Teacher-education students' views about knowledge building theory and practice.

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Teacher-education students’ views about knowledge
building theory and practice
Huang-Yao Hong•Fei-Ching Chen•Ching Sing Chai•
Wen-Ching Chan
Received: 31 October 2009/Accepted: 11 June 2010
? Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010
Abstract
and work with knowledge in a computer-supported collaborative learning environment
called Knowledge Forum on their views about knowledge building theory and practice.
Participants were 24 teacher-education students who took a required course titled ‘‘Inte-
grating Theory and Practice in Teaching.’’ Data mainly came from (1) student discourse
recorded in a Knowledge Forum database, (2) a survey that examined students’ views
about knowledge building, and (3) interviews with regard to students’ perceived barriers to
implementing knowledge building theory in teaching. Findings suggest that with sustained
discourse to construct their collective understanding of the relationships between theory
and practice in teaching for a semester, the participants were able to attain more informed
and practical views about knowledge building theory. In addition, students’ perceived
barriers to implementing knowledge building in teaching were identified and strategies to
help overcome these barriers discussed.
This study investigated the effects of engaging students to collectively learn
Keywords
Teaching beliefs
Knowledge building ? Teacher education students ? Epistemology ?
Introduction
Teaching has been viewed as a craft (Bereiter 2002). As commonly observed in the
classroom, most teachers tend to pursue improvement in practices by following some
H.-Y. Hong (&) ? W.-C. Chan
Department of Education, National Chengchi University, 64, Sec. 2,
Zhi-Nan Rd, Wenshan District, Taipei 11605, Taiwan ROC
e-mail: hyhong@nccu.edu.tw
F.-C. Chen
Institute of Learning & Instruction, National Central University,
300, Chung-Da Rd, Chung-Li City 32001, Taoyuan County, Taiwan
C. S. Chai
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore
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Instr Sci
DOI 10.1007/s11251-010-9143-4

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known theories, and they are less inclined to assume the role of theory-building for their
practice (Hargreaves 1999; Sawyer 2004). Recent literature, however, emphasizes the
importance of viewing teaching as a knowledge-building enterprise (Hargreaves 1999;
Zhang et al. accepted; Scardamalia 2002). Related concepts have been introduced to
support this idea, for example, creative teaching (Sawyer 2004), adventurous teaching
(Cohen 1989), adaptive teaching (Darling-Hammond and Bransford 2005), teaching as
progressive problem solving (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1993) or as a sustained design
process (Hong et al. 2009b). Yet, the idea of education as a progressive science and
teaching as knowledge building is still new to most teachers (Sawyer 2006).
Knowledge-building theory and practice
One way to help teachers to develop a deeper conceptual understanding of teaching as a
process of knowledge-building may be to engage them in the actual ‘‘knowledge-building’’
practice (Hargreaves 1999; Hong and Sullivan 2009). Knowledge-building is a social
process focused on the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a
community (Bereiter and Scardamalia 2003). The epistemological position underlying the
knowledge building pedagogy is Popper’s (1972) construct of World 3. Other than World 1
(the physical world) and World 2 (the subjective world inside the mind), Popper postulates
a World 3 that is constituted of conceptual artifacts. The ideas and theories created by
knowledge workers such as scientists, engineers and architects are among the conceptual
artifacts. These theories and ideas, once created, have a life of their own in that they can be
improved and transformed by people who interact with them. They are treated as tentative
theories that should be subjected to error elimination under Popper’s schema for the search
for truth. In other words, all created knowledge is open to further inquiry and improvement.
This epistemological stance is translated directly into the practice of treating all knowledge
as ideas and as improvable in a knowledge-building community (Scardamalia 2002).
Bereiter (1994) argues that school focused on changing students’ mind (ie, World 2) and
neglected the enculturation of students’ competencies to work in World 3. Arguably,
teachers are unaccustomed to the ways of building knowledge as professionals, much less
developing such competencies among students (Hong et al. in press).
In a knowledge-building community, students are empowered to produce conceptual
artifacts (Bereiter 2002) such as explanations of phenomena they have encountered. These
conceptual artifacts are then subjected to community scrutiny for further improvement.
This process could be facilitated by software that enables a computer supported collabo-
rative learning environment such as Knowledge Forum (Scardamalia 2003), Inquiry
Learning Forum (Barab 2003), and Math Forum (Stahl 2009). The students’ articulated
conceptual artifacts are captured as an online post uploaded to the discussion forum for the
other members in the community to critique and build-on. Bereiter (1997) argues that this
process is similar to scientists’ intellectual work. Engaging students in the improvement of
conceptual objects will inevitably lead them to the examination of existing theories (ie, the
theories produced by established scientists). It will also encourage students and teachers to
see knowledge as uncertain and evolving. In a knowledge building community, one has to
assume epistemic agency to participate in the active process of continuously improving
conceptual artifacts rather than passively relying on an authority to provide verified truths.
Bereiter (2002) posits that by engaging learners in a knowledge-building community, we
are empowering learners to work constructively and creatively with ideas, i.e., to treat
learners as knowledge producers.
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Knowledge building principles
To facilitate the process of knowledge building, a set of 12 knowledge-building principles
have been conceptualized (Scardamalia 2002). These principles have evolved over the last
two decades: from an earlier focus on transformative discourse (Bereiter and Scardamalia
1987), intentional learning (Scardamalia and Bereiter 1991), and creative expertise as
progressive problem solving (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1993), to the most recent 12
knowledge building principles (Scardamalia 2002). These 12 principles represent some
innovative, pedagogical know-how to help transform a traditional class into a knowledge
building community. They include (1) Real Ideas, Authentic Problems; (2) Idea Diversity;
(3) Improvable Ideas; (4) Epistemic Agency; (5) Community Knowledge, Collective
Responsibility; (6) Democratizing Knowledge; (7) Symmetric Knowledge Advance; (8)
Pervasive Knowledge Building; (9) Constructive Uses of Authoritative Sources; (10)
Knowledge Building Discourse; (11) Concurrent, Embedded, Transformative Assessment;
and (12) Rise Above (see Scardamalia 2002, for more details). Fundamentally, knowledge
building principles are designed to reconceptualize the behaviors of and relationships
between three essential knowledge-building entities: the idea, the agent, and the com-
munity (see Fig. 1). For example, the principle of Real Ideas, Authentic Problems high-
lights the importance of viewing students’ ideas as conceptual artifacts (Bereiter 2002) that
are as real as things touched and felt, and that knowledge problems arise from efforts to
understand the world and the ideas of other collaborators in the community, leading to
problems of understanding that are quite different from textbook problems and puzzles.
The principle of Epistemic Agency underscores that participants deal with the full range of
knowledge problems (goals, motivation, evaluation, long-range planning, etc.), including
knowledge problems normally left to teachers or managers. And the principle of Com-
munity Knowledge, Collective Responsibility emphasizes that contributions to shared, top-
level goals of the community are prized and rewarded as much as individual achievements;
team members produce ideas of value to others and share responsibility for the overall
advancement of knowledge in the community. These principles represent design ideals and
challenges that set the stage for the community’s work in sustained knowledge advance-
ment (Bereiter and Scardamalia 2003), which is very different from conventional
classroom work defined by pre-specified procedures, clear scripts and rules, or any highly-
structured, ritualistic learning activities that represent fixed rather than improvable
classroom procedures (Hong and Sullivan 2009).
Fig. 1 Relationships between three essential knowledge building entities: the idea, the agent, and the
community
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The present study
A growing body of evidence has suggested that it is important to consider teachers’ epis-
temological views since such views will influence classroom performance (Chai et al. 2009;
Pajares 1992; Richardson et al. 1991; Wilson 1990). The aforementioned principles rep-
resent essential concepts underlying knowledge building as a theory of knowing and as a
way to transform traditional teaching practice. In order to help prospective teachers develop
a more informed view of knowledge building theory and practice, instead of employing
traditional direct teaching, the present study engaged the participants in self-initiated and
self-directed knowledge work in a knowledge building environment (Hargreaves 1999;
Hong et al. 2009b). Previous research suggests that engaging students in a knowledge-
building environment is an effective means to support collaborative learning activities in
class settings (Hong et al. 2008; Scardamalia 2002; Scardamalia et al. 1994; Sun et al. 2010;
van Aalst and Chan 2007; Zhang et al. 2007). Chai and Merry’s (2006) study on in-service
teachers who experienced both learning and teaching through knowledge-building also
provided some evidences that it may stimulate belief change among teachers (see also Chai
and Tan 2009). Two out of seven teachers in their study have reportedly developed a more
sophisticated and relativistic epistemological stance. Therefore, it is posited that engaging
teacher-education students in a collaborative knowledge building environment should also
have effects on their views about knowledge building. Yet, such an assumption remains to
be tested, especially in the Taiwanese society. The purpose of the present study is to
investigate whether engaging students in knowledge work in Knowledge Forum as a
knowledge building environment would help them become more engaged in their collab-
orative efforts to advance knowledge and whether it would also help them develop more
informed and practical views about knowledge building theory and practice.
Our research question focuses on: How does the knowledge-building environment and
technology affect students’ learning processes and outcomes? Specifically, in terms of
processes, we looked into participants’ online performance patterns, social interaction
patterns, and patterns in relation to their reflective understanding of the relationships
between theories and practices in teaching. In terms of outcomes, we looked into pre-post
changes in students’ views about the importance and feasibility of knowledge building, and
their perceived barriers to implementing knowledge building in class.
Method
Participants and context
The present research was conducted in a university course titled ‘‘Integrating Theory and
Practice in Teaching’’ in Taiwan. The course was offered by the university’s Center of
Teacher Education to teacher-education students as its last required course before they start
their teaching practicum. The university is ranked as one of the best universities in the
nation. As such, the students enrolled in the subject university are all academically high-
achievers. Based on the test results of the national Basic Competence Test for Senior High
School Students (BCTSHSS), in order to enroll in this university, a student’s test scores in
BCTSHSS need to be ranked above the 95th percentile nationwide. Participants in the
present study were 24 teacher-education students (14 females) who were planning to teach
at the high-school level in the near future. Their ages range from 21 to 29 (M = 24;
SD = 2.3).
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Instructional design and online knowledge building environment
By engaging students in building knowledge in Knowledge Forum, the two main
instructional goals were: (1) to help students better understand the complex relationships
between theories and practices in teaching; and (2) to help students develop a more
informed and practical view about knowledge building. To these ends, an invited talk about
knowledge building theory, pedagogy, and principles, and a tutorial workshop about how
to use Knowledge Forum for knowledge building were given in the beginning of the
semester. The basic design features and functions of Knowledge Forum were demonstrated
to students, for example, how to create a note or a ‘‘view’’ (i.e., virtual spaces for col-
laborative discourse among community members) and how to ‘‘build-on’’ to an existing
note. Other major instructional activities included: (1) a weekly reading assignment in
which students (a) reviewed literature related to various teaching theories, and (b) read
teachers’ interview transcripts in which in-service teachers share their successes and
challenges encountered in their daily teaching practice; (2) an invited guest speaker (i.e.,
a veteran teacher) shared his personal teaching experiences; and, (3) most importantly,
sustained online peer discussion about the relationships between theories and practices in
teaching.
The technology platform used to support peer discourse in this study is Knowledge
Forum (Scardamalia 2003), which enables a computer-supported collaborative learning
(CSCL) environment. The key concept of CSCL is that shared digital environments can be
used to foster meaning interactions that produce deeper understanding for the group and its
participants. As such, the uniqueness of CSCL designs consists in their features for sup-
porting effective group collaboration and meaning interaction (Stahl 2007). Previous study
(for example, see, Hong et al. 2009a) comparing Knowledge Forum with other types of
networked learning environments (e.g., Blackboard) indicates that Knowledge Forum is
more likely to engage students in creative and collaborative knowledge work. In the
present study, participants were guided to spend extensive time collectively constructing
their knowledge in Knowledge Forum. They contribute their ideas in the form of notes.
The Knowledge Forum environment also enables participants to co-author notes, build-on,
reference (i.e., citation excepted from other community members’ notes), and annotate the
work of others, set problem fields and add keywords, and create ‘‘rise-above’’ notes that
bring greater coherence to the contents of the knowledge space. All these features are
designed as different means to foster collaboration in depth. For example, the ‘‘rise-
aboves’’ allow users to gather theories and ideas that have already been presented, syn-
thesize these old ideas and point out new challenges to understandings. Operations such as
reading, referencing, editing, rise-above etc. are recorded automatically in the database,
and can be summarized statistically by means of an Analytic Toolkit (Burtis 2002). The
Knowledge Forum technology designs—in line with the overarching commitment to
continual knowledge improvement—allow students to exchange ideas and continuously
improve them. Figure 2 shows a screenshot of a Knowledge Forum ‘‘view’’.
Study design and data sources
This research employed a mixed-method design. The rationale for using such a design is
that ‘‘the quantitative data and results provide a general picture of the research problem;
more analysis, specifically through qualitative data collection, is needed to refine, extend,
or explain the general picture’’ (Creswell 2005, p. 515). Given the nature of the research
questions, a more comprehensive approach is necessary in order to address the questions of
Views about knowledge building
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