Huang-Yao Hong

• Ed.D.
• National Chengchi University

This case study investigates how a designed learning environment cultivates a “sense of promisingness”—an ability to discern what may work in uncertain conditions, essential for creative expertise. The study focused on 32 in-service teachers enrolled in a Master’s program in Taiwan, who engaged in mutually-supportive development of their thesis pro...

This case study aims to examine students’ sense of community (SOC) during online learning. Participants were college students data came from the “Classroom Community Scale” and students’ online discussion in a platform designed based on knowledge building theory and pedagogy. The results showed that students were able to develop a strong sense of c...

This study investigates how teachers who were engaged in online knowledge building via guided perspective-taking (PT) activities to discuss their critical teaching incidents (CTIs) helped them to develop creative learning views that see learning not merely as knowledge acquisition and exchange, but also as knowledge creation. Data were mainly from...

During the COVID-19 pandemic, online learning provides an essential means for teaching in higher education to avoid close human contact. Nevertheless, there is a general lack of understanding from current research regarding how to select appropriate pedagogies and technological tools to foster quality online interaction and discussion. As such, the...

Research Findings: This study incorporates teacher vitality, efficacy, and engagement with lesson design practice in which teachers can particularly encounter challenges from technology integration that calls for design thinking. Using a structural equation modeling approach, this study explores the relationships among teachers’ design thinking eng...

Engaging in design thinking activities has been increasingly viewed as important for the craft of teaching for early childhood practitioners. However, reliable and valid measurements for this are lacking. As such, this research aims to develop and validate a design thinking engagement scale (DTES) to assess teachers’ engagement in design thinking....

Integrating Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for meaningful constructivist instruction has become essential in teacher education. This study investigated preservice teachers’ intention to integrate ICT for constructivist learning from the perspectives of their Internet epistemic beliefs (IEB) and Internet-based learning self-efficac...

Reading motivation can greatly impact reading comprehension, but it tends to diminish in and beyond elementary school. This study employs knowledge building pedagogy to advance reading motivation and comprehension in an elementary Chinese language arts class. Participants were twenty‐four third graders who spent one class period (ie, 40 minutes) fo...

This study investigated multimodal multiple text comprehension (MMTC) among forty-eight Taiwanese university students, considering their cognitive and affective characteristics. A randomized trial with pre- and post-tests design was applied. The experiment group received a browser-embedded note-taking device along with epistemic prompting. The cont...

This study explores the dynamic, interactive nature of digital drawings and writing in a knowledge building community in which students used a multimedia online environment—Knowledge Forum—to represent and advance ideas in the field of optics. The research employs a mixed-methods case study to collect and analyze multimedia notes created by 22 four...

The aim of this study was to investigate whether and how engaging with a computer-supported collaborative knowledge-building environment helps students to develop a more sophisticated approach to scientific inquiry. A total of 52 undergraduate students took a course entitled “Introduction to Natural Sciences” that was based on knowledge-building pe...

In the digital age, reading literacy, and particularly, higher-level reading comprehension involved in making sense of information from multiple sources online is an important educational challenge. This study explores designs for teaching reading to third graders in Taiwan. Over the course of a semester, the experimental group engaged in an innova...

This study aims to understand the collaborative discourse of the preservice teachers on their customly designed online learning course. The participants were 38 pre-service teachers from a teacher education program in Taiwan. Using a design-oriented instructional approach, two iteration of design thinking activities were scaffolded to help the part...

The creation of effective knowledge-building environments (KBEs) to help learners develop essential skills in a knowledge society has gradually been recognized as an important goal in education (see the review by Chen & Hong, 2016), but the qualities that teachers require to develop KBEs remain to be investigated. Drawing on a review of relevant li...

Knowledge building is an innovative pedagogy aiming to transform students into expert-like knowledge workers. The purpose of this study was to foster teacher-education students’ design performance (i.e., observation, synthesis, ideation and prototypes) in a knowledge-building environment. The participants were 38 college students from a Taiwanese u...

This study employs Knowledge Building pedagogy and Knowledge Forum technology to advance reading literacies in a third-grade elementary reading class in Taiwan. We hypothesized that sustained engagement in idea-centered discussions surrounding reading materials would lead to higher levels of reading comprehension (i.e., interpretation, and integrat...

STEM learning is an integrated approach to improving learners’ problem-solving capacity and 21st-century skills by engaging them in systematic investigation that requires interdisciplinary knowledge. This study aimed to examine whether the design of an innovative knowledge-building environment facilitates STEM learning. Participants were university...

This research study aimed to understand the concept of “learning” held by current Taiwanese pre-service teachers from the information and communication technology (ICT) generation in order to establish a new digital learning theory for the future. Over the course of an entire semester, 38 participants took an elective course that adopted a project-...

Effective energy education depends on continuing research designed to identify instructional strategies that will proof effective in particular learning contexts. The aim of this study was to help Taiwanese students learn about energy-saving related concepts through idea-centered, collaborative knowledge-building activities carried out in an online...

This study follows the Knowledge Building discourse of 4 th graders in order to assess changes in literacy-related outcomes over the course of two semesters. Our analyses revealed that Knowledge Forum activities, such as use of scaffolding tools, increased over time and were positively correlated with improved essay writing, particularly for the lo...

This study examined preservice teachers' conceptions about creative teaching via knowledge-building activities. It also identifies the underlying challenges/barriers faced by preservice teachers for engaging in creative teaching. The data collected were from two surveys and a follow-up in-depth interview. Findings indicate that while the participan...

This study investigated teacher-education students' development of adaptive mathematics teaching practices and beliefs in an online knowledge building environment under principle-based design guidance. Participants were students who took a university course titled Middle-School Mathematics Teaching over a year. Data analyses focused on (a) students...

This study investigated the effects of two different pedagogical approaches on the development of college students’ innovation-oriented cultural views. First, an initial cultural view survey (n = 126) was implemented; then another quasi-experiment was employed using two treatment conditions: the control condition (n = 45) employed a concept-centred...

As collaborative learning is actualized through evolving dialogues, temporality inevitably matters for the analysis of collaborative learning. This study attempts to uncover sequential patterns that distinguish “productive” threads of knowledge-building discourse. A database of Grade 1–6 knowledge-building discourse was first coded for the posts’ c...

Exploring students' epistemic views is important as it should help to better understand how they acquire and work with knowledge. This case study investigated how college students' epistemic views relate to their collaborative inquiry activities in an online knowledge-building environment. Findings based on a mixed-method analysis on students' onli...

In recent years, there have been many exchanges of perspectives and debates in the field of conceptual change. Most of the classical views on conceptual change have been criticized, and there have been recent discussions around bridging the cognitive and socio-cultural approaches in the research on conceptual change. On the other hand, researchers...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationships among students’ conceptions of knowledge building, approaches to knowledge building, knowledge-building behaviors and learning outcomes. A total of 48 primary school students (from grades 3 and 4) who had experienced knowledge-building activities participated in the present study. After...

The purpose of this study was to explore how knowledge building could support the generation of creative ideas among college students and accordingly foster their creativity. The study was conducted in Knowledge Forum (KF), a knowledge building environment, where students were encouraged to engage in idea-centered activities. Participants were 38 c...

In this article we review the Knowledge-Building literature, unpacking its conceptual framework, principle-based pedagogy, distinctive features, and issues regarding scalability and sustainability. The Knowledge-Building goal is to reframe education as a knowledge-creating enterprise, engaging students from the earliest years of schooling. Despite...

This study explored how students viewed the role of ideas for knowledge work and how such view was related to their inquiry activities. Data mainly came from students' online interaction logs, group discussion and inquiry, and a survey concerning the role of ideas for knowledge work. The findings suggest that knowledge building was conducive to dev...

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of principle-based analytic tools to improve community knowledge building in a class of Grade 5/6 students. A flexible design framework was used to engage students in use of three analytic tools - a Vocabulary Analyzer, a Social Network Tool, and a Semantic Overlap Tool. These tools are built into Kno...

This conceptual paper argues that to develop students’ twenty first century competencies, teachers need to consider how technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK) can be applied through design thinking processes. It proposes a conceptual framework articulating various TPACK considerations and how these various forms of TPACK can be used as...

The purpose of this study is to investigate college students’ cultural views. To this end, an exploratory study was implemented, and data mainly came from students’ essay writing (via individual reflective activities) and focused group discussion (via collective reflective activities). The participants were 176 college students taking a culture-rel...

This study investigates whether engaging college students (n = 42) in a knowledge building environment would help them work as a community to construct their collective knowledge of history of science and, accordingly, develop a more informed scientific view. The study adopted mixed-method analyses and data mainly came from surveys and student onli...

This book explores, through eight chapters, how design thinking vocabulary can be interpreted and employed in educational contexts. The theoretical foundations of design thinking and design in education are examined by means of a literature review, which characterizes design thinking among children, undergraduates and teachers using research data c...

This chapter summarizes the potential contributions of design thinking to the field of education and the challenges faced in current practice. It then discusses the future directions for developing the educational applications of design thinking.

This chapter reviews four areas of education research that are closely related to the application of design thinking in K–12 education, with a focus on primary school education. These areas are learning through designing digital artifacts in a programming environment, learning by design, design and technology, and theory-building as human design. G...

This chapter revisits the role of design and design thinking in general and in education in particular. It then suggests a replacement of traditional educational system with a new one where design thinking is integrated as part of the curricular. Acknowledging that the new educational design is a work in progress, this chapter discusses some import...

This chapter scrutinizes three leading theorists of design and design thinking, Herbert Simon, Donald Schön, and Nigel Cross, and their influential books, The Sciences of the Artificial, The Reflective Practitioner, and Designerly Ways of Knowing, respectively. Most attempts to articulate the nature and scope of design thinking have appealed to the...

With the rapid development of ICT in education, demand for teachers to be able to design ICT-infused lessons is also on the rise. As such, preservice teachers need to be equipped with design-thinking skills so that they can design effective lessons. This chapter discusses the relationships between design thinking and preservice teacher preparation....

This chapter reviews major 21st century learning frameworks and derives five common dimensions that characterize 21st century learning. These are the social-cultural, cognitive, metacognitive, productivity, and technological dimensions. It then discusses how design experiences can be used to foster these 21st century learning dimensions in students...

This chapter analyzes how in-service teachers create, develop, and adopt frames when designing an educational innovation. The stages of instructional design as well as the knowledge that teachers create throughout the design process were two lenses used to understand teachers’ design activity. Using case studies of Singapore in-service teachers eng...

This chapter examines the different conceptions of design knowledge and suggests how it can be fostered and evaluated in the educational experiences of teachers and students. It proposes that design thinking can be developed through the purposive selection and sequencing of design problems as well as through the reflection and understanding of desi...

This study investigates 201 Singaporean teachers’ perceptions of their technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), lesson design practices, and design dispositions through a survey instrument. Investigation of these constructs reveal important variables influencing teachers’ perceptions of TPACK which have not yet been explored. The confir...

This study investigated whether engaging students in knowledge-building help them develop more informed views regarding the nature of scientific theories. Findings indicated that students’ views of the nature of scientific theories became more constructivist-oriented toward the end of the semester. A relationship was also observed between students’...

This study examined students' perceptions of learning and online performance in a learning environment. The participants were 93 college students in a teacher-education program in a university. The online learning environment was designed based on knowledge building pedagogy and was utilized to help engage students in collaborative learning and kno...

This study investigated effects of engaging teacher-education students in knowledge building on their teaching beliefs for mathematics. The data include a belief survey, student discourses recorded in an online database, and student teaching practices that were videotaped. Results indicated that the teaching practice of teacher-education students g...

This study explored the effects of student engagement in a knowledge-building (KB) environment on their collaborative learning process and the perceived creative climate of that environment. The participants were 30 college students who undertook a living technology course in which KB were employed. The main data sources include students’ online di...

This study investigates ways of using key terms to represent and assess community knowledge in an online knowledge building environment. Knowledge Forum – an environment specially designed to support advances in community knowledge – incorporates key-term analytic tools. In the current study these tools were used to determine if key-term measures c...

This qualitative, exploratory study investigated the design strengths and concerns of OpenCourseware (OCW) for higher education based on user experience, using the translated Chinese website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology OCW as a venue for exploration (http://www.myoops.org/twocw/mit/index.htm). Forty-two college students, professors...

This position paper proposes to broaden the conception of personal epistemology to include design epistemology that foregrounds the importance of creativity, collaboration, and design thinking. Knowledge creation process, we argue, can be explicated using Popper's ontology of three worlds of objects. In short, conceptual artifacts (World 3) like th...

The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) framework has been adopted by many educational technologists and teacher educators for the research and development of knowledge about the pedagogical uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in classrooms. While the framework is potentially very important, efforts to survey tea...

This study aimed to develop a knowledge-building environment scale (KBES). Based on the knowledge building pedagogy, the authors identified three core dimensions that could reflect the creative extent of knowledge building environment in the classrooms. Three independent samples were recruited to validate the reliability and validity of the scale....

In this study, we investigated prospective teacher-education students' belief change in a CSCL environment enabled by knowledge building pedagogy. Data mainly came from a belief survey and students' online discussion. The results indicated that engaging students in collaborative work with knowledge was conducive to making their teaching beliefs bec...

In this symposium, we present a comprehensive overview on the unique position of technologies in the context of learning sciences. According to Jonassen, Howland, Marra and Crismond (2008), learning with technology necessitates the designs of learning and the learning environments in order to engage learners. The overarching purpose of this symposi...

How does learning about scientists' struggles during their scientific knowledge building affect students' science learning? Two hundred and seventy-one high school students were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 conditions: (a) the struggle-oriented background information (n = 90) condition, which presented students with stories about 3 scientists' strug...

This study investigated the effects of knowledge building pedagogy and technology (i.e., Knowledge Forum, K.F) on students' collaborative competencies and their views on collaboration over 18 weeks. Participants were 52 fifth graders from two science classes (n=26 for both the experimental and control classes). Data mainly came from students' onlin...

This study explores Knowledge Building as a principle-based innovation at an elementary school and makes a case for a principle- versus procedure-based approach to educational innovation, supported by new knowledge media. Thirty-nine Knowledge Building initiatives, each focused on a curriculum theme and facilitated by nine teachers over eight years...

This study examined students' perceptions of classroom learning in a knowledge building environment. The participants were 48 college students in Taiwan, who participated in a course titled "Introduction to Natural Sciences/' The course was implemented based on knowledge building pedagogy. The online learning environment, Knowledge Forum, was emplo...

The Knowledge Society Network (KSN) “takes advantage of new knowledge media to maximize and democratize society’s knowledge-creating capacity” (www.ikit.org/KSN). This article synthesizes the principles and designs of this network which were initiated over 15 years ago, and presents an exploratory study of interactions in the KSN over four years, e...

This study investigates the impacts of knowledge building on students' views on collaboration. Participants were 53 fifth graders. Data mainly came from students' online activities and pre-post interview with regard to students' view on collaboration. Findings indicate that engaging students in knowledge building helped broaden students' view of co...

This study examined growth in graphical literacy for students contributing to an online, multimedia, communal environment as they advanced their understanding of biology, history and optics. Their science and history studies started early in Grade 3 and continued to the end of Grade 4; students did not receive instruction in graphics production, no...

This study investigated the effects of engaging students to collectively learn 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 “Integrating Theory an...

Previous research indicates that epistemological beliefs are related to learning in various ways and have implications for teaching. This study further investigates whether it is possible to change teacher-education students' epistemological beliefs by engaging them in a constructivist way of collaborative knowledge building and learning in an onli...

This study investigates the impact of engaging teacher-education students in sustained design and knowledge building practices in mathematics teaching on their views of mathematics and mathematics teaching. Participants were nine teacher-education students who took a university course titled "Middle School Mathematics Teaching." Data primarily came...

The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of a collaborative knowledge building environment called "Knowledge Forum" (KF) on students' perceived creative climate in class. Participants were 30 college students who took a university course about living technology. Data analysis includes: (1) descriptive statistics which analyzed studen...

While the importance of viewing learning as knowledge creation is gradually recognized (Paavola et al. Computer-supported collaborative learning: foundations for a CSCL community 2002; Rev Educ Res 74:557–576 2004), an important question remains to be answered—what represents an effective instructional design to support collaborative creative learn...

Teachers’ epistemological and pedagogical beliefs and their attitude about ICT are identified as the second-order barrier for the integration of ICTinto classrooms. In this paper, we report the findings obtained from our recent survey and conducted among,Singaporean and Taiwanese,pre-service teachers (N=108). The results indicate that the teachers’...