Designing evolution of knowledge building using opportunistic collaboration and idea-friend maps

Abstract

Engaging students in creative and innovative knowledge work is a challenging education agenda in learning sciences. This thesis presents a two-year investigation into how to support students’ collective epistemic agency for progressive knowledge building in large classes and examines the effectiveness of the designed environments on the advancement of individual and collective knowledge. Four iterative studies on the same cohort (n = 211) from four Grade 4 classes in China were conducted following increasingly complex knowledge-building designs. Each class included around fifty students working in groups supported by the online platform Knowledge Forum as they undertook collective epistemic agency in authentic scientific practices to co-design their journey for progressive knowledge building. After establishing a basic knowledge-building culture (Study One), the meta-discourse aspect was developed for productive knowledge-building discourse (Study Two), followed by the use of Idea-Friend Maps (IFM, external representations of a learning analytics tool) for collective cognitive responsibility (Study Three). Finally, the refined IFM design supported students along their co-designed collective journey for progressive knowledge building (Study Four). From Study Two, experimental and comparison conditions were included to examine the effects of the knowledge-building designs. Five major research questions were addressed: (1) What were the effects of the designed knowledge-building environment on students’ scientific understanding and contribution to collective knowledge advancement? (2) What were the effects of the designed knowledge-building environment on students’ Knowledge Forum interaction and depth of discourse? (3) How did students engage in knowledge-building practices towards collective knowledge advancement? (4) What characterized students’ meta-knowledge, specifically their epistemic understanding of knowledge building? (5) What was the interplay among students’ meta-knowledge of knowledge building, Knowledge Forum engagement, collective knowledge advancement, and scientific understanding? Multiple data sources were collected, including pre- and post-science learning tests, Knowledge Forum notes, student artifacts, classroom observations, interviews, and questionnaires. Students obtained higher scientific understanding scores and collective knowledge advances across the four studies and engaged in higher Knowledge Forum interaction and deeper knowledge-building discourse over time, with more positive results for the experimental classes. Characterization of students’ collective knowledge-building practices show how they were able to co-design the collective journey of knowledge building, including (1) forming research groups and establishing research directions; (2) establishing cross-group fertilizations and conceptualizing key ideas using the group-level IFM; (3) identifying problems and pursuing inquiries into the research area using the community-level IFM; (4) comparing knowledge building with scientists’ work and designing the collective knowledge-building journey; (5) identifying the importance of scientific communication and revising the collective knowledge-building journey; and (6) conducting progressive knowledge building based on the collective journey and the knowledge building-level IFM. Moreover, students’ meta-knowledge predicted their Knowledge Forum interaction and depth of knowledge-building discourse, which further impacted individual and collective knowledge advancement. The results also indicate that students’ meta-knowledge and knowledge-building learning developed from idea-sharing to theory building, collective cognitive responsibility, and finally to progressive knowledge building. The thesis illuminates the mechanism and trajectory of how elementary school children undertook collective epistemic agency in authentic scientific practices for progressive knowledge building.