With each loop iteration, I want to visually update the text of a textblock. My problem is that the WPF window or control does not visually refresh until the loop is complet
You can do Dispatcher.BeginInvoke in order to do a thread context-switch so that the rendering thread could do its job.
However, this is not the right way for such things. You should use Animation + Binding for things like that, as this is the hack-free way of doing things like that in WPF.