I just discovered this from a piece I wrote about 10 years ago. It seems timely given today’s fascination with generative AI.
As has been established, the instructionism of the 20th century was designed to transfer information into student’s brains. Educative experiences necessitate a more sophisticated purpose for teaching. Data and information, which are the focus of instruction, are still needed, but alone those do not represent adequate education. Classrooms designed to support understanding that proceeds from information to knowledge and wisdom are more effectively facilitate students’ learning in a meaningful way.
Whereas instructionism leads to learners knowing about the subject, Marlene Scardamalia and Carl Bereiter (2006), educational scholars from Canada, suggest knowledge-building leads to knowledge of the subject. Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown (2011) suggested that knowledge building occurs as learning within the subject. Regardless of the preposition used to describe it, knowledge building has characteristics that differentiate it from instruction. Learners who engage in knowledge building apply elements of human wisdom when they articulate generalizations and create new understanding; this enables the transition from information to knowledge and wisdom.
According to Scardamalia and Bereiter, “All understandings are inventions; inventions are emergent” (2006, 103). Emergent properties are those that appear only when systems achieve a certain level of complexity, and are not predictable even if the parts of the system are well known and understood. Because of this, educators who create curriculum focused by knowledge building seek to design classrooms that allow complexity to emerge through use consumption and creation of information and interaction.
A common example used to illustrate emergent properties is the well-functioning office to illustrate the emergent nature of knowledge. Writing for business audiences, John Seeley Brown and Paul Duguid observe, “Most systems, amalgams of software and hardware from different vendors, rely on social amalgams to keep everything running” (2000, 77). Expertise in each part of the technology system in an office is distributed across the individuals, and it is only through the interaction of these individuals at the correct time, that the system functions in an optimal manner. Complete knowledge of how to operate the office is an emergent property that is observed only when the parts are intact and interacting.
Classrooms designed for knowledge building and classrooms designed for instruction approach authoritative resources in different ways. Whereas the instructionist will defer to an authority assumed to possess the correct answer, knowledge builders seek to verify through evidence. When knowledge building, it is unusual for students or teachers to justify conclusions “because the textbook says so;” information from any source is understood as “work in progress” and ideas are always subject to improvement. In these characteristics, knowledge building is supported by technology. Though networks, educators and students can access multiple primary resources, including those from disparate perspectives. In addition, understanding that is created in a digital file can be revised with no effort to recreate the original, so documents can be updated and improved as understanding improves in a manner not possible with print resources.
In addition, knowledge building necessitates more sophisticated goal setting than is common in instructionist classrooms. Bereiter (2002) differentiates three types of goals used frame and motivate learning tasks in classrooms. Task completion goals are behavioristic; students may be completing the tasks as specified, but there is little attention paid to the purpose of the tasks or the use of the lesson beyond the immediate need to complete the task. Learning goals are characterized by student’s engagement to a greater degree than simply completing the task. The purpose is clear and students seek to understand the lesson in his or her mind. The purpose of knowledge building is developing skills applicable beyond the immediate need; students understand the learning as it can be applied to the present situation and to other similar and novel situations.
A single activity can comprise all three types of goals: A student may propose a science fair experiment by answering a series of questions posed by the teacher to ensure the project is safe and reasonable; this would be organized around a task completion goal. Completing the project would require the student reach several learning goals that are related to understanding and answering the question that focuses the project. Presenting the project to peers, parents, and community would be focused around knowledge building goals. In presenting, the student sees communication as a valuable skill and also perceives the connection between his or her project and others’ projects.
References
Bereiter, Carl. (2002). Education and Mind in the Knowledge Age. New York: Routledge.
Brown, John Seely and Paul Duguid. 2000. The Social Life of Information. Harvard Business School Press.
Scarmelia, Marlene, and Carl Bereiter蜉. 2006. “Knowledge Building: Theory, Pedagogy, and Technology.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Learning Science, edited by R. Keith Sawyer蜉, 97-115. Cambridge University Press.