Theme 1: Knowledge building for a Knowledge Society
Foundational Issues and the Big Picture
Theoretical
foundations of learning and knowledge building
Kai Hakkarainen, University of Helsinki, Finland
Kai Hakkarainen, University of Helsinki, Finland
This view (in the KSN database) is hosted by Kai Hakkarainen and his team (Liisa Ilomäki, Lasse Lipponen, Hanni Muukkonen, Jiri Lallimo, and Sami Paavola) from the Centre for Research on Networked Learning and Knowledge Building, University of Helsinki, Finland. The meeting is designed to facilitate discussion of theoretical foundations and methodology of learning and knowledge building.
We assume collective responsibility of helping knowledge-building discourse to emerge around foundational issues. The specific topics to be addressed are as follow (you are wellcome to propose also other topics if it appears advancing our inquiry.
a) What is the role of mediation in knowledge building? (The virtual meeting focuses on improving our shared understanding of various forms of mediation, including conceptual artifacts. How does engaging in dialogue between minds (dialogical approach) differ from engaging in dialogue with ideas created by a fellow inquirers (trialogical approach) (Moderator: philosopher Sami Paavola)
b) How autonomous is Popper’s World 3. (The meeting will discuss the extent to which Popper’s World 3 is autonomous versus embedded in material tools and practices. Various ways of conceptualizing World 3 objects, just as Bereiterian conceptual artifacts and Moscovician social representations will be discussed. The meeting will explore what are relations between World 3 knowledge objects and social practices. Further, the participants will explore the potential role of Latourian heterogeneous (actor) networks in knowledge-building communities
(Moderator: Dr. Lasse Lipponen)
c) Should knowledge-building be investigated across multiple time scales? (One of the biases of cognitivism is to guide researchers to investigate mental processes mainly through very short time scales, e.g., those involved in an experimental session. Careful investigations of the history of science indicate that scientific discoveries are distributed across time and involve 10.000 small inferences rather than a few huge mental leaps. In order to capture interesting processes of knowledge advancement, investigators need to study knowledge-building processes across multiple timescales (Jay Lemke had an interesting article about this in JLS in 2001). Some situationally and phenomenologically oriented investigators, who focus exclusively on analyzing extremely short interactive situations, chat processes or “collaborative moments” are still talking about “knowledge building”. Without analyzing agents’ extended work with shared knowledge objects, it appears very difficult, however, to capture processes of knowledge advancement at all. It appears that one of the advantages of knowledge-building approach has been to guide investigators to analyze processes of knowledge advancement that extend over weeks, months, or even longer. On the basis of these kinds of considerations, we would like to ask people to discuss about multiple time scales of knowledge building. (Moderator Dr. Kai Hakkarainen)
d) How should knowledge-building agency be conceptualized? (Discussing the relational nature of agency and discussing resources provided by social network analysis that allow one to use relational measures to determine various knowledge-building roles assumed by agents. The virtual meeting will introduce some pieces of empirical research in which Finnish people have pursued this line of inquiry). (Moderators: Researchers Hanni Muukkonen and Jiri Lallimo)
e) What kind of study material does facilitate knowledge building? (The Finnish research network has been involved in European research projects aimed at developing educational learning objects (LOs). One topic of the virtual meeting is to examine to what extent LOs may be used to facilitate practices of knowledge building.) (Moderator: Researcher Liisa Ilomäki)