Marlene Scardamalia

Institute for Knowledge Innovation & Technology,
OISE/University of Toronto
252 Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada
(p) 416.923.6641 ext. 2264 (f) 416.926.2713

Marlene Scardamalia holds the Presidents' Chair in Education and Knowledge Technologies at OISE/University of Toronto and directs IKIT, the Institute for Knowledge Innovation and Technology—a worldwide network of innovators working to advance the frontiers of knowledge building in various sectors. "Knowledge building," a term now widely used in education and knowledge management, originated with the CSILE/Knowledge Building project. Marlene led the team that created CSILE (Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environments), which was the first networked knowledge building environment for education. The second generation version of this technology, Knowledge Forum®, is in use in 19 countries, in education, health, business, and professional organizations. Knowledge building theories, models, practices and technologies have been developed in partnership with Carl Bereiter and team members, and formed the basis of two major grants, from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation and from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's Initiative on the New Economy.

From 1996 till 2002, Marlene was the K-12 theme leader for Canada’s TeleLearning Network of Centres of Excellence. Her work has led to several honours and awards, including an Ontario Psychological Foundation Contribution to Knowledge award, a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, election to the U. S. National Academy of Education (the second Canadian so honoured) and appointment to the Presidents’ Chair in Education and Knowledge Technologies. She has done research and published in the areas of cognitive development, psychology of writing, intentional learning, the nature of expertise, and educational uses of computers. She also headed a project on "Cognitive Bases of Educational Reform," out of which grew the "Schools for Thought" program, notable for its synthesis of major socio-cognitive approaches.

Scardamalia, M. & Bereiter, C. (2006). Knowledge building: Theory, pedagogy, and technology. In K. Sawyer (Ed.), Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences (pp. 97-118). New York: Cambridge University Press. (Note: Cambridge University Press has contracted with Educational Scientific Publishing House for a Chinese simplified language edition).

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2007). “Fostering communities of learners” and “knowledge building”: An interrupted dialogue. In J. C. Campione, K. E. Metz, & A. S. Palincsar (Eds.), Children's learning in the laboratory and in the classroom: Essays in honor of Ann Brown (pp. 197-212). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2008). Pedagogical biases in educational technologies. Educational Technology, XLVIII(3)3-11.

Scardamalia, M. (2006). Technology for understanding. In K. Leithwood, P. McAdie, N. Bascia, & A. Rodrigue (Eds.), Teaching for deep understanding: What every educator needs to know (pp. 103-109). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Scardamalia, M., & Bereiter, C. (2003). Knowledge building. In Encyclopedia of education, second edition. (pp. 1370-1373). New York: Macmillan Reference, USA.

Scardamalia, M. (2003). Knowledge building environments: Extending the limits of the possible in education and knowledge work. In A. DiStefano, K. E. Rudestam, & R. Silverman (Eds.), Encyclopedia of distributed learning (pp. 269-272). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Scardamalia, M. (2002). Collective cognitive responsibility for the advancement of knowledge. In B. Smith (Ed.) Liberal education in a knowledge society (pp. 67-98). Chicago: Open Court.

Gan, Y.C., Scardamalia, M., Hong, H.-Y., & Zhang, J. (2007). Making thinking visible: Growth in graphical literacy, Grades 3 and 4. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning 2007 (pp. 206-208). Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, NJ.

Reeve, R., Messina, R., & Scardamalia, M. (2008). Wisdom in Elementary School. In M. Ferrari & G. Potworowski (Eds.), Teaching for Wisdom: Cross-cultural Perspectives on Fostering Wisdom (pp. 79-92). New York: Springer. Retrieve from http://books.google.ca/books?id=Cr_6g3IC7hcC&pg=PA79&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=0_0.

Teplovs, C., Donoahue, Z., Scardamalia, M., & Philip, D. (2007). Tools for concurrent, embedded, and transformative assessment of knowledge building processes and progress. Proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Learning 2007 (pp. 720-722). Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, NJ.

Zhang, J., Scardamalia, M., Lamon, M., Messina, R., & Reeve, R. (2007). Socio-cognitive dynamics of knowledge building in the work of nine- and ten-year-olds. Educational Technology Research and Development, 55 (2), 117-145. Online First version (posted Sept. 26/06) is available here. (Outstanding Manuscript of the Year Award presented by Association for Educational Communication and Technology (AECT)-Division of Instructional Development)