Collaborative learning and knowledge building

Knowledge Building Principles and constructive related actions: A frame to support knowledge building in your classroom

Frank de Jong

Adapted from the work of Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter by Monica Resendes and adapted again by Frank de Jong.

Using Video Supported Collaborative Learning in the classroom in a knowledge building way (Scardamalia and Bereiter 2014) leads to deeper understanding and improved ideas (e.g. knowledge) of students and teachers.

Research from several sources has identified principles and activity phases (Scardamalia 2002; De Jong 2020) which guide teachers and students in such a discourse.

In Figure 1. De Jong identifies different activity phases and roles at each phase for students, teachers and the technology. In the first phase, video is used to introduce an authentic problem by, for example:

- videoblogs of students’ initial ideas as a first step in creating a video constructed during the whole knowledge building process to tell the story of the process and ending in a video product where students present their understanding, solution of a problem etc.

- students’ video recordings of them trying out ideas in their own practice or community environment.

- students’ video recordings of their dialogues helping them to reflect on their content-progressions or social interactions and role taking to learn the necessary communication skills.

Figure 1: Knowledge-building in^-(ter)-action model as a basis for developing guidelines for students, teachers, technology (De Jong, 2020b)

 

Twelve Knowledge building principles and constructive actions

To advance knowledge building in this collaborative process, twelve knowledge building principles are formulated by Scardamalia (2002) as well as  ‘good moves’ e.g. constructive dialogic actions that can contribute to attaining goals of such dialogue – to solve problems, resolve disagreements, generate innovations, new concepts and conceptual structures (Bereiter and Scardamalia 2016) and constructive actions (De Jong 2020a).

These principles and constructive actions are described below. They relate to the principles and ‘good moves’ you can hear about in the related video in this MESHGuide and the VSCL video MOOC. Steps for gradually transforming content centered teaching and learning into more knowledge building oriented learning are described by De Jong (2020b).

The twelve knowledge building principles and examples of their application in practice are listed below:

1. IMPROVABLE IDEAS

Ideas generated by students e.g. through discussion, are treated as improvable rather than simply accepted or rejected; work proceeds continuously to improve the explanatory power, coherence and utility of ideas —> The goal is not searching for a perfect answer or the final state but for the best explanation, solution, product, or understandings on which we can build.

The teacher or e-environment (for instance Knowledge Forum) role:

- to support revision in all aspects of the design of ideas —there is always a higher level to take ideas, there is always opportunity to rework and refine contributions.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“Let’s design an experiment,” “How does it work, REALLY?”, “We used to think..., now we think...”

Constructive actions

• The teacher makes it clear to students that all ideas are good and improvable. Students don’t have to think in terms of a complete, fully developed product before expressing their ideas.
• The teacher creates a socially safe environment in which ‘open minds’ can flourish.
• Collaborating on the development of an idea, vision, theory, solution, etc. that can be applied to, but also goes beyond, the intended problem area.

2. EPISTEMIC AGENCY

Learners are given agency to set goals, engage in long-range planning, monitor progress, evaluate idea coherence, support sustained knowledge advancement —> Learners are empowered to take charge at the highest levels.

Teacher or e-environment (for instance Knowledge Forum) role:

• to use scaffolds to help support high level knowledge work embedded in notes or conversations to help learners take charge in building knowledge (scaffolds include providing language to use: for students “My theory”, “I need to understand”, “Putting our knowledge together”, “We need an experiment to,” etc.).
• to provide support for viewing ideas in different contexts and assessment tools to help learners evaluate their own work.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“I need to understand…;” “I think we should take this in a different direction altogether,” “So how does this address our problem?” “What’s our goal here?” “Let’s plan the next stage of our work now, so we can stay on course,”

Constructive actions

• Students write down, without constraints, whatever comes to mind.
• The teacher gives the students tools to effectively analyse authentic topics, to determine what the problem is and to define why an idea may be promising.
• Meta-dialogue, reflecting on the discourse, evaluating its progress, recognising and complimenting individual contributions and group performance. Solving problems if the discourse is going astray in terms of content or socially.

3. COMMUNITY KNOWLEDGE, COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY

All students are legitimate contributors to community goals and take responsibility for advancing the community’s knowledge, not just their individual learning —> The community identifies shared progress and needed advances.

Teacher or e-environment role:

- to support use of an open, collaborative workspace which holds ideas that are contributed by community members. Community membership is defined in terms of reading and building-on the notes of others, ensuring that contributions are informative and helpful for the community.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“Let’s create a You Tube video—the story of our knowledge advances,” “Our ideas don’t fit together,” “We’re all saying the same thing,” “How would you describe our current state of understanding?” “We need to organize this Knowledge Forum* view.”

*We suggest you explore the knowledge building and Knowledge Forum at the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology.

Constructive actions

• Students conducting ‘small-group dialogues’ about each other's ideas to find out whether there is a common interest in working together as a group.
• Students putting forward useful ideas for the group or group members. Assuming shared responsibility for the group’s knowledge development (shared metacognition).
• The teacher creates virtual and physical spaces where groups can form and subsequently work.
• Finding and supporting common interests.
• Collaborating by reading, appreciating, building on, bringing together and rising above each other's contributions, with a focus on the group’s shared collective goals.

4. DEMOCRATIZING KNOWLEDGE

All students are empowered as legitimate contributors to the shared goals; all take pride in the knowledge advances of the community. Diversity and divisional differences are viewed as strengths rather than as leading to separation along knowledge have/have-not lines —> Everyone’s ideas are needed and encouraged.

Teacher or e-environment role:

- to ensure all students have access to and contribute to a community space; analytic tools allow students to assess evenness of contributions and other signs of the extent to which all members are engaging and making contributions towards the group’s shared goals.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“What can we do to get everyone involved?” “We seem to have lost the interest of

several people,” “Interesting idea—how can we help?”

Constructive actions

• Sharing everyone’s ‘acquired’ insights and finding a content-based socio-cognitive match, whereby groups are formed through a sense of connection in relation to content.
• Conducting ‘small-group dialogues’ to find the most promising idea (question, curiosity, solution, etc.) to develop further together.
• Reflecting on the discourse, evaluating progress, recognizing individual contributions and group performance, and complimenting one another. Solving problems if the discourse goes astray in terms of content or socially.

5. IDEA DIVERSITY

Knowledge advancement depends on diversity of ideas, just as the success of an ecosystem depends on biodiversity. To understand an idea is to understand the ideas that surround it, including those that stand in contrast to it —> A wealth of ideas and out-of-the-box thinking.

Teacher or e-environment support tools:

Bulletin boards, discussion forums, and so forth, provide opportunities for diversity of ideas but they only weakly support interaction of ideas. Look for good Forums or dialogue e-environments (like Knowledge Forum), that facilitate linking ideas and bringing different combinations of ideas together in different contributions and perspectives to promote interaction that makes productive use of diversity.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“I never realized there were so many ways to view this!” “That’s a new idea,” “I never

thought of it that way,” “Let’s try a different approach”

Constructive actions

• Students exchanging ideas and curiosities, face-to-face or by reading contributions from others.
• Instead of discussing you can empathize and take the perspective of the other, and look what your idea contributes the other perspective and both to the collective understanding.

6. KNOWLEDGE BUILDING DISCOURSE

Discursive practices are not simply for sharing ideas and opinions, but for transforming and advancing knowledge; problems are progressively identified and addressed, and problems deepened; new conceptualizations are built using contrasting ideas and analogies —> Ever-deepening questions, clearer explanations, better examples.

Teacher or e-environment roles:

- to provide support with rich multimedia and intertextual notes and views that support emergent rather than predetermined goals and workspaces. Revision, reference, and annotation further encourage students to identify shared problems and gaps in understanding and to advance understanding beyond the level of the most knowledgeable individual.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“How does this work, REALLY? This doesn't explain how...” “We’re just grouping ideas

together—what’s the big idea?” “That’s just a topic, what’s the issue?”

Constructive actions

• Students are reading information, not to confirm one’s own ideas, but to look for what helps to answer a collective question, testing (promising) collective ideas (theory), curiosity or solving a problem.
• Students integrate knowledge by establishing relationships and connections, bringing together and rising above the group’s knowledge, reasoning and arguing as to why certain ideas and solutions are better than earlier ones – the latter also in relation to sustainability for people, nature and society. How do the ideas contribute (or not), and why, to the ‘good’ in practice – that is, society?
• Teachers and students are analyzing and defining the problem; clarifying the essence of the challenge, why it is important and why the idea has not emerged earlier.

7. REAL IDEAS, AUTHENTIC PROBLEMS

Identify problems that arise from efforts to improve practice and understand the world; pursue sustained, creative work surrounding ideas that matter —> The essence, as I see it.

Teacher or e-environment role:

- to create a culture for creative work with ideas. Notes and views serve as direct reflections of the core work of the organization and of the ideas of its creators.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“The real issue, I believe...” “What I’d REALLY like to know...” “Authentic from my point of view would be.”

Constructive actions

• The teacher has a good connection with what is happening in current/future practice; they select relevant literature and establish the link with compulsory curriculum content. Interdisciplinary collaboration is an option here.     

• Teachers connect to students’ own practices and environment (Umwelt), so that they work on real ideas, authentic problems, issues or challenges in their environment or community, based on the ‘promising’ collective idea and goal.

8. RISE-ABOVE

Work with diverse ideas in complex problem spaces; transcend trivialities and over-simplifications and work toward more inclusive principles and higher level formulations of problems —> There’s got to be a better way!

Teacher or e-environment role:

- to support in-expert knowledge building teams, as in Knowledge Forum, conditions to which people adapt, change as a result of the successes of other people in the environment.

- to adapt to a progressive set of conditions that keep raising the bar.

- to support constructive discourse, stimulate and help students with ‘Rising-Above’ and progressive perspectives supporting unlimited embedding of ideas in increasingly advanced structures and support emergent rather than fixed goals. When students reflect on the preceding discourse from time to time by brining ‘their knowledge together’ and ‘rising-above’ they work toward more inclusive principles and higher-level formulations of problems. ‘Rising above’ means learning to work with diversity, complexity and messiness, and out of that achieving new syntheses. By moving to higher planes of understanding students transcend trivialities and oversimplifications and move beyond current best practices.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“Let’s take this to a new level.” “I bet we are missing something important here,” “How

do we get beyond our current thinking?” “It can’t be that simple.” “We just keep going

back and forth—this or that.”

Constructive actions

• Students evaluate ‘promising ideas’ by considering which one has more potential for a solution; developing an understanding of the subject, understanding it, theory development and how the idea relates to alternatives.
• Reading and building on the contributions of others by asking questions, providing new information, bringing information together and ‘rising above’.
• Working towards more inclusive principles and higher-level (more abstract) problems. Rising above (over)simplifications and trivialities and thinking beyond the current ‘best’ or ‘good’ (practical) case studies.
• Teachers help students to rise above the information that they have gathered. Explaining the difference between summarizing, integrating and establishing relationships, and how searching for patterns can help.

9. CONSTRUCTIVE USE OF AUTHORITATIVE SOURCES

Find and critically evaluate source material; assess writer credentials; use source material to refine ideas, not as ultimate authority; show respect for expertise, but also freedom to question authoritative accounts —> “What do experts say?” “What makes you think this person is an expert?”

Teacher or e-environment role:

• encourage students to use authoritative sources, along with other information sources, as data for their own knowledge building and idea improving processes.
• students are encouraged to contribute new information to central resources, to reference and build-on authoritative sources; bibliographies are generated automatically from referenced resources.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“How would someone with more knowledge handle this?” “There seems to be agreement among experts that...”; “How does this expert’s idea fit with ours?” “Here’s what someone who knows a lot says.” “I found an explanation but I need help to understand the relevance to our work.”

Constructive actions

• Students discussing the literature together, in-depth exploration of terms that the group uses to find out what each individual and the group as a whole understands by the term.
• Teacher and students analyze the core concepts, concept map, (individual) word clouds and word clouds based on the relevant literature.
• Teachers provide adequate and authoritative literature or help students to develop effective searching skills.
• Teachers support design thinking: brainstorming, bringing information together, creating, testing, evaluating, rising above and properly substantiating ideas.

10. PERVASIVE KNOWLEDGE BUILDING

Knowledge building is not confined to particular occasions or subjects but pervades mental life—in and out of school and across contexts —> Everywhere an opportunity.

Teacher or e-environment role:

• encourage knowledge building as the central and guiding force of the community's mission, not as an add-on.
• contributions to collective resources reflect all aspects of knowledge work.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“In a movie I saw there was this cool demonstration—it worked like this,”, “I wrote a note—I’ll put it in our group space tomorrow.” “I took a picture so I’ll remember,” “I thought of this while I was walking in the park,” “Let’s enter data from this recorder.”

Constructive actions

• Looking beyond one’s own practice or problem by studying similar problems and solutions and bringing them to the dialogue; crossing boundaries by connecting ideas from other groups, practices and problems.
• Teachers promote in-depth dialogues by inviting experts to give guest lectures, from both a theoretical and practical perspective; contributing one’s own expertise, organizing face-to-face-meetings to discuss the literature.
• Teachers create situations that promote cross-boundary encounters between practices and groups.
• Reflecting with expert on group’s conceptual ideas.
• Teachers help to point out important ‘sources’, viewpoints, theories that have been overlooked.

11. SYMMETRIC KNOWLEDGE ADVANCE

Expertise is distributed within and between communities and team members; “to give knowledge is to get knowledge” —> The growing edge of knowledge / inner-outer community dynamics.

Teacher or e-environment role:

• to encourage students to use authoritative sources, along with other information sources, as data for their own knowledge building and idea improving processes.
• to encourage students to contribute new information to central resources, to reference and build-on authoritative sources; bibliographies are generated automatically from referenced resources.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“Scientists cannot explain...,” “I found a report of a breakthrough...” “What’s special about our approach?” “Another team discovered...” “What would those who disagree say?” “I’m going to put this idea out there so others can help advance it.”

Constructive actions

• Including direct practice in the discourse from the outset, giving a voice; entering into co-creation with fellow students, colleagues, people from your living environment about the insights and how they think these can contribute to their practice.
• Creating situations that promote cross-boundary encounters between practices and groups.
• Encouraging students to think beyond the current problem situation, more future-focused as well as environmentally sound or understanding the impact, longer-term consequences for the well-being and prosperity of nature, people, animals, plants, the organization and society.

12. EMBEDDED, CONCURRENT, AND TRANSFORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

Assessment is integral to Knowledge Building and helps to advance knowledge through identifying advances, problems, and gaps as work proceeds —> Self and group assessment, feedback that enables advances.

Teacher or e-environment role:

• provide standards and benchmarks as objects of discourse, to be annotated, built on, and risen above.
• support increases in literacy, twenty-first-century skills advance in parallel as work to advance knowledge proceeds.

Things you may hear that reflect this principle...

“Let’s look at our data and see how we’re doing,” “We seem to be stuck. Let’s see how much progress we’ve made,” “Good we caught this mistake early,” “Our best insight so far,” “The idea that really needs work,” “We haven’t advanced our ideas beyond”

Constructive actions

• Reflecting on the discourse, evaluating its progress, recognizing individual contributions and collective accomplishments, troubleshooting when the discourse is perceived as not going right socially or conceptually.
• Subgroup’s word clouds or concept maps and those of experts or topic models based on the literature to reflect content and stimulate dialogue.
• Word-growth tracking to analyze the increase in the use of keywords related to core curriculum concepts.
• Presenting the assignment; sharing insights in presentations, assessments, videoblogs, on social media, in their own practice, Umwelt. Writing papers, creating visualizations, preparing appearances.
• Providing a platform for the dissemination of insights; co-publications; co-creation sessions with practitioners, etc.

 

Further reading:

Bereiter, Carl, and Marlene Scardamalia. 2016. “‘Good Moves’ in Knowledge-Creating Dialogue.” Qwerty - Open and Interdisciplinary Journal of Technology, Culture and Education 11 (2): 12–26. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764202045008013.

Jong, F., de. 2020a. Knowledge In-Ter-Action. Wageningen, The Netherlands: Aeres Applied University Wageningen/Open University, The Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.46884/2020.2.

Jong, F., de. 2020b. “E-Didactick for Collaborative Learning & Knowledge Building.” LinkedInn, March 2020. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/e-didacticpedagogy-important-use-technolo.... This MESHguide.

Scardamalia, M. 2002. “Collective Cognitive Responsibility for the Advancement of Knowledge.” In Liberal Edcuation in a Knowledge Society, edited by B Smith, 67–98. Chicago: Open Court. http://ikit.org/fulltext/inpressCollectiveCog.pdf.

Scardamalia, M, and C Bereiter. 2014. “Knowledge Building and Knowledge Creation: Theory, Pedagogy, and Technology.” In The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences, edited by R K Sawyer, 397–417. New York: Cambridge University Press.