Reasoning Together or Clicking Though? Analyzing Patterns of Group Science Talk On and Off Individualized Computers

ABSTRACT In this article, I examine group science talk within the classrooms of three urban secondary science teachers who regularly use one‐to‐one computers to mediate their NGSS‐aligned science instruction. I combine methods of framing analysis (Goffman 1974; Tannen 1993) and interaction analysis (Jordan and Henderson 1995) to illustrate differences in how students talk and relate across clips where computers were differentially present as mediators of group activity. In doing so, I compare how students interacted with one another and framed their contributions to the group when individualized computers mediated their activity to when computers were shared, limited or absent. My findings demonstrate how students embody certain habits as they each work on their own individual digital device—namely, going at their own pace, and keeping their screens private—which appeared to stymie students’ ability to engage in sensemaking talk as a social group. These inhibiting forms of social interaction were mitigated in clips where students were asked to share computers or documents or even put computers away altogether. This article contributes to our evolving understandings of how the expansion of individualized computers and digital platforms may be shaping the kind of environment classrooms are for science discourse. As I conclude, I call for educators and researchers who are working towards the science education community's long held reform goals of collective knowledge construction in classrooms to consider how we might disrupt the individualizing ways students have come to use computers in school.