How vocal and silent forms of participation in combination relate to student achievement

Abstract

We adopted a person-oriented approach to identify patterns of how classroom talk and internal behavioral engagement are combined in students.The research was conducted on a sample of 639 ninth-grade students (32 classes). We measured the duration of classroom talk for each individual student during Czech language and language arts lessons. The students completed an inventory to determine their internal behavioral engagement. Student achievement was measured using the results from standardized reading literacy tests. We also inquired about the socioeconomic backgrounds of the students.We identified five distinct participation profiles (eager, chatty, diligent, aloof, and disconnected) and analyzed whether the profiles could predict student achievement. We found that the profile with high talk and high internal behavioral engagement performed best, and the profile with low talk and low internal behavioral engagement performed worst. Analyzing the inconsistent profiles, we found that high internal behavioral engagement did not guarantee student achievement if the engagement was not accompanied by talk. Our findings thus highlight the important role of classroom talk in relation to student learning.