What is Knowledge Building?
Knowledge building, supported by Knowledge Forum, is an educational model for the 21st century education developed by Professors Scardamalia and Bereiter at University of Toronto. KB refers to the production and improvement of ideas in the community. Students working together to create and to improve ideas that add value to the community. Knowledge Forum , a technology- supported platform, mediates and supports the progressive discourse for knowledge creation. .Knowledge Forum is designed to provide a collaborative working space where students can post their ideas and theories and work collectively for idea improvement.
Knowledge building is a journey in which students learn knowledge and produce new knowledge
- Learning the existing knowledge: The prerequisite of producing new knowledge.
- Bring the new pedagogical idea into classroom
- Give students collective responsibility for idea improvement
- Promoting educational change
- Students as a community are responsible for the process of knowledge building
- Integrating ideas and developing higher level conceptions
- Students built a coherent explanation together.
- Students are responsible for the whole knowledge building process
- Get use of their prior knowledge and authoritative source information and sharing collective responsibility to advance their theoretical explanations
- Students working together to improve ideas and to create knowledge collectively supported by Knowledge Forum
- Students pose problems, construct explanations, test ideas…through sustained pursuit of inquiry
- Epistemic agency, community knowledge and collective responsibility, improvable ideas
- Students engage in inquiry through discourse – three modes of online discourse (knowledge sharing, knowledge construction, knowledge building/creation)
- “Ideas” are real things – like mobile phones that can be improved
- Goal is to improve the “Ideas” the community is using
- “Culture” – e.g. ability to work together, self-evaluation and reflection, ideas seen as shared rather than personal
- “Community” – how do we improve the community’s ideas?
- Technology supported – KF (e.g. KF scaffolds, linking ideas using build-on and reference function, synthesis and rise-above using portfolio notes)
Comparison between learning and knowledge building
| Learning | Knowledge Building |
|---|---|
| Individual learning and performance | Collective knowledge work to create & improve ideas |
| Changes in individual behavior; mental representation & personal understanding | Advances in collective knowledge; ideas have a public life; scientific community |
| Acquisition of knowledge and skills; group and inquiry learning are used to motivate and to help students learn better | Beyond acquiring what is already there; help children to engage in the process of creating and contributing to knowledge advancement |
| Belief-Mode Thinking | Design-Mode Thinking |
| What is your standpoint? | What is this idea about? |
| Do you agree with A or B? Why? | How can such phenomena be explained? |
| Which argument is better? Is this logical? | How can we improve on this explanation? |
| What is the evidence? | What does this idea do and fail to do? What is missing and how can it be better? |
| What are the arguments for and against? | How to synthesize & rise-above? |