"Impact of Peer Interaction on Students' Intellectual and Behavioral Development and Engagement"

Presenters: Alondra Villegas, Algrae Gorospe, Vanessa Comia, Poster Presentation
Research Title: Impact of Peer Interaction on Students' Intellectual and Behavioral Development and Engagement
Faculty Advisor: Hosun Kang
Mentor: David Liu

Abstract

​This study explores students’ behavioral engagement by examining the interactions and participation of students and afterschool educators in an out of school setting. Drawing from the Productive Disciplinary Engagement (PDE) theory proposed by Engle and Conant, this study looks at interactions of student during on topic and off topic task engagement. Data was collected from a year-long fifth-grade afterschool science program over eight sessions and a total of 24 hours of video recording of student interactions. Using MAXQDA software, videos were segmented into 15 seconds and were coded for either on topic engagement (e.g., student to peer interaction, student collaboration) or off topic codes (e.g., no interaction, misbehaving) with 82% interrater reliability among three coders. Our findings suggested an increase in peer to peer interaction created more opportunities for students to be involved in classroom activities as the focus was to increase collaboration among groups. This implies that if the class is structured where there is less interaction between peer and staff, there will be a greater peer to peer interaction.

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