Refining qualitative ethnographies using Epistemic Network Analysis: A study of socioemotional learning dimensions in a Humanistic Knowledge Building Community

Contemporary educational research has increasingly pointed to socioemotional dimensions of learning as important in promoting academic progress and sociocognitive developments. Epistemic Network Analysis, a methodology for producing quantitative ethnographies based on complex learning environments, has only begun to examine socioemotional facets of learning in classrooms. The aim of this research is to investigate what and how Epistemic Network Analysis can contribute to qualitative, socioemotionally-focused ethnographies of classroom learning communities. To do this, we employed Epistemic Network Analysis to analyze data collected during a semester of studies, in parallel to a stage developmental analysis of the same community using qualitative methods. The results of this study specifically show the importance of prior experience and how this interacts with participants' connectedness to the community, as well as how group dynamics are a vital aspect of community discourse and that the socioemotional dimensions that people attach to it may be the determinants of stage advancement. More generally, this study shows how Epistemic Network Analysis can be used to better understand complex socioemotional phenomena in learning communities by combining it with deep, qualitative ethnographies. •Qualitative and quantitative methods can be combined to create rich learning ethnographies.•Designing knowledge building communities with humanistic activities can foster socioemotional developments.•Epistemic Network Analysis can be used to confirm and expand on qualitative findings of socioemotional phenomena.