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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 a 30-year program of research and development and recognition that there is a close fit between Knowledge Building and efforts to meet knowledge society needs, Knowledge Building is frequently reinterpreted along the general lines of bringing constructivist learning into schooling rather than means to reframing education as a knowledge-creating enterprise. This article aims to clarify Knowledge-Building goals and to make the opportunities afforded by Knowledge Building more accessible.
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Schools as Knowledge-Building Organizations:
Thirty Years of Design Research
Bodong Chen1,* and Huang-Yao Hong2
1Department of Curriculum and Instruction, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities, Minneapolis, MN, USA
2Department of Education, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
*chenbd@umn.edu
**This is a preprint. APA Style Citation: Chen, B., & Hong, H.-Y. (2016). Schools as knowledge-building
organizations: Thirty years of design research. Educational Psychologist, 51(2), 266–288.
https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2016.1175306
ABSTRACT
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 a 30-year program of research
and development and recognition that there is a close fit between Knowledge Building and efforts to meet knowledge society
needs, Knowledge Building is frequently reinterpreted along the general lines of bringing constructivist learning into schooling
rather than means to reframing education as a knowledge-creating enterprise. This article aims to clarify Knowledge-Building
goals and to make the opportunities afforded by Knowledge Building more accessible.
Knowledge creation is proposed as a third “metaphor” of learning—in addition to the learning as acquisition and participation
metaphors (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005; Sfard,1998). The acquisition metaphor has dominated formal education since its
inception, with concerns focused on transmission, acquisition, construction, internalization,appropriation, and accumulation of
a variety of knowledge entities (Sfard, 1998). In contrast, learning as participation focuses more on the action of “knowing,
especially through social interactions and dialogues within specific contexts (e.g., A. L. Brown & Campione, 1994; J.S. Brown,
Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Lave & Wenger, 1991;Salomon, 1993). Prominent instructional approaches, such as guided discovery
(A.L. Brown & Campione, 1994), problem-based learning (Hmelo-Silver, 2004), and project-based learning (Blumenfeld et al.,
1991) fall under this umbrella. The knowledge creation metaphor (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005) is proposed as an alternative
aligned with the “knowledge age” (Drucker, 1994), in which the creation of new knowledge becomes a necessity and thus
needs special attention in education. It is argued that the shift from knowledge acquisition to construction, even with added
emphasis on social participation, may not meet the needs of knowledge societies in which collective, systematic production of
new knowledge is the norm (Paavola & Hakkarainen, 2005).
Knowledge Building (KB) aims to move beyond metaphor to the realization of education as a knowledge-creating enterprise
(Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). The term knowledge building is widely used in the research and practitioner literatures but
rarely defined. Because of the semantic proximity of “building” and “construction,” the term “knowledge building” is often
used interchangeably with “constructivist learning” and “inquiry learning” (e.g., Kimmerle, Moskaliuk, & Cress,2011), with a
focus on individual knowledge construction. Instead, KB—“the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a
community” (Scardamalia, 2003)—aims to support forms of engagement that drive knowledge creation. Individual learning is a
by-product rather than the focus (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2006). Scardamalia and Bereiter (2006) argued that an additive model
in which constructivist and inquiry learning are added to current-day schooling will not “refashion education in a fundamental
way, so that it becomes a coherent effort to initiate students into a knowledge creating culture” (p. 97). As with Nonaka’s (1991)
knowledge-creating organizations and Tsoukas’s (2009) knowledge-creating dialogue, KB emphasizes the production of new
knowledge. However, this emphasis is often neglected in the discourse surrounding KB. In this article, we focus on Bereiter and
Scardamalia’s notion of KB and the educational approach growing out of their research laboratory at the University of Toronto
since the 1980s. For clarity we capitalize the term “Knowledge Building” (abbreviated KB), referring to this conception.
The main objective of this article is to provide an informed review of KB so as to articulate its key ideas and explore its
applications in various educational contexts. Such a review of KB is much needed. First, situated in the global demand for
knowledge-creating talents, there is much to learn from decades of design research on KB. A critical examination of KB’s
accomplishment as a unique educational approach emphasizing knowledge creation helps inform education reform. Second,
despite the long tradition of KB research, review of its empirical studies remains nonexistent. Influential publications present its
theory, technology, philosophical, and pedagogical stances (e.g., Scardamalia, 2003; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1994, 2014a), but
they do not attempt to assess the complex, interacting systems of assessment, the teacher, classroom dialogues, technological
affordances, culture, and policy required to operationalize KB. A review of KB design research—which involves theoretical
positioning, curriculum tuning, cultural adjustments, technological design, and pedagogical interventions—will contribute
to future development of KB. Third, further articulation of the KB approach would benefit broader discourse in the field of
learning sciences, as KB is often confused with “near-neighbor” constructivist approaches. KB researchers have written broadly
to address this issue (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2014; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003, 2006, 2007, 2014a; van Aalst, 2009), but
confusions still persist, with challenges compounded when KB is translated into other languages. Further clarification would
allow exchanges and cross-fertilization between KB and other educational approaches.
In this article, we first synthesize the conceptual framework of KB by tracing key insights that have motivated its emergence
and development. This conceptual exploration is followed by a thematic review of KB as a design innovation in schools. In
particular, we elaborate design principles of KB, review their enactments in empirical studies, articulate the roles of teacher
and technology and distinctions between KB and other constructivist approaches. In the sections that follow, we examine the
efficacy and prospects of KB in facilitating learning in various contexts—along with challenges and various ways to address
these challenges, as documented in the KB literature. Finally, we summarize the review and discuss ongoing efforts to further
this theory, pedagogy, and technology.
PSYCHOLOGICAL, EPISTEMOLOGICAL, ANDSOCIOCULTURAL FRAMEWORK
KB involves interwoven conceptual factors. The first, psychological factor, is concerned with the subject—the knower or
knowledge worker. Understanding psychological processes of experts or knowledge creators underpins the psychological aspect
of KB. The second, epistemological factor addresses the nature and limits of knowing—ideas, knowledge products, or objects
that people seek to create, problematize, and improve. To understand the epistemic nature of KB, it is crucial to understand why
ideas need to be treated as objects with a public life independent of the minds of their creators. Third, in between the knowledge
creator and the object of knowledge lies the sociocultural factor that defines collective knowledge practices through which
knowledge-building activities are initiated and sustained. Understanding the sociocultural processes of KB grounds efforts
to enhance the interactions among epistemic agents, knowledge objects, and technological supports in knowledge-building
discourse. We elaborate these conceptual factors as follows.
Creative Expertise, Collective Intelligence
KB is founded on decades of research on expertise and knowledge transforming processes (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987;
Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2010a). Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) noted a phenomenon that stood in contrast to much of the
expert–novice research prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s. In their studies of written composition, they noted that experts actually
took longer and worked harder than novices—quite a contrast to other expert–novice studies. This led to the discovery that
expert writers were engaged in a very different sort of endeavor than their novice counterparts. Novice writers tell what they
know, presenting ideas that come to mind in the order they come to mind. In contrast expert writers intentionally reconstruct the
writing challenge and engage in complex reflective processes, contemplating a broad range of ideas and mindful of concerns
likely to be raised by readers. This leads to iterative cycles of information processing, assessment of beliefs surrounding ideas
to be presented, search for new information, efforts to create coherence in light of disparate findings, and more generally
knowledge transforming processes. Accordingly, through knowledge transforming, progressive problem-solving experts
continually invest cognitive capacity in new learning—setting “creative experts” apart from “routine experts” or “experienced
non-experts” (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1993). Creative experts exhibit adaptive expertise—going beyond one’s technical
training and adaptively using adopted skills to explore and expand current levels of expertise instead of carrying on routines
(Hatano & Inagaki, 1986). Creative expertise manifests itself across professions.
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1993) coined the term intentional learning, which encapsulates two key features of creative
experts—progressive problem solving and higher levels of agency in solving problems (see also Scardamalia & Bereiter,
1991b). They argued that education should engage students as “expert-like” learners. Intentional learning is distinguished from
self-regulated learning. Efforts to support self-regulated learning typically involve teaching strategies to achieve relatively
short-term learning goals (Zimmerman, 1990). Intentional learning requires that students take charge of school activities to
serve longer term learning agendas; it demands higher levels of agency (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2010a). To this end, Computer
Supported Intentional Learning Environment (CSILE) was implemented in the early 1980s as a technological support for
intentional learning (Scardamalia, Bereiter, & Lamon,1994; Scardamalia, Bereiter, Mclean, Swallow, & Woodruff, 1989). It
was designed to provide students with an audience for their ideas and to support higher levels of responsibility for contributing
to each other’s learning, as elaborated below. More generally, the goal was to support knowledge transforming processes.
To advance knowledge, KB embraces the means of building explanatory theories and improving them on the basis of
evidence, reasoning, and design thinking (Bereiter, 2012; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2010b), so as to achieve greater explanatory
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power and coherence (Thagard, 1989). For example, KB treats scientific progress as “not a matter of getting closer to the truth”
but “a matter of improving on existing knowledge” (Bereiter, Scardamalia, Cassells, & Hewitt, 1997, p. 331). This emphasis on
the building part is synthesized as design-mode thinking (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2003; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2007, 2014b).
Most creative knowledge work is carried out in design mode, as contrasted with belief or justification mode, which is concerned
with arriving at true or warranted beliefs. In design mode, “the concern is not with ideas as objects of belief but... objects of
creation, development, assembly into larger wholes, and application” (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2007, p. 14). Design-mode
thinking is a critical mind-set for KB to afford the view of education as a fundamental idea improvement challenge (Bereiter
&Scardamalia, 2014). Like growth mindset for development of individuals (Yeager & Dweck, 2012), design-mode thinking is
a growth mindset for creative work with ideas. A critical issue with current schooling is students have little opportunity to
venture into certain areas—for example, growth mindset, design-mode thinking—and are thus deprived of unique opportunities
to engage in knowledge building. When envisioning education for the knowledge age, Bereiter and Scardamalia (2008, 2014)
advocate engaging students in design mode to drive research-based innovations.
In summary, KB originates in decades of research on the nature of expertise and insights into knowledge-transforming
processes, creative expertise, progressive problem solving, higher order agency, intentionality, design thinking, and explanatory
and emotional coherence. These set psychological cornerstones, inspiring KB’s deep investment in students’ continual
knowledge advancement.
Knowledge Creation and Ideas in World 3
Viewing knowledge as continually improvable is contingent upon models of knowledge creation in which artifacts live in
the world, not in a person’s mind. CSILE was theory-driven software designed to engage students in worlds of knowing
and knowledge work of the sort that defines creative expertise and collective intelligence (Scardamalia et al., 1989). For
example, CSILE made ideas and knowledge-construction activities overt in a community context, creating an environment in
which students contributed to one another’s learning and engaged in knowledge-transforming processes. CSILE made KB
epistemological commitments transparent; for example, it included a theory-building scaffold, elaborated next, to encourage
theory elaboration and refinement. This led to discovery of new competencies in theory building on the part of young students
(Chuy et al., 2010). More generally, work in CSILE opened up a realm of knowledge processes hidden from view in traditional
educational contexts (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992). Once students had their ideas recorded, accessible to others, searchable,
and reconstructible in varied contexts, new forms of engagement, research, and knowledge work became evident. Student work
exemplified what Tsoukas (2009) characterized as a dialogical approach to the creation of new knowledge in organizations and
Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) characterized as a dialect between tacit and explicit knowledge and individual and group work in
knowledge-creating organizations.The term “knowledge building” first appeared in the learning sciences literature, conveying
knowledge creation ideas similar to those in the organizational literature (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991a; Scardamalia et al.,
1994), demonstrating knowledge as the product of purposeful acts of creation created through building ideas out of simpler
ideas (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2014). As work in CSILE supported knowledge-transforming processes the knowledge-creating
potential of young students became increasingly evident, leading Scardamalia and Bereiter (2003) to draw a distinction between
KB and learning:
Learning is an internal, unobservable process that results in changes of belief, attitude, or skill. Knowledge building,
by contrast, results in the creation or modification of public knowledge—knowledge that lives ‘in the world’ and
is available to be worked on and used by other people. Of course creating public knowledge results in personal
learning, but so does practically all human activity. Results to date suggest that the learning that accompanies
knowledge building encompasses the foundational learning, subskills, and socio-cognitive dynamics pursued in
other approaches,along with the additional benefit of movement along the trajectory to mature knowledge creation.
(p. 1371)
Another influence on KB processes was Karl Popper’s treatment of knowledge independent of human minds (see Scardamalia
& Bereiter, 2010a). Challenging the monist and dualist views of the universe, Popper proposed a view that recognizes three
different but interacting subuniverses—“three worlds” of knowing (Popper, 1972, 1978): World 1—the physical world,
including nonliving physical objects and biological objects; World 2—the mental or psychological world, the world of our
subjective experiences, states, or processes; and World 3—the body of human knowledge expressed in its manifold forms, or
the products of the second world made manifest in the materials of the first world (i.e., books, paintings, music, airplanes, and
all the products of the human mind). Popper’s central argument was that objects in World 3 have an existence and a trajectory
of development independent of any individual knowing subjects (Popper, 1978):
Are [W]orld 3 objects, such as Newton’s or Einstein’s theories of gravitation, real objects? Or are they mere
fictions, as both the materialist monist and the dualist assert?...My answer to this problem...is that [W]orld 3 objects
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are real; real in a sense very much like the sense in which the physicalist would call physical forces, and fields of
forces, real, or really existing. (p. 152)
In line with Popper’s three worlds of knowing, KB treats ideas as real things—as objects of discourse (Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 1994, 2003; Tsoukas, 2009). This fits KB’s emphasis on the building part, especially building collectively in a public
domain, as mediated by discourse. In KB, objectifying ideas as cultural artifacts (Bereiter, 2002) is the starting point of putting
them onto trajectories of improvement through collective knowledge-building discourse. In line with Popper’s description
of the scientist’s work on theories, students pick up ideas in their community’s World 3 space, modify and contribute ideas
back. The emphasis on World 3 differentiates knowledge-building discourse from discourse in many constructivist classrooms
operating predominantly in World 2:
Discourse in World 3 is concerned with improving conceptual [artifacts], and gradually making them part of a
community’s conceptual tools. In a World 2 discourse, students might be attempting to understand the content of
the framework without trying to improve it. (van Aalst & Hill,2006, p. 24)
The disposition of ideas belonging to a community—or living in World 3—is crucial for enculturating students into getting
beyond winning arguments to improving ideas as a collective.
Recent theoretical developments in KB have included elaborating the role of self-organization at both the interpersonal and
the idea level (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2013; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014b), the concept of idea land-scapes and learning a
knowledge domain by criss-crossing the landscape by varied paths (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2016), and the role of judgments
of idea “promisingness” in knowledge creation (Chen, Scardamalia, & Bereiter, 2015).
CSILE and its successor Knowledge Forum (KF) have been designed to sustain knowledge objects in World 3 (Scardamalia
et al., 1994). At the most basic level, a KB environment objectifies ideas and presents them in a community space. Supported
operations on ideas include representing ideas in multiple modalities, organizing ideas, linking together multiple ideas, assessing
ideas, and moving ideas to higher levels (Scardamalia, 2003).
Knowledge Communities
Knowledge or learning communities can take many forms. At one end of the educational spectrum there are communities
primarily concerned with supporting members’ individual learning. At the other end, where KB sits, are communities primarily
concerned with advancing the state of public knowledge. The essence of the KB principle of symmetric knowledge advancement
is that communities are embedded in broader worlds of knowing, with knowledge advances driven by forces within and between
communities.
Sociocultural practice within the former form of communities is usually designed to enhance personal knowledge acquisition,
internationalization, accumulation, and construction. Such sociocultural practice is normally well defined and is often
characterized by repetitive activity structures, such as division of labor, cycled or proceduralized learning, scripted collaboration,
and prespecified group tasks/assignments. A well-known example of such practice, characteristic of repetitive activity structure,
is a “jigsaw classroom” that involves each student figuring out one piece of the “jigsaw puzzle,” with the puzzle being learning
all the curriculum material (Aronson & Patnoe, 1997). Another example that also underlines well-defined activity structures, but
perhaps with less emphasis on everyone learning the same content, is a guided discovery “Community of Learners” pedagogy:
“The repetitive, indeed, ritualistic nature of these activities is an essential aspect of the classroom, for it enables the children
to make the transition from one participant structure... to another quickly and effortlessly” (A.L. Brown et al., 1993, p. 200).
One benefit of such sociocultural structures is efficiency in enhancing personal learning with group support. Knowledge
communities following such structures may be characterized as “learning in group” as the employment of sociocultural practices
is to help each group member learn, or at best “learning by group” if group members collectively complete group tasks, projects,
or assignments in addition to individual learning.
At the other end of the continuum, knowledge communities go beyond “learning in or by group” to function as knowledge-
creating organizations, where sociocultural practices are less predefined and fixed. Instead, groups form in an emergent and
opportunistic manner to solve knowledge problems as they emerge for the sake of producing new understandings, solutions,
and further problems. As a result, within such communities the sociocultural practices need to be adaptive to allow creative
knowledge work to emerge in the pursuit of collective knowledge goals. A KB community represents a case of such communities,
where (a) members (as subjects of knowing) are encouraged to assume epistemic agency like real-world knowledge workers,
(b) ideas (as objects of knowledge building) are treated as conceptual artifacts subject to continual refinement, and (c) the
community serves as a venue of knowledge building and a space where ideas and knowledge workers encounter and interact.
Such communities usually exhibit high levels of emergence and self-organization, similar to knowledge-creating cultures within
science, research, design, and technology communities where knowledge creation figures as the constant, ultimate community
goal (Gloor, 2005; Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995).
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To summarize, KB theory, pedagogy, and technology is underpinned by a psychological, epistemological, and sociocultural
framework, which comprises interconnected ideas of knowledge transformation; progressive problem-solving; high-level
agency; knowledge and intelligence in the collective; and emergent, self-organizing and opportunistic sociocultural processes.
KNOWLEDGE BUILDING IN PRACTICE
The KB approach has been applied broadly in different countries, across grade levels from kindergarten to graduate school,
subject areas spanning the curriculum, in teacher education and professional development (Chai & Khine, 2006; Chan & van
Aalst, 2006), design work by learning scientists (Kali, 2006), continuing education in medicine (Lax, Singh,Scardamalia,
& Librach, 2006), liberal arts and engineering (Ellis, Rudnitsky, Moriarty, & Mikic, 2011), and other in- and out-of-school
contexts (Melnick, Day & Scardamalia, 1999; Mylopoulos & Scardamalia, 2008). Building on the conceptual framework just
presented, in this section we review design principles that guide KB practice in various contexts of K-16 education, discuss the
roles of teacher and technology, and draw distinctions between KB and several constructivist approaches. All of these treat KB
as a principle-based innovation.
Elaborating Knowledge-Building Principles
In learning sciences, it is common to distill design principles from empirical studies to inform future implementations or new
designs. Design principles are often treated as objects of design themselves, with empirical studies being used to strengthen or
falsify them (Bell, Hoadley, & Linn, 2004).
The KB pedagogy follows a principle-based approach to instantiate the conceptual framework just presented in KB
pedagogy and technology. Its roots in social-constructivist and knowledge-creation models can be seen in the seminal 1989
article by Scardamalia et al. (1989), in which 11 design principles of CSILE were presented: (a) make knowledge-construction
activities overt, (b)maintain attention to cognitive goals, (c) treat knowledge lacks in a positive way, (d)provide process-relevant
feedback, (e) encourage learning strategies other than rehearsal, (f) encourage multiple passes through information, (g) support
varied ways for students to organize their knowledge, (h) encourage maximum use and examination of existing knowledge, (i)
provide opportunities for reflectivity and individual learning styles, (j) facilitate transfer of knowledge across contexts, and
finally (k) give students more responsibility for contributing to one another’s learning. Although intentional learning is central,
principles also reflect a social constructivist factor.
Ideas in World 3 and the social dimension of knowledge construction became more explicit in the transition from CSILE
1.0 to 2.0, with design principles for CSILE 2.0 incorporating knowledge-building community dynamics such as (a) helping
students treat knowledge as an object of discourse, (b) making progress perceptible to students, (c) encouraging higher order
representations and integrations of knowledge, (d) creating engaging experiences (e.g., ideas referenced, helpful ideas and
comments added), (e) helping students seeing merit in their contributions to group knowledge advancement, (f) maximizing
opportunities of crossing boundaries, and (g) integrating knowledge building broadly into the social life of the classroom
(Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1992). Community dynamics were also reflected in empirical studies, for instance, on “joint”
knowledge-transformation activities (Oshima, 1998) or “intra- versus inter-group” classroom arrangements (Woodruff & Meyer,
1997). A later article, drawing heavily on the distributed cognition literature, elaborated several distinguishing features of
the “Knowledge-Building Community” model, with a general focus on community-oriented knowledge advancement: (a)
community activity defined by advances in knowledge rather than completion of tasks, (b) greater access to distributed expertise,
and (c) student-created artifacts as mediators of distributed cognition. This article went further to explain additional principles
of KB designs: (a) support educationally effective peer interactions, (b) integrate different forms of discourse, (c) focus students
on communal problems of understanding, (d) promote awareness of participants’ contributions, and (e) encourage students to
build on each other’s work (Hewitt & Scardamalia, 1998).
In 2002, 12 principles were elaborated by Scardamalia (2002), with identification of parallels between socio-cognitive
innovations and technological innovations to supportKB. A partial account is presented in Table 1.
These principles are further illustrated in Figure 1, with our interpretation of their alignment with KB’s conceptual
framework. Like earlier principles, the central goal remains to turn high-level agency over to students and refashion classroom
practices. Traces of these principles can be found in earlier studies. For instance, the principle of real ideas, authentic problems
is reflected in a critical examination of school science as being “pre-packaged and validated by communities of scientists”
instead of students (Woodruff & Meyer, 1997, p. 28); the principle of collective responsibility echoes an earlier principle, give
students more responsibility for contributing to each other’s learning (Scardamalia et al., 1989), and has been recently linked
to the phenomenon of “rotating leadership” in collaborative innovation networks (Ma, Matsuzawa, Chen, & Scardamalia, in
press).
This review of KB principles and descriptors reflects a complex mix of translating theory and pedagogy into an integrated
model with practical consequence. The 2002 set of principles with technological correspondences aimed to make the underlying
conceptual framework transparent even to elementary school children. The underlying theoretical framework has provided a
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Table 1. Correspondences Between Knowledge-Building Principles and Knowledge Forum Supports
Knowledge-Building Principle Knowledge Forum Supports
Real Ideas and Authentic Problems. Students explore
problems and ideas they really care about.
Notes and views created by students live in a community
space where all may contribute.
Improvable Ideas. Ideas are treated as improvable; com-
munity efforts improve their quality, coherence, and utility.
Comments, annotations, references, linked notes, and an-
alytic tools support progressive knowledge advance and
idea improvement.
Epistemic Agency. Students engage in high-level knowl-
edge work normally left to the teacher.
Scaffolds and visualization support reflection on individ-
ual and group progress.
Collective Responsibility for Community Knowledge.
Community members share responsibility for advancing
ideas of value to the community.
Collaborative open workspaces encourage building on,
linking, and reconstruction of ideas supported by social
and semantic network analysis.
Democratizing Knowledge. Knowledge work is enriched
through diverse contributions of all participants who right-
fully take pride in what the group as a whole achieves.
Multimedia notes and views provide a way into shared
problem spaces for all; social network analysis helps mem-
bers monitor and equalize participation.
Idea Diversity. Diverse ideas help drive knowledge ad-
vancement and create a context for engaging complexity.
Notes and views can be reconstructed in multiple and
novel ways to create coherence out of diversity.
Knowledge-Building Discourse. Discursive practices go
beyond sharing to transforming and advancing knowledge.
Intertextual and interteam notes and views can be aligned
and realigned through key term and semantic correspon-
dences to identify shared problems, gaps, and emergent
goals.
Rise Above. Progressive work with ideas leads to higher-
level formulations to advance beyond competing perspec-
tives.
Rise-above notes and views support increasingly high-
order overviews.
Constructive Use of Authoritative Sources. A respectful
yet critical stance to authoritative sources opens the possi-
bility of advancing the state of the art.
Reference with automatically generated bibliography
helps identify shared problems, gaps, as well as reflec-
tive and considerate use of new information.
Pervasive Knowledge Building. A mindset for knowledge
innovation pervades mental life, in and out of school.
Multimedia conceptual artifacts support work across time,
media, and contexts.
Symmetric Knowledge Advance. Distributed inner-outer
community expertise extends opportunities for generative
ideas.
Searches support interconnectedness, flow of information,
and cross-fertilization of ideas.
Concurrent, Embedded and Transformative Assessment.
Assessment is integral to knowledge advancement, with
moment-to-moment productive feedback as work pro-
ceeds.
Automated on-demand feedback aids reflective monitoring
and improvement.
central core that has been strengthened through research programs over the years. With new issues emerging from different
contexts, such as scalability and sustainability issues we discuss next, refinements of principles are likely to continue to be
reflected in theory, practice, and technology emerging in parallel.
The Role of the Teacher
The KB philosophy and principles have important implications for the role of the teacher. A key implication relates to the
distribution of epistemic agency and cognitive responsibility between students and the teacher. Specifically, three idealized
models of teacher—Teacher A, B, and C—were distinguished (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987; Scardamalia, 2002; Scardamalia
& Bereiter, 1991a). In simplest terms, Teacher A manages tasks and activities, Teacher B goes beyond this to ensure that
educational objectives are met, and Teacher C does both of these but works to empower students to take over responsibilities
normally reserved for the teacher. To nurture students’ higher level agency, KB teachers play important roles in facilitating
epistemological, cognitive, and sociocultural aspects of KB. First, because schooling emphasizes World 2 (i.e., personal
knowledge processes), a KB teacher needs to help students understand the importance of public, community knowledge, and
spaces to advance ideas. As explained by a kindergarten teacher:
Traditionally, students are responsible for their own learning only. In Knowledge Building students learn for their
own sake but also to contribute to the knowledge of the community... New information cannot be only shared at the
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Figure 1. Knowledge-Building (KB) principles with the conceptual framework. Note: The shape of the figure should be
interpreted as a cone divided with three planes—the bottom plane (of three conceptual factors) supports the middle plane of KB
principles, which in turn guides the implementation of KB pedagogy.
end of the unit such as is often done in Project-Based Learning but instead continuously so that everyone shares a
breadth of understanding along with a specialized deep knowledge based on their research interest... making the
individual’s learning visible to everyone else in the classroom for the benefit of all. (Tarchi et al., 2013, p. 388)
A KB teacher also nurtures a favorable cognitive, social, and cultural environment. For example, a Grade 5/6 teacher’s work
is characterized as “deliberate cultural transformation” to gradually get students accustomed to an explanation-seeking culture
(Hakkarainen, 2003a). To begin with, the teacher turned his work into a design opportunity—reflecting on current classroom
practices, identifying weakness, and looking for novel opportunities to improve. To transform the classroom culture, the teacher
modeled quality contributions, nurtured a sense of community knowledge, and made knowledge building pervasive instead of
confined within certain school periods. For example, as reported by the teacher,
As classroom processes evolved over time, it became clear to me that you could not have a regular classroom and
then, for that 40 minutes, say that “we are going to do some knowledge building.” That was not going to work. So
I had to use knowledge-building principles in everything that I did... (Hakkarainen, 2003a, p. 216)
Such design endeavors were also reflected in a Grade 4 teacher’s attempt to implement KB over 3 years with assistance from
researchers, with a focus on the Collective Responsibility for Community Knowledge principle (Zhang, Scardamalia, Reeve, &
Messina, 2009). In Year 1, the teacher adopted a small-group setup, with each group specializing in one area related to the
topic. Realizing the small-group arrangement was impeding students’ engagement with a broader network of peers and ideas,
in Year 2 the teacher encouraged cross-group reading and collaboration, inviting students to contribute to other specialization
groups. He increasingly realized the importance of creating a psychologically safe culture and therefore facilitated classroom
discussions to help students feel not overly attached to “their own theories” and instead treat them as owned by the community.
Finding student collaboration in Year 2 still not flexible enough, in Year 3 he abandoned the small-group strategy and had
students collectively responsible for cross-fertilization of ideas across different areas of specialization. In addition to catalyzing
classwide collaboration, the teacher initiated reflective discussions to engage students in diagnosing their progress. Students
voluntarily formed groups afterward, created rise-above notes (i.e., KF notes that preserve the value of various, sometimes
competing, ideas while presenting higher level accounts) and identified weaker areas worth further inquiry. This teacher’s work
featured strong commitments to promote awareness of contributions (i.e., understanding and monitoring advances throughout
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that community space), complementary contributions (i.e., linking with each other’s ideas through building on, rising above, and
referencing), and distributed engagement (i.e., distributing high-level decisions in knowledge building with minimal hierarchical
control)—areas pertinent to collective responsibility in KB (Zhang et al., 2009).
To summarize, the teacher’s role in KB is guided by principles and remains responsive to specific classroom contexts.
An important characteristic of a KB teacher is his or her dedication to helping students assume collective sociocognitive
responsibility.
The Role of Technology
Theoretically driven and principle-based technological designs play a critical role in supporting KB. First, Knowledge-Building
Environments (KBEs) support ideas in World 3 by putting student ideas “out in the world” for continual improvement and to
support what Tsoukas referred to as a dialogical approach to the creation of new knowledge (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2014;
Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003; Scardamalia et al., 1994; Tsoukas, 2009). A KBE is where knowledge materializes and is
advanced—a community space that extends face-to-face interactions, with students later contributing references and notes from
field trips or other off-line activities (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014a).
Second, KBEs are designed with provisions and scaffolding of knowledge-transforming processes (Scardamalia & Bereiter,
2003). As previously mentioned, KB’s emphasis on explanatory coherence is supported by:
problem statement—a text field in each note to define overarching knowledge goals;
scaffolds—“semantic markers” that give KF notes defined roles in knowledge processes (e.g., “My theory,” “I need to
understand,” and “New information”; see Figure 2, center-left);
views—knowledge spaces supporting flexible idea interconnectivity including build-ons, citations, and references (see
Figure 2, background);
rise-aboves—a special type of KF notes to support summarization of groups of notes, and thus elevate knowledge
building to a higher level (Figure 2, bot-tom-right); and
endless improvability of ideas substantiated by note review and revision, flexible means to move ideas across spaces,
graphical means to organize ideas from multiple perspectives and for different purposes, and so forth.
Technological affordances support higher levels of agency in knowledge building. Cognition and intelligence are distributed
between technology and epistemic agents (Pea, 1993), with ideas meeting ideas to support KB processes.
Third, KBEs support idea-centered sociocultural interactions within and across communities (Scardamalia & Bereiter,
2003). In many cases, KBEs play a key role in helping students (as young as 4 years old) see each other’s ideas as opportunities
of knowledge building (Pelletier, Reeve, & Halewood, 2006). To nurture cognitive responsibility among students, KBEs support
the self-organization of students around ideas, lower the need for externalized guidance, facilitate opportunistic collaboration,
and allow for knowledge emergence in a community (Chen et al., 2015).
Pedagogical designs surrounding technology use are crucial, as the teacher plays a critical role in initiating productive use
of KBEs (e.g., Oshima et al., 2006). If technology is simply added without deliberate efforts to cultivate a KB culture, little
transformation will take place (Hakkarainen, 2003a), and knowledge telling rather than knowledge building will dominate
classroom discourse (van Aalst, 2009). Pitfalls in the use of computer-supported collaborative learning environments have
been reported (Kreijns, Kirschner, & Jochems, 2003); the belief that technologies need to be coupled with proper pedagogical
supports to have real-world impact is widely shared among educational researchers (Amiel & Reeves, 2008).
Humans have been engaged in knowledge building/knowledge creation since the beginning of time, so knowledge building
is obviously not dependent on digital environments or on one particular KBE. In addition, many classroom designs support
students in making ideas more explicit and open. In place of computer-supported environments, a more affordable “Knowledge
Wall” was used by Haneda & Wells (2000). A more recent teacher-researcher innovation used “flash cards” to socialize students
into progressive knowledge building (see Figure 3; Bielaczyc & Ow, 2014). And environments other than CSILE/KF, such as
the Future Learning Environment (Muukkonen, Lakkala,& Hakkarainen, 2005), have been developed to supportKB. However,
without principle-based guidance, any technology may fall short of its goals (e.g., Gilbert & Driscoll, 2002) or require additional
efforts and caution, as the “deliberate bias toward shared activity and rewarding inter-actions with other knowledge builders”
could be missing (Hewitt & Scardamalia, 1998, p. 93). Wikis are often regarded as a KBE, but as a general purpose Web
2.0 technology, wikis lack scaffolding features and would therefore require technical repurposing and informed designs of
surrounding sociocultural processes to support KB.
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Figure 2.
Main interface of Knowledge Forum (version 4.8). Note. Center-left (front)—three KF notes, in which ideas about
“where did water come from” are presented. In a note, users can specify the problem they want to address, use scaffolds to
frame ideas, and add keywords to convey the essence of the note. A note is the basic unit in KF. In the form of notes,
participants contribute theories, explanations, designs, plans, evidence, authoritative sources, and so forth to this communal
space. Notes can be linked in different ways, in KF terms of building on and referencing. Background—a KF view, a problem
space created and designed by a KB community to conceptually organize ideas presented in notes. A view is a two-dimensional
organizing background for notes. In a view, users have the freedom to place notes in specific locations. They can also add
graphic structures, such as a concept map, a diagram, or a scene, to help organize notes in meaningful ways. With views and
notes, KF provides an open, communal space for a community to engage in idea development. Bottom-right (front)—a
rise-above note that presents a high-level summary of student ideas about “how clouds carry water.” The packaged ideas can be
accessed by clicking on the icon in the text area.
Figure 3.
Ideas First project in Singapore used flash cards (Bielaczyc & Ow, 2014;
c
Springer, with permission of Springer).
Note: INTU—I need to understand.
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Enactment of Principles in Empirical Studies
In this section, we review empirical studies documenting implementations of KB together with their educational contexts.
Given the breadth of KB literature, comprehensiveness is not the goal; instead, empirical studies were chosen to best represent
different historical, sociocultural, and technological contexts of KB implementation.
Classroom experiments reported by Haneda and Wells (2000) implemented KB to support writing in Grade 1–8 Canadian
classrooms through collective dialogues. Recognizing writing as a nonlinear and social process, they implemented KB as a new
approach to writing instruction, embracing KB’s disposition that “writing is most powerful [for mediating the enhancement
of understanding] when the text already written, or in process of being written, is treated as an object with which the writer
dialogues in the effort to improve it” (p. 439). A Grade 8 teacher intrigued by CSILE was confronted by the lack of networked
computers in her school. Her solution was the Knowledge Wall, a large notice-board on one wall to serve in place of a CSILE
database. Despite “low” technology support and no mentioning of KB principles in this study, knowledge practices reflected the
conceptual framework of KB. Students started with initial exploration and identification of questions worth pursuing and then
posted them using sticky notes onto the Knowledge Wall. Students conducted research and contributed new ideas and questions
to the wall, with oral discussions engaging the whole class in making connections among different threads of inquiry.Written
discourse on the Knowledge Wall demonstrates responsivity (students responding to ideas) and the progressive nature of KB
(gradually working toward acceptable explanations). What made the Knowledge Wall effective in multiple trials across subject
areas, according to Haneda and Wells (2000), is that
it enables its users to exploit the composition of written texts for the development of progressive discourse...
[Writing] leaves a record of the activity involved—an object that can be returned to at leisure, and then reconsidered
and improved through revision or response. (p. 448)
Collaborative discourse, mediated by both the Wall and oral dialogues, supports the class’s collective undertaking. A
number of teachers use the notice boards and sticky notes rather than digital technology to support KB; there is no research we
are aware of to determine the extent to which this approach supports sustained creative work with ideas to the same extent as in
technologically mediated environments that provide more support for extended collaborative knowledge work.
In a study of KB in elementary mathematics, three Grade4 classrooms from two schools collaborated on KF to solve six
mathematical “generalizing problems” considered challenging for their grade level (Moss & Beatty, 2006). The KB principles
of idea improvement and epistemic agency were at the forefront, as students self-organized to collectively solve these problems
in a progressive manner without support of teachers. Figure 4 presents a KF view dedicated to one of the mathematical problems.
Analysis of student discourse revealed their increasing commitment to, and sophistication in, mathematical explanation. Of
special interest is that all three classes had prior experience with KF for science and had developed a KB culture that was
transferred to mathematics. As a student reflected, “In regular math you don’t use ‘my theory’ and get to write it down and then
get new information to help you develop your theory—in regular math you don’t ask people to help you find what the rule is”
(p. 459).
In a Grade 4 science class studying “optics,” efforts were made to enact four principles:improvable ideas, real ideas and
authentic problems, collective responsibility for community knowledge, and constructive use of authoritative sources (Zhang,
Scardamalia, Lamon, Messina, & Reeve, 2007). Students began this unit with their shared interest in “how worms sense light”
carried forward from the previous year, and they were encouraged to identify their own problems of understanding instead of
following predefined tasks and activities. The teacher fostered continual idea improvement; in his own words,
We encourage a process of inquiry and ask “why, why,” and not to be content with a superficial understanding.
Whenever want the children to feel they’ve got it, even in the way we form our notes—they say “this is what I
understand and if I could I would explore this further, or if I had support from other people I could do...” (p. 124)
The focus on ideas and their improvement led to opportunistic collaboration in the class, with small groups formed and
reformed based on emergent needs to address new or refined problems identified by students. KF as the supporting environment
served as a public space that records collective works, with the top-level knowledge goals center front and student ideas objects
of collective discourse. Use of authoritative sources in various forms (e.g., quoting, paraphrasing, summarizing, integrating)
were broadly observed in collective idea improvement.
Implementation of these principles is a gradual, iterative design process, as revealed by an account of this teacher’s practice
over a 3-year period (Zhang et al., 2009). As discussed earlier, before the teacher attempted to foster opportunistic collaboration
in Year 3, he experimented with a “small-group” design in Year 1 and a “small-group plus cross-group exchanges” design in
Year 2. What motivated his progressive experimentation was the desire to turn over more agency to students. In the process,
he developed a deep trust in students, nurtured a “feeling of empowerment” among them, let go the desire for control and
embraced emergence, and came to understand “the progressive and unfolding nature of curriculum” (p. 38).
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Figure 4. Perimeter problem view in Grade 4 (International Journal of Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning,
“Knowledge Building in Mathematics: Supporting Collaborative Learning in Pattern Problems,” Vol. 1, No. 4, 2006, J. Moss
and R. Beatty; c
Springer, with permission of Springer).
The gradual implementation process is also reflected in a recent effort to develop scaffolding tools, or applicable implemen-
tation paths, for teachers (Bielaczyc & Ow, 2014). This notion of implementation paths is consistent with KB’s principle-based
approach in that it supports enactments of “a set of differentiated design elements that help scaffold participants from their
initial entry point toward a more robust enactment of the desired model” (p. 35). To scaffold this transition, the problem of
enculturating students into a KB community is conceptualized as teaching them to play a “Progressive-Improvement epistemic
game” wherein the principle of idea improvement was brought to the center. The epistemic games consist of basic game moves
(including “Our Problem,” “Initial Theories,” “Gather NewInformation,” “Improved Theories,” and “Pull-Together”), rules (e.g.,
“New Information” moves follow “Initial Theories” moves, each move is accompanied by a problem statement), and strategies
(e.g., “to seek authoritative sources when getting stuck with a problem”; pp. 36–44). KF is conceptualized as a game board,
with its metacognitive scaffolds (e.g., “My theory”) mapping onto play moves.
To implement the Progressive-Improvement Game, two types of scaffolding tools were designed. First, before moving into
full game play in KF, a Think Cards strategy was designed to improve students’ epistemic fluency in this game and to transform
classroom culture from treating students’ ideas as static entities to finding possible moves to improve them. The cards were
designed with metacognitive scaffolds, and students could jot down ideas and then discuss them in a whole class. In Figure 3,
for example, students generated four ideas about “characteristics of living things” in the first “My idea is...” card; they worked
as a community to investigate plausibility of all four ideas and then introduced “facts” using the “New information” card. This
move led to revised ideas presented in the “A better idea” card (Bielaczyc & Ow, 2014). Using the cards, students focused on
the “initial idea–new information–improved ideas” sequence to gain epistemic fluency in idea improvement. Second, after
the class launched full gameplays on KF, hypothetical game configurations were designed to provide isolated practices of
particular moves. In one case, students reflected on the usefulness of hypothetical game moves (e.g., an imaginary build-on
post), or students were asked to choose from branching directions in a hypothetical game configuration in order to make a
superior explanation. Overall, these developed tools focused on the idea improvement principle and expanded to others. The
introduction of epistemic games presents an innovative strategy for exploring KB.
In summary, the enactment of KB principles may be visualized as a complex terrain with different paths leading toward
local optima of having students collectively take sociocognitive responsibility for idea improvement. The principles themselves
are interconnected elements of design, whose implementation may sit at any point of a continuum. As demonstrated in multiple
cases, the process of implementing KB is iterative and progressive, not only in that enactment of one principle could be
deepened through iterative efforts but also that enacting one principle would unlock others. Various factors—social, cultural,
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cognitive, and technological—could influence KB implementation. Successful engagement depends on recognitions of both
constraints and affordances and iterative attempts to enact principles.
Distinctions From Other Constructivist Approaches
Researchers and practitioners tend to treat a family of constructivist approaches as interchangeable because of their shared
constructivist commitments. This seems to be a result of overlapping features in knowledge building, constructivist learning,
and inquiry learning, on the one hand, and on the other, community-based knowledge approaches—communities of learners,
community of practice, knowledge-building communities, or even certain online communities (A.L. Brown & Campione, 1994;
Gilbert & Driscoll, 2002; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Swan et al., 2001). Although overlapping features are important, focusing on
them obscures KB’s distinctiveness (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2014). Without KB’s conceptual framework and principles, the
following four distinctive features of KB are often lost.
First, as discussed earlier, KB requires students to take high-level social and cognitive responsibility—responsibility
typically assumed by the teacher (e.g., planning, monitoring, assessing), as well as to engage in knowledge-transforming
processes that characterize expertise and work in knowledge-creating organizations (Oshima et al., 2006; Scardamalia, 2002;
Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). This distinction could also be understood by the question of “who controls the zone of proximal
development (ZPD)” (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 1991a, p. 48): In most instructional approaches, the power to define the ZPD is
reserved for the teacher or instructional designers, and KB challenges this practice and elects to nurture children toward taking
over the control of their own ZPD (see also Wells, 1999).
Building on the notion of sociocognitive responsibility, the second distinction is taking responsibility collectively. Ideally,
a KB classroom functions like an expert team, in which each team member is aware of the team goals while contributing
to the team in distinctive ways (Scardamalia, 2002). For students assuming collective responsibility in KB, their goal is to
bring individual talents to the collective enterprise to help the group succeed as a whole (Chuy, Zhang, Resendes, Scardamalia,
& Bereiter, 2011; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2010c). This is in contrast to individual learning through group processes (e.g.,
reciprocal teaching; see Palinscar & Brown, 1984), as well as learning in group or distributed learning in a “community
of learners” (A.L. Brown & Campione, 1994). Collectivity in KB is more akin to group creativity (Sawyer, 2003), swarm
creativity (Gloor, 2005), or collaborative innovation networks (Gloor, Paasivaara, Schoder, & Willems, 2008), where emergent,
opportunistic collaboration is encouraged to collective knowledge goals.
Third, the goal of KB is to create new knowledge. By engaging students in the same enterprise of expert teams and
knowledge-creating organizations, where complex social interactions lead to the creation of public knowledge beyond individual
minds, students are poised not only to learn but also to create new knowledge in the process. In contrast to “learning [as] an
internal, unobservable process that results in changes of belief, attitude, or skill,” KB results in the production or modification
of public knowledge (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003, p. 3), just like scientists working in real-world laboratories (Dunbar, 1995)
or company employees striving for the next innovation (Nonaka, 1991). Even though the perceived knowledge frontier varies
across contexts—reflecting differences in the knowledge domains and the level of expertise—the goal and the design-mode
practice are essentially the same, with learning an important “by-product” of knowledge creation (Scardamalia & Bereiter,
2003, 2010b). By contrast, the Web-based Inquiry Science Environment, a successful science education project that supports
customizable and adaptive teaching designs, emphasizes the grasp of curriculum content, such as “factors required for optimal
plant growth,” through accomplishing well-defined projects (Linn, Clark, & Slotta, 2003). The emphasis on design-mode idea
improvement in KB is grounded in a different epistemological approach recognizing World 3 and the goal of creating new
knowledge, as discussed earlier, which cannot simply “be added to collaboration and learning to learn” in World 2 in which
most constructivist approaches operate (van Aalst, 2006, p. 286).
Finally, the principle-based KB pedagogy places design principles at the center—themselves objects of discourse, discovery,
and improvement. Rather than reducing KB know-how to procedures, KB is a creative act calling for design-mode thinking in
its own right (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014a). So rather than specifying tasks and activities, a principle-based KB approach
“defines core values and principles, leaving to teachers the challenge of engaging in reflective interpretation, using discretionary
judgment, and making adaptive classroom decisions to accommodate their different contexts and possibilities” (Zhang, Hong,
Scardamalia, Teo, & Morley, 2011, p. 263).
Notwithstanding our efforts to draw distinctions, it is important to appreciate the extent to which KB shares characteristics
with other constructivist approaches. For example, inquiry is an activity common across the constructivist spectrum, as well as
being a feature of work in knowledge-creating enterprises. Some researchers aim for hybrid approaches, for example, KB and
scaffolded inquiry (Slotta& Peters, 2008), to ease the way to KB. It is not clear, however, that it represents a more efficient
approach. In the spirit of principle-based pedagogy, Scardamalia and Bereiter (2014a) argued for a direct approach that engages
the inventive spirit of teachers, noting that it has resulted in the most powerful examples of KB available. KB researchers and
practitioners recognize, however, that principle-based pedagogical innovation places high demands on professional development
and on practitioner networks to function as innovation networks (Gloor, 2005) rather than simply sharing networks. Thus the
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KB professional development challenge is to create KB innovation networks.
EVIDENCE OF KB’s EFFECTIVENESS
This section examines evidence of KB’s effectiveness in supporting learning in the school settings. As reported in one study:
On one level, you can see the content area being covered and students learning quite rapidly. On another level, you
know that they are becoming prepared for a thinking life, the philosophical level which children are so natural at.
Ata third level, they are developing metacognitive skills which enable them to articulate thought processes and to
highlight their needs as learners. (Caswell & Bielaczyc, 2002, p. 299)
Essentially, KB’s goal is to help students become literate in knowledge or innovation-driven societies, where literacies of
all kinds are geared to solving problems and developing new knowledge, with knowledge building driving a broad range of
literacies.
Domain-Specific Literacies
Advancement of domain-specific literacies is broadly regarded as a major educational goal. In science education,
1
KB has been
found to facilitate scientific literacy. KB’s emphasis on “progressive idea improvement through collective discourse” is in line
with a sociocultural trend in science education that stresses the enculturation of practice,discursive interactions, and social
construction of knowledge (Saito & Miyake, 2011; Scott, Asoko, Leach, Abell, & Leder-man, 2007; Vygotsky, 1978). One
earlier study found knowledge-building activities mediate the effect of conceptual conflict in conceptual change; specifically, in
conceptual-conflict instruction, students responding to presented conceptual conflicts in a knowledge-building manner—not
avoiding conflicts, but using contradictory statements as “opportunities for upgrading their domain understanding”—were
found more likely to achieve conceptual change (Chan, Burtis, & Bereiter, 1997, p. 29).
In later studies, the effects of KB on scientific literacy were studied in the absence of conceptual-change instructional
strategies. For instance, in an analysis of two Grade5/6 classrooms using CSILE over a 3-year period, students in one class
moved toward progressively constructing explanations; their community ideas improved on a Level of Explanation5-point scale
from Year 1 (M = 2.86) to Year 3 (M = 4.18), whereas the other class, where personalized epistemology and fact-oriented
knowledge processes remained prominent, did not demonstrate such progress (Hakkarainen, 2003a). In a study of KF activities
of four student groups from Grade 10–11, the group demonstrating the strongest features of KB—for example, a sense of
community, explanation-seeking inquiry, interpreting and evaluating information, and insights into knowledge processes—
achieved the most conceptual progress reflected by “Knowledge Quality” of their collaborative summary notes(effect sizes
0.70, Cohen’ d; van Aalst, 2009). In another study that compared a “KB class” (following an instructional design involving
developing a collaborative culture and deepening KB inquiry) with a “non-KB class” (using atypical approach with teacher
presentations demonstrations and class discussion), more conceptual change measured through written conceptual change tests
found in the KB class (effect size η2= .23; Lam & Chan, 2008).
The processes by which KB can foster conceptual change in science are explored in various studies. Analyses of classroom
dynamics show how KB can restructure scientific discourse, foster deep learning, and enhance inquiry-based scientific
understanding (e.g., Caswell & Bielaczyc, 2002; Lee, Chan, & Aalst, 2006; van Aalst & Chan, 2007). For instance, as a result
of a pedagogical shift toward knowledge-transforming discourse, a Grade 5/6 class engaged in scientific theory building, started
to see themselves as contributors to knowledge advancement, and recognized the power of working collectively as a community
(Caswell & Bielaczyc, 2002). As evident from student discourse, they developed deeper scientific knowledge and traversed
complex knowledge landscapes: The class started from “how islands might be formed” to “species living on islands,” and to
“evolution.” The “curriculum” became defined by students themselves, with the teacher responding to students’ interests and
incorporating key ideas deemed important in science (Caswell & Bielaczyc, 2002).
Sociocognitive dynamics were examined in a Grade 4 KB class (Zhang et al., 2007). Results showed students engaged in
progressive problem solving—addressing and refining questions, proposing and refining theories, contributing to meaningful
community discourse, and constructively using authoritative sources—which led to significant group-level knowledge advance-
ment in various “inquiry threads” (measured through content analysis of ideas) and individual knowledge gains (reflected
by pre-post knowledge tests). Social network analysis of community interactions uncovered a gradual shift from a fixed
small-group structure toward opportunistic collaboration on shared, overarching goals in the class; students gradually assumed
higher level responsibility in their work, and their classroom represented an increasingly organic, flexible, and distributed social
structure (Zhang et al., 2009).
1
In the school setting, KB has been most actively applied in science, for several reasons. Explanation building has been widely recognized as an important
enterprise in science learning (Carey & Smith, 1993). In contrast, treating mathematics, for example, as an explanation-building enterprise, although
possible (Moss & Beatty, 2006), demands a more substantial reconstruction of the curriculum. Nonetheless, examples of KB pedagogy exist across curricula
(Scardamalia & Egnatoff, 2010).
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KB has been also broadly applied in other subject areas. In mathematics, KB has helped student engagement in solving
challenging math problems by crowdsourcing student ideas and explanations. In one study focusing on generalizing problems
(see the Enactment of Principles section)—an important and yet challenging construct of early algebra—three Grade 4 classes
used KF to collaboratively solve problems over a 4-month period. Analysis of student discourse found that students identified
multiple rules for the problems, provided meaningful justifications for them, and revised their own conjectures regarding rules
over an extended period (Moss & Beatty, 2006). Even more profoundly for their grade level, students spontaneously recognized
structural similarities across multiple problems. For example, a student named AN posted a note titled “same rule”: “My
theory is that this has the same rule as the hand-shake problem since they are the same numbers. See in handshake problem
view, [my note titled] ‘right answer’” (p. 457). These gains in mathematical understanding were connected with the KB
principles of epistemic agency and improvable ideas, as well as an emergent KB culture in these classes. In a secondary analysis
focusing on democratization of knowledge, students at all achievement levels were found participating in community discourse
and able to solve problems of recognized difficulty (Moss & Beatty, 2010). In a similar effort of introducing proportional
reasoning to Grade 1, students were engaged in face-to-face knowledge-building discourse instead of using KF. The results
showed that they made progress in solving a set of proportional reasoning problems challenging for their grade level. Content
analyses of classroom dialogues found students grappling with various proportional reasoning concepts while displaying several
basic knowledge-building behaviors, including contributing new ideas, extending current ideas, referencing a peer’s idea, and
addressing the collective (i.e., “we”) instead of oneself (Hutton, Chen, & Moss, 2013).
KB engages students in history in an exploratory manner, allowing discussion of multiple perspectives when examining
historical events. In one study examining historical reasoning, a Grade 4 KB class studied medieval times through discussing
their ideas, questions, theories, and research on this topic, with the teacher allowing the study to grow organically. Analyses
found students engaged with various aspects of historical reasoning, including contextualization, using substantive concepts,
using historical sources, historical questions and using meta-concepts (Resendes & Chuy, 2010). They explored historical
questions such as “Why back then they painted so much?” in conjunction with historical metaconcepts such as “How were the
Elizabethan times different from medieval times?” While being engaged in an exploratory and evaluative discourse supported
by KB, students not only addressed historical concepts productively in collaborative dialogues but also constructed meaningful
contextual understandings of them (Resendes & Chuy, 2010).
KB studies span the curriculum and all levels of schooling. In addition to science, mathematics, and history just presented,
studies include but are not limited to language arts, physical education, chemistry, physics, climate change, crafts and the arts,
social studies, and engineering (Ellis et al., 2011; Hong, Scardamalia, Messina, & Teo, 2008; Lahti, Iivonen, & Seitamaa-
Hakkarainen, 2004; Lam & Chan, 2008; McAuley, 2009; Reeve & Sharkawy, 2012). Researchers span the Americas, Europe,
and Asia, and mainstream to remote networked schools and aboriginal contexts (see Scardamalia & Egnatoff, 2010, a special
issue on KB, for an overview).
Epistemic Literacy
KB features design-mode thinking and improvable ideas, with strong implications for the development of epistemic literacy,
that is, knowing how knowledge is created and how humans make sense of the world (Tuomi, 2015). In science, conceptual
change often involves growth in students’ views about the nature of science (Duit & Treagust, 2003; Hofer & Pintrich, 1997).
Students’ epistemic beliefs play important roles in conceptual change (Nussbaum, Sinatra, & Poliquin, 2008), and so does their
metaconceptual awareness (Vosniadou, 2008). KB, which embraces a framework of epistemology and knowledge practices
reflecting real-world scientific inquiry, supports epistemic development advocated by conceptual change researchers.
Previous research found changes with students’ epistemic beliefs advancing in the course of knowledge building. For
instance, a departure from the view of science knowledge as a fixed entity—as “factual, objective, and independent of human
distortion”—toward the belief that scientific ideas are tentative and subject to refinement and replication was observed in a
Grade 5/6 KB class (Caswell & Bielaczyc, 2002). In a comparative study, students in an experimental KB class achieved
more epistemic change—from viewing knowledge as simplistic toward complex, and from static toward extendable—than a
control class, t(77) = 4.75, p
<
.01 (Lam & Chan, 2008). In another study comparing a KB class with a project-based learning
class, more progress in understanding of the nature of science (Carey & Smith, 1993) was demonstrated in the KB class
over a 4-month period; students immersed in a KB environment developed deeper understanding in the nature of theoretical
process, theory-fact differentiation, and recognition of the role of ideas in scientific progress (Cohen’s d = 1.17; Chuy et
al., 2010). In addition, the epistemological nature and epistemic complexity of student ideas also developed in the course
of KB, reflecting students’ evolving capabilities in producing theoretical explanations and articulating underlying scientific
mechanisms (Hakkarainen, 2003b; Zhang et al., 2009).
Basic Literacies
KB is an intensive literacy practice. To teach basic or traditional literacies, KB immerses students in complex literate worlds
from early years; students engaged in day-to-day KB practice experience continual opportunities for literacy development in
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Figure 5.
Example of a 4-year-old child’s note. Note. Corrected text: “The beaker is floating because the water is warm.” This
note is about a student’s theory about flotation, which originated from commenting on a photo about a science experiment
(Pelletier et al., 2006; c
Taylor & Francis; reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis; permission to reuse must be
obtained from the rightsholder).
meaningful contexts, with consequent advances in it (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1987). In an early comparison of two KB Grade
5–6 classes with a demographically similar but more traditional class, the KB classes scored a two grade-level advantage on a
standardized reading achievement test (Scardamalia et al., 1992). A norm for a KB community is all members contributing
ideas to the collective enterprise and working together to improve them. The use of technology supports text, drawing, and
multimedia artifacts. In KB, students read each other’s entries, search for information to answer questions, design and report
experiments, read authoritative sources, and synthesize across texts and information modalities. In this situation, gains in
traditional literacy (i.e., reading and writing), as well as multiliteracies, become natural, often in absence of explicit literacy
instruction.
KB combined with explicit instruction in basic literacies has promoted reading with a purpose and encouraged a departure
from traditional monologic writing to communicative and dialogic writing (Haneda & Wells, 2000). In one case, named
“Dinosaur Schools,” a Grade 3 class self-organized into groups to write a story based on readings and their ideas on dinosaurs.
They treated “the emerging text as an ‘improvable object’, and writing as a means for collaborative knowledge building” (p.
443). Cooperative dialogues took place in group conversations, leading to a group-constructed story, Dinosaur Schools, with a
well-crafted theme and a clear sense of audience awareness (despite technical errors). The results convinced the teacher to
change her lower expectations for ESL students (many in her class) and to abandon a number of earlier teaching conventions.
To students, writing the story became more about improving their pertinent ideas, with learning grammar and spelling a less
arduous by-product with the group functioning as a collective.
This mechanism is also demonstrated in a study involving 4- and 5-year-olds’ journey of writing photo-based journals in KF,
where students brought photos taken in various settings as anchors of writing and knowledge-building dialogues (Pelletier et al.,
2006). Like Dinosaur Schools, children’s writing has a purpose of collectively solving authentic problems (e.g., “how to design
an ideal playground”), writing and literacy development a by-product. Children were found motivated to write using varied
strategies (see Figure 5): Children’s early literacy development showed transitions from “using drawings to communicate ideas”
toward using invented, incorrect spellings (e.g., from drawing a picture of “two horses” to writing “2 hors”). A comparison
between two classes that followed the same approach but differed in technology mediation—KF versus paper-and-pencil found
significantly greater improvement in reading quotients in the KF class (p
<
.05), as well as a mitigating effect on gender
inequity in literacy development, as boys in the KF class made the same number of entries as girls.
Reading, although possibly not the focal pedagogical goal, serves as an integral part of collective idea improvement in KB,
in line with the principle of constructive uses of authoritative sources. In the journey of learning in a science unit on light, 22
Grade 4 students used a large number of reading materials from authoritative sources, many of which were written for much
higher grade levels. Reading in this class was characterized into four themes: reading for the purpose of advancing community
knowledge, reading as progressive problem-solving (not only comprehending but also problematizing understanding), reading
embedded in KB discourse, and reading as dialogues between local understanding and knowledge out in the world (Zhang
& Sun, 2011). These themes reflected a higher level reading practice, which was constructive (Chan, Burtis, Scardamalia, &
Bereiter, 1992; Graesser, 2007), social (Applebee, Langer, Nystrand, & Gamoran, 2003), and inquiry oriented or reasoning
oriented (Chinn, Anderson, & Waggoner, 2001; Phillips & Norris, 2009). When reading is treated by students as a tool to solve
problems, it becomes meaningful and “involves much deeper and transformative operations” (Zhang & Sun, 2011, p. 442).
Likewise, writing is a tool for building knowledge—with text serving knowledge purposes in the community, and ideas rather
than structure and lexico-grammar at the center (Haneda & Wells, 2000). In contrast to traditional writing instruction, writing
in KB is mostly “ideational”—focusing on effective communication of the ideas rather than the technicality of the writing
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(Chuy, Scardamalia, & Bereiter, 2011; Norris & Phillips, 2003), the growth of writing skills a by-product of communicating
idea through writing. This hypothesis has been tested in several studies, focusing on productive writing vocabulary and
writing practices of students. In one study, an analysis of lexical frequency profiles of 22 students’ KF entries in Grade 3
and 4 revealed growth in both domain-specific and academic words; over 2 years, each student on average produced 3,231
words and 715 unique words, with the composition shifting toward more sophisticated words. Occurrences of domain-specific
and academic words correlated with the quality of ideas (Pearsonrs r
>
.50), indicating an underlying connection between
vocabulary development and conceptual understanding (Sun, Zhang, & Scardamalia, 2008). A secondary analysis focusing
on gender differences found that boys performed slightly better than girls, in contrast to boys’ lower performances reported
elsewhere (Sun, Zhang, & Scardamalia, 2010). Similarly, a longitudinal study mining a student cohort’s 6 years of KF writing
activities also uncovered significant growth in productive writing vocabulary; in particular, note revision—a strong indicator of
knowledge transforming and idea improvement less commonly found among novice writers (Scardamalia, 1981; Scardamalia &
Bereiter, 1987)—was identified to be the strongest predictor of vocabulary growth rate (Chen, Ma, Matsuzawa, & Scardamalia,
2015). Co-elaboration of word meanings was evident in student discourse; so was sustained collective engagement with a
same term across multiple years. For example, students were engaged with the term gravity across 6 years in various discourse
contexts (e.g., explaining rains, building planes, and studying astronomy) and with different levels of understanding that
improved in sophistication over time.
KB also shows promise in supporting graphical or visual literacy, which precedes and enhances reading and writing
(Sinatra, 1986) but is traditionally not emphasized in education. In CSILE/KF, young students successfully use multi-media
features, especially drawing, to express ideas in various modalities. Student gains in ability to produce and interpret graphical
communications are demonstrated in a number of studies (Scardamalia, 2002; Scardamalia et al., 1992; Zhang et al., 2007).
In one study investigating progression of students’ graphical literacy from Grade 3 to 4 when studying biology, history, and
science, students spontaneously produced graphics; without explicit instruction, they advanced along multiple dimensions of
graphical literacy including effective representation of complex ideas, use of source information and captions, and aesthetic
quality (Gan, Scardamalia, Hong, & Zhang, 2010). For example, two fourth graders produced a fairly complex graphical
representation to report on an experiment on refraction (see Figure 6), demonstrating the value of graphics for enhancing textual
description and advancing scientific knowledge. Another study found that students using graphics achieved greater conceptual
progress more frequently, implying a potential reciprocal connection between graphical literacy and scientific literacy (Oshima
& Scardamalia, 1996).
In summary, empirical evidence indicates KB’s efficacy and prospects for facilitating learning in various domains. These
findings should be considered within specific implementation contexts of KB. In many cases, such as research conducted in the
laboratory school at the University of Toronto, empirical evidence should be considered as what could be possible in an optimal
educational context, in which the KB culture has already been established for decades (Zhang et al., 2011). Yet other studies
are in contexts that are far from optimal in terms of class sizes and demographics and still show positive effects.
CHALLENGES AND NEXT STEPS
KB attempts to refashion education in response to increasing needs for knowledge-creating talents in knowledge societies
(Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2006; Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2003). Despite its close alignment with educational needs, it faces
formidable barriers at multiple levels of the education system. Overcoming these barriers requires synergetic efforts from inside
and outside schools (Fullan, 2000). To this end, we review challenges and approaches explored by KB researchers. Of course,
in the spirit of KB, the way forward is itself a design challenge requiring a great deal of research and inventiveness.
Pedagogical Factors
The principle-based nature of KB pedagogy demands a shift in teachers’ practices and beliefs, especially for teachers accustomed
to following specific activity structures (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2007). Indeed, KB requires teachers to become designers
themselves (e.g., Hakkarainen, 2003a). This design culture favored by KB runs contrary to some practitioner cultures in
which teachers are conventionally treated as implementers of course plans (Chai & Khine, 2006); in this case, norms in the
teaching profession need to be challenged when introducing KB. Moreover, because the process of building coherent and
powerful explanations is an ill-structured process, KB demands the teacher cultivate higher order competencies among students
(Woodruff & Meyer, 1997), and some teachers raise doubts regarding feasibility (Hong, Chen, Chai, & Chan, 2011). In other
situations, teachers’ interest in KB technology may overshadow its philosophy and principles, leading to difficulties in fostering
a KB culture (Hakkarainen, 2009; Pelletier et al., 2006).
Several approaches have been proposed, for example, starting from “easier” principles and gradually expanding to others
(Law & Wong, 2003; Tarchi et al., 2013), or integrating core KB principles with existing “activity structures” and carrying
on iterative design to further principle enactment (Oshima et al., 2006). To help teachers gradually become attuned to the
principle-based approach, KB implementation in phases has been tried, for example, developing a collaborative KB culture or
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Figure 6.
Graphical representations of bending-light experiment in Grade 4 (adapted from Gan et al., 2010). Note. Note text:
“I did an experiment on Bending Light. The flame is behind the glass. When the flame is out in the air, it looks normal. When it
is next to the water, the flame seems to expand. I need to understand why the flame expands under the water.
epistemic fluency before engagement in inquiry and alignment of assessment (Bielaczyc & Ow, 2014; Lee et al., 2006). These
approaches have seemingly eased challenges faced by teachers new to KB. Yet there are also examples of teachers who with
little or no support have developed principle-based approaches that serve as models for others; a number of these are reported
in this review.
Professional development initiatives that engage teachers as knowledge builders show promise (Bielaczyc & Collins, 2006;
Chai & Tan, 2009; Chan & van Aalst, 2006; Honget al., 2011). To introduce KB, teacher-education opportunities should
model the KB approach; instead of reproducing current best KB practices, teachers work as knowledge builders to solve
authentic problems of teaching (Chan & van Aalst, 2006). Four principles for teacher education in KB were suggested: (a)
focusing on problems as starting points, (b) engaging in inquiry and dialogue with others, (c) working collaboratively as
a community, and (d) building agency in assessing teachers’ own collaborative learning. Similar approaches emphasizing
teacher KB communities are documented elsewhere (e.g., Chai & Tan, 2009). A new international Building Cultural Capacity
for Innovation initiative (http://ikit.org/bcci/) has been established to create collaborative innovation networks to spread and
continually advance powerful, research-based models of KB.
Contextual Factors
First, sustainable educational change requires favorable school cultures (Fullan, 2000); sociocultural innovation requires
fundamental epistemological shifts involving all stakeholders—teachers, school principals, researchers, parents, students, and
policy makers—to sustain KB innovations (Zhang et al., 2011). Strong teacher–researcher, school–university partnerships
are strengthening KB implementations in many contexts (Laferriere et al., 2015; Laferriere et al., 2010; Oshima et al., 2006;
Pelletier et al., 2006; see also http://www.knowledge-building.org).
Second, although KB is aligned with the goal of cultivating creative talents, as emphasized in many policy documents,
a widespread emphasis on standards and accountability (Sahlberg, 2011) may undermine its implementation. One barrier
stems from the tension between efficiently covering curriculum standards and allowing students to advance understanding in
an emergent, in-depth manner. The Ontario education context has enabled KB work over extended periods; there have been
no discernible negative effects, and many advances have been reported in the literature, as discussed earlier in this article
(e.g., Caswell & Bielaczyc, 2002; Chan et al., 1997; Chen et al., 2015; Chuy et al., 2010; Gan et al., 2010; Moss & Beatty,
2006; Resendes & Chuy, 2010; Zhang et al., 2007). Despite impressive examples of KB from high-stake contexts, a legitimate
concern in education regimes with high-stake tests is effective and efficient curriculum coverage. One KB teacher reflected:
I used to be worried about...covering curriculum... Now I truly believe that the curriculum... is about the process
and how deeply the children go. And as a result, anything can be curriculum. It could be something that comes
17/26
from the younger grades, as easily as it’s from, you know, a higher grade, as long as it’s an area where you can go
deeply. (Zhang et al., 2009, p. 38)
Another approach is to seek coexistence of KB pedagogy and the emphasis on examinations. For example, teachers in Hong
Kong dedicate a certain amount of time to test preparation before the exams while spending most time on KB (Chan & van
Aalst, 2006).
Third, community-oriented KB supports social and cultural practices that may run against local cultural norms, for example,
providing input to improve rather than receive ideas may be culturally inappropriate in some cultures(Chai & Khine, 2006);
cultural preference for oral communication over reading/writing could also became a barrier (Porcaro, 2014).
Fourth, principle-based KB assessment is concurrent, embedded, and transformative, and must complement other forms of
assessment. Colleagues provided examples of ways in which assessment supports metadiscourse and, in turn, higher levels
of agency as well as advances in subject matter under-standing (Chen et al., 2015; Resendes, Scardamalia, Bereiter, Chen,
& Halewood, 2015). Scardamalia and Bereiter (2016) made the case for assessment built directly into KBEs to open new
possibilities for exceeding, not simply meeting, curriculum expectations.
In summary, one premise of successful implementation of KB is careful consideration of both local context and cultural and
contextual constraints that create design challenges at multiple levels. To make school change sustainable, partnerships and a
design mind-set are needed among different stakeholders. At a fundamental level, educators need to operate as knowledge
builders themselves, highlighting the importance of teacher education for KB.
CONCLUSIONS
In this review of the KB literature, we have unpacked the conceptual framework of KB, elaborated its principles, distinguished
KB from other constructivist approaches, reviewed the implementation literature, and discussed challenges and approaches that
have allowed the KB agenda to advance, with attention to barriers yet to be addressed.
KB originated in research on the nature of expertise and knowledge transformation processes. Its broad influences
include self-organizing systems, design thinking, connectionism, ideas in the world, knowledge-creating dialogue, collective
intelligence, and explanatory coherence. These influences have led to distinguishing characteristics of KB, mainly its emphasis
on high levels of agency and community knowledge (ideas in the world) that enable the creation of new knowledge. The
ideas-in-the-world stance is embedded in KF technological affordances and knowledge practices that reflect the work of
international design teams and researchers. These interconnected aspects of KB give rise to a set of principles that stem from
and, in turn, are used to guide technological and pedagogical designs for KB. As reflected in our review, different levels of
implementation exist in various educational contexts, and successful adoption of KB requires iterative and progressive design.
Principles are treated as interconnected design elements—implementing one helps unlock others; examples of effective use
provide a basis for improved models and advances in the principle-based framework that guides the work. KB has shown
prospects for facilitating learning in various areas, including domain-specific literacies, epistemic literacy, basic literacies,
teacher education, out-of-school contexts. Findings must, of course, be considered within the distinctive educational contexts
that gave rise to them; generalization from more favorable to less favor-able contexts is always risky and calls for careful
assessment. To sustain KB in education, continual efforts are needed to catalyze work cultures and partnerships within and
beyond schools, design innovative solutions to address policy and curriculum issues, and understand cultural practices of KB in
different education regimes and societies.
Ongoing efforts to improve technological environments focus on the question, Are new technologies supporting students to
assume more agency or taking it away? This was a concern when the development of KB environments started to take shape
in 1983 (see Scardamalia et al., 1989), and remains a central concern nowadays when computer technologies are mature and
widely applied in education. As technologies are getting “smarter,” they should give priority to promote higher level agency
of students, collective cognitive responsibility, explanation-building discourse, metacognitive judgment, and design-mode
thinking (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014b). These goals are reflected by recent innovations with KB technologies, such as
analytical tools to foster “metadiscourse” (Resendes et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2015) and technological enhancements to
facilitate the identification and development of promising ideas (Chen et al., 2015). The emphases on turning epistemic agency
over to students in these efforts represent an important contrast to many current learning technology innovations that focus on
assessment of student performance, classroom management, and effective delivery of curricula. Meanwhile, innovations in
learning analytics and education data mining are actively being explored by a KF working group, with attention directed to new
analytics and embedded assessment for group-level knowledge creation.
Our review has highlighted areas of future research to advance our understanding of the nuanced process of enacting KB
principles—by different teachers, in diversified environments, across various subjects, at all levels of schooling, and within
varied sociocultural contexts. Comprehensive investigation of enablers and constraints at different levels of the education
system is needed to broaden KB research and knowledge practices. This is especially true when the issue of scalability is
18/26
concerned, as it constitutes a key area where research is needed. Fortunately, major initiatives are advancing with ministries
of education, school, and university partnerships, with commitment to large-scale research intensive initiatives. These will
advance KB and the evolution of education as a knowledge creating enterprise.
Acknowledgements
We acknowledge the reviewers and the editor for their critical and constructive feedback. We also thank students, teachers, and
researchers who have contributed to this line of research.
ORCID
Bodong Chen http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4616-4353
Huang-Yao Hong http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7400-7094
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... Consequently, knowledge building is usually thought to occur within groups (Popp & Goldman, 2016). In the educational context, the aim of knowledge building is to reframe schools as knowledge-creating enterprises that engage and initiate students into a knowledge-creating culture (Chen & Hong, 2016). In terms of teachers, the understanding of TKB is basically situated in the context of constructivism, holding the view that knowledge is constructed socially by learners based on their previous knowledge and beliefs as well as an active relationship with the environment (Vossen et al., . ...
... Online learning, which offers authentic, flexible, and personalised learning opportunities for teachers to co-construct knowledge by means of fostering effective social interactions and critical dialogue, has become an important method for facilitating teachers' PDL (Zhang et al., 2017). Improved technology environments could support TKB when they prioritise promoting higher level agency, collective cognitive responsibility, explanation-building discourse, metacognitive judgement, design thinking (Chen & Hong, 2016), and peer assessment that grants teachers more independence in leading the learning process and developing high-order thinking skills (Anat et al., 2019). ...
Thesis
It is held in consensus worldwide that targeted professional development and learning (PDL) approaches should be provided for in-service teachers at different career stages. This research aims to add to the paucity of research that explores what PDL approaches are best suited for in-service teachers at different career stages. By integrating personal and environmental factors encompassing working years, government certification, teachers’ honorary reputations, and leadership positions, this study proposes a three-career-stage division of in-service teachers in China: beginning teachers, experienced teachers, and expert teachers. In examining the main question of what PDL approaches are best suited for in service teachers at three career stages, various contextual factors need to be considered: firstly, discovering what various stakeholders such as government, teacher educators, and in-service teachers, perceive to be the best PDL approaches for that purpose; secondly, discovering which of these work to that effect. These main points are critically investigated by looking at two research questions: Research Question 1: What PDL approaches are best suited for in-service teachers at three career stages according to the perceptions of the stakeholders, including government, teacher educators, and in-service teachers? Research Question 2: How are these PDL approaches that are thought to be best suited for in-service teachers at three career stages by the stakeholders effective? The methodology, a two-stage qualitative study, was used to address the research questions. The first stage combined interview data with document analysis to answer Research Question 1. All the data from various sources were critically analysed and then pieced together to determine what PDL approaches were thought by all the stakeholders to be best suited for in-service teachers at three career stages. To address Research Question 2, the second stage was to explore how these identified PDL approaches were effective. This study adopted the perspective of teacher knowledge building (TKB) to investigate the effectiveness of identified PDL approaches through teachers' self-reported knowledge changes. This research conceptualises that TKB is a process wherein teachers build new knowledge through the continuous, dynamic, multi-faceted, multi-layered interaction and dialogue among theoretical, practical, explicit, and tacit knowledge through the action of problem solving. However, the TKB processes at various stages may show different characteristics concerning approaches, mechanisms, and facilitating conditions. It is the hypothetical conception that this research attempts to confirm. The results indicate that the identified PDL approaches are suitable for beginning teachers, experienced teachers, and expert teachers respectively because they could promote TKB when properly designed to provide high-quality facilitating conditions. The similarities and differences in the approaches, mechanisms, and facilitating conditions to knowledge building of teachers at different career stages were reported and discussed. A composite model was then developed to present TKB at all three career stages based on cross-case analysis. This research provides promising approaches for designing effective PDL approaches for various stages of in-service teachers, and expands the knowledge base concerning TKB, practical knowledge, and learning sciences.
... The use of knowledge building in various disciplines has been quite prevalent in recent years (Chen & Hong, 2016) and the sharing of diverse ideas and theories between students and external communities from different fields have also led to increasing acknowledgement and recognition of the importance of epistemic emotions (Teo et al., 2022). However, this field is under-researched, especially in the exploration of relationships and associations between students' epistemic emotions and the knowledge building activities they are engaging in. ...
Article
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This study looks at learning habits of temporal regularity in learning activities. Building such habits involves learners' regulation of their behaviors and requires learning strategies for time management, which is a cornerstone of self-regulated learning (SRL). Given the importance of habit-building in education, Learning Analytics (LA) techniques have been applied to various long-term supports by monitoring learners' habitual behaviors from the trace data. However, building a learning habit does not always mean the productive use of time. Scant supports attend to recommending learners by building which habit can improve their learning productivity. Hence, this study proposes recommendations for productive learning habit-building from learning logs. We focus on the context of English reading in a Japanese junior high school and design an algorithm to compute a recommended learning time slot. Furthermore, we collect learners' perceptions of their productivity and learning status at different times of the day. The comparison between self-report and log data presents that learners are not aware of their learning as the detection from their learning logs. This implies the potential of the proposed recommendations for facilitating learners to build productive learning habits. Specifically, our study can suggest an optimal time in learning plans and provide learners with a sustainable cue to automate learning behaviors from long-term perspectives. By building productive learning habits, learners can become more engaged in their studies as well as lead more balanced lives.
... The use of knowledge building in various disciplines has been quite prevalent in recent years (Chen & Hong, 2016) and the sharing of diverse ideas and theories between students and external communities from different fields have also led to increasing acknowledgement and recognition of the importance of epistemic emotions (Teo et al., 2022). However, this field is under-researched, especially in the exploration of relationships and associations between students' epistemic emotions and the knowledge building activities they are engaging in. ...
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Educational research may have established intricate connections between student achievements and emotions, but there remains a need to conduct more research on the crucial role of students' epistemic emotions during learning. The emergence of global knowledge societies has nudged researchers to delve deeper into the understanding of students' epistemic emotions within evolving learning environments, such as knowledge building environments that encourage complex learning and knowledge creation. This study addresses this gap via a naturalistic study of students' epistemic emotions in a student Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS). We aim to illuminate the intersections between epistemic emotions and knowledge building activities, with findings to inform the design of more rigorous studies and designs to advance knowledge building practices. An Epistemic Emotion Survey (EES) was adapted for gathering students' epistemic emotions and to align with knowledge building activities in the sKBDS. A total of 11022 sets of epistemic emotion data from 73 primary and secondary school students were collected from two runs of the sKBDS, compiled into a single repository for descriptive analysis. Findings show that students experienced heightened curiosity, interest, excitement, and were generally happy to participate in activities at the sKBDS, while demonstrating relatively less anxiety, frustration, and confusion when undergoing knowledge building activities. Throughout the sKBDS, students also exhibited surprise at planned activities and what they have discovered and worked on. In addition, knowledge building activities also had varying effects on students' emotions, ranging from tiredness and hunger to occasional positive feelings. Overall, the findings from this study will be used for improving knowledge building practices and designs in future design studios, with implications for educators, students, and researchers.
... The use of knowledge building in various disciplines has been quite prevalent in recent years (Chen & Hong, 2016) and the sharing of diverse ideas and theories between students and external communities from different fields have also led to increasing acknowledgement and recognition of the importance of epistemic emotions (Teo et al., 2022). However, this field is under-researched, especially in the exploration of relationships and associations between students' epistemic emotions and the knowledge building activities they are engaging in. ...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Educational research may have established intricate connections between student achievements and emotions, but there remains a need to conduct more research on the crucial role of students' epistemic emotions during learning. The emergence of global knowledge societies has nudged researchers to delve deeper into the understanding of students' epistemic emotions within evolving learning environments, such as knowledge building environments that encourage complex learning and knowledge creation. This study addresses this gap via a naturalistic study of students' epistemic emotions in a student Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS). We aim to illuminate the intersections between epistemic emotions and knowledge building activities, with findings to inform the design of more rigorous studies and designs to advance knowledge building practices. An Epistemic Emotion Survey (EES) was adapted for gathering students' epistemic emotions and to align with knowledge building activities in the sKBDS. A total of 1,022 sets of epistemic emotion data from 73 primary and secondary school students were collected from two runs of the sKBDS, compiled into a single repository for descriptive analysis. Findings show that students experienced heightened curiosity, interest, excitement, and were generally happy to participate in activities at the sKBDS, while demonstrating relatively less anxiety, frustration, and confusion when undergoing knowledge building activities. Throughout the sKBDS, students also exhibited surprise at planned activities and what they have discovered and worked on. In addition, knowledge building activities also had varying effects on students' emotions, ranging from tiredness and hunger to occasional positive feelings. Overall, the findings from this study will be used for improving knowledge building practices and designs in future design studios, with implications for educators, students, and researchers.
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This design-based research investigated the differences in knowledge-creation practices among university students across two blended learning formats—traditional and hybrid—over multiple years, guided by knowledge-building principles. Each year, 74 first-year students participated in the course to develop new happiness indices through small-group activities. They used a Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL) system to share weekly reflection notes and plan future activities in addition to face-to-face interactions. In the hybrid blended learning format, students had to manage communication with remote group members. The students’ reflection notes in CSCL were analyzed to evaluate the development of their epistemic views and perceptions of the community of inquiry (CoI). Clustering analysis revealed that in the traditional blended learning year, 57% of successful students developed their epistemic views over the modules, while 43% were only partially successful. In the hybrid blended learning year, only 36% of students were partially successful, and 64% were not successful. Furthermore, epistemic network analysis (ENA) indicated that students in the traditional blended learning year emphasized cognitive presence, whereas those in the hybrid blended learning year focused more on social presence. These findings suggest that hybrid blended learning should incorporate multimodal communication to reduce cognitive load and enhance epistemic engagement.