogic interaction (e.g., Baron, 2003; Lin et al., 2015; Tolmie et al., 2010). The central premise of the current study is that dialogue is an amalgamation of social and cognitive processes. In a productive small group discussion, students not only constantly update and monitor their reasoning and understanding of an issue, but also actively exercise their interpersonal competencies to maintain a collaborative norm. However, such a vigorous form of social interaction could be a stressor for socially anxious students, who tend to withdraw from verbal participation due to their sensitivity to social evaluation (e.g., Rubin, Coplan, & Bowker, 2009; Younger, Schneider, Guirguis, & Bergeron, 2000). We hypothesized that having a best friend in the small group discussion might enhance socially anxious students’ verbal participation. Friends have shared experience and beliefs (e.g., Brechwald & Prinstein, 2011), which may establish a foundation for knowledge co-construction. In addition, the presence of friends in the group may satisfy students’ needs for relatedness (Deci & Ryan, 2000), which would enhance their motivation to participate in the dialogic interactions with peers.

The participants were 120 fifth-graders from a public elementary school in a suburban district in the Midwest region of the U.S. Students participated in five weekly Collaborative Social Reasoning discussions (CSR, Lin et al., 2017). Dialogue patterns were coded at the level of speaking ties, which were speaking turns with identifiable addressees. Cognitive dialogue patterns were coded based on Chi’s Interactive-constructive-active-passive framework (Chi, 2009); social dialogue patterns were identified based on the three social norms of CSR (Lin et al., 2015) (Table 3). Social anxiety and friendship relationships were assessed before the first discussion, using a peer nomination approach (e.g., Parker & Asher, 1993; Younger et al., 2000).

As summarized in Table 4, exponential random graph models (ERGM, e.g., Lusher, Koskinen, & Robins, 2012) showed that socially anxious students were less likely to initiate or receive dialogue patterns from peers. However, when interacting with friends, socially anxious students were more likely to initiate cognitive dialogue patterns and were more likely to be challenged in polite ways (i.e., mutual respect) by their friends.

The current study took a fine-grained social network approach to unpack the dynamic cognitive and social processes during collaborative small group discussions. The results suggest that grouping socially anxious student with their friends may be an effective instructional method to facilitate their verbal participation.

Authors

• Jing Chen, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author

• Tzu-Jung Lin, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Lynley Anderman, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author