This project investigates whether establishing joint attention between student and teacher during real-time dyadic interaction is conducive to a teacher’s instructional alignment and student learning. After identifying task characteristics associated with joint or diverging attention (Study 1), which will also allow for creating a task database for subsequent studies, we explore the relation between levels of joint-attention, student learning and teacher alignment by measuring verbal and non-verbal cues in real-time interaction (Study 2). This is followed by two studies which address the following questions: Does student learning improve when teachers are trained to use cues which increase joint attention (Study 3)? Does teacher alignment increase when teachers receive real-time information about a student’s level of understanding (Study 4)?

• Alline Aleman
• dr. Nienke Smit
• dr. Margot van Wermeskerken