Fostering knowledge building through meta-discourse among Chinese students

Abstract

Engaging students in collaborative knowledge building inquiry with a high level of discourse is challenging, and is thus the focus of extensive learning sciences research. This dissertation presents a two-semester investigation into how and to what extent reflective assessments and dialogic teaching enriched with discourse visualizations affect tertiary students’ use of knowledge building meta-discourse in business English classes. Meta-discourse refers to dialogue in which learners reflect on the collective inquiry process. The aim of this study is to investigate (1) how and to what extent students’ engagement in Knowledge Forum inquiry and their views regarding collaboration in knowledge building and discourse affect their academic achievements; (2) how and to what extent students’ participation in in-class and online reflective assessments fosters their use of meta-discourse moves; (3) how and to what extent teachers’ reflection on discourse visualizations promotes dialogic teaching and sustained in-depth inquiry; and (4) how and to what extent students’ collective reflection on discourse visualizations encourages their use of meta-discourse in reflective assessments. Two iterative studies were conducted with students studying a business English course. Twenty-five year-one tertiary students and one teacher were enrolled in two studies. Study One investigated the roles of reflective group presentation and electronic portfolio in students’ use of meta-discourse moves. Study Two involved a quasi-experimental design to investigate how and to what extent participating students’ collective reflection on discourse visualizations promoted their use of meta-discourse moves. Three groups of students attended two iterative workshops in which they were asked to reflect on discourse visualizations supported by the Classroom Discourse Analyzer, while the two other groups only participated in regular knowledge building activities. The teacher was also invited to reflect on discourse visualizations of teacher–student talk for dialogic teaching. Five main findings were obtained across the two iterative studies: (1) multiple factors significantly predicted individual students’ academic achievements, such as the frequency of build-on notes, the use of scaffolds, their views of collaboration, and their views of discourse; (2) the students used multiple strategies to identify useful clusters of notes and reflect on knowledge advancement, and the KB reflective assessment design promoted students’ use of meta-discourse moves; (3) teacher’s reflection on discourse visualizations promoted dialogic teaching through improving the use of talk moves that can foster collective inquiry; (4) students’ collective reflection on discourse visualizations promoted their use of meta-discourse moves by improving their awareness of collective inquiry, meta-discourse moves and other useful moves using contextualized materials; (5) students’ use of meta-cognition moves in e-portfolio notes significantly predicted their final exam scores, and an association was found between students’ in-class and online meta-discourse. This dissertation has several research implications. In terms of theory, knowledge building discourse is more comprehensively characterized from a dialogic teaching perspective. This thesis also clarifies how reflection on discourse visualizations can encourage students’ use of meta-discourse. Pedagogically, the design of students’ collective reflection activities enriched with discourse visualizations can engage students in in-depth collective inquiry and can help to coordinate in-class and online knowledge building discourse for higher–level knowledge creation.