Learning Analytics for Teacher Noticing and Scaffolding: Facilitating Knowledge Building Progress in Science

Abstract

This study investigates using ongoing learning analytics to support two teachers’ reflective noticing and responsive scaffolding in knowledge building communities. Students in four Grade 5 science classrooms collaborated to investigate the human body systems for four months using an online platform: Idea Thread Mapper (ITM). The teachers kept weekly reflective journals to attend to students’ collaborative idea progress and interpret the noticed events in order to make responsive moves to facilitate student knowledge building. Their reflective efforts were supported by knowledge building analytics. Qualitative analyses of the teachers’ reflective journals, classroom and online discourse, and interviews traced how the teachers engaged in and facilitated students’ knowledge building over time. The teachers used the analytical feedback to enhance their reflective attention and sense-making focused on students’ idea-growing efforts as individuals, groups, and a whole community, including discovering student inquiry moves, reforming collaborations, and intertwining analytical feedback into iterative noticing and scaffolding.