Proposal view
| Proposal Type: | Individual Paper |
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| Domain: | Communities of learners |
| SIG: | Social Interaction in Learning and Instruction |
| Scheduling category: | Communities of learners |
| Type | Keynote Paper |
| Equipment |
Computer and data projector / beamer |
| Paper Details |
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| Paper type | Theoretical |
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| Title | Facilitating social knowledge construction in communities of learners: Are we there yet (and how will we know)? |
| Abstract | For quite some time, educational researchers have recognized the social nature of learning and the importance of creating learning communities. Ann Brown’s idea of communities of learners has been influential in that thinking (Brown & Campione, 1994, 1996, Brown, 1995, 1997). But getting there remains a challenge and knowing when we have gotten there even more so. An important aspect of communities of learners is understanding how to facilitate social knowledge construction and the kinds of participant structures that promote social knowledge construction. Communities of learners is an approach that has its basis in shared discourse and social negotiation in a community of practice. It requires that learners take responsibility for their own learning as well as others in their group. But facilitating learners to engage in productive discourse is not easy and it is not always clear when that discourse is productive. There are still many questions that educational researchers need to address to better understand how to create and recognize productive learning communities: • How do groups engage in social knowledge construction? • What kinds of instructional and discourse practices engage students in social knowledge construction? • What kinds of shared knowledge is constructed (and how can we measure it)? • What is the relation between individual learning and group cognition or collaborative knowledge building? Addressing these questions will be important if we are to address the gaps between research and practice in understanding how to orchestrate communities of learners beyond small-scale research and development projects. |
| Summary | For quite some time, educational researchers have recognized the social nature of learning and the importance of creating learning communities (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000). A December 2008 literature search on communities of learners brings up thousands of citations. Ann Brown’s idea of communities of learners has been influential in that thinking (Brown & Campione, 1994, 1996; Brown, 1995, 1997). The pillars of communities of learners include learner agency, reflection, collaboration, a culture of negotiating, sharing, and producing public artifacts, and engaging with deep disciplinary content (Brown, 1997). But getting there remains a challenge and knowing when we have gotten there even more so. An important aspect of communities of learners is understanding how to support guided discovery that facilitate social knowledge construction and the kinds of participant structures that promote social knowledge construction (Herrenkohl & Guerra, 1998; Hmelo-Silver & Barrows, 2008; Tabak & Baumgartner, 2004). Communities of learners is an approach that has its basis in shared discourse and social negotiation in a community of practice. It requires that learners take responsibility for their own learning as well as others in their group (Brown, 1997). But facilitating learners to engage in productive discourse is not easy and it is not always clear when that discourse is productive (Engle & Conant, 2002). There are still many questions that educational researchers need to address to better understand how to create and recognize productive learning communities: • How do groups engage in social knowledge construction? • What kinds of instructional and discourse practices engage students in social knowledge construction? • What kinds of shared knowledge are constructed (and how can we measure it)? • What is the relation between individual learning and group cognition or collaborative knowledge building? Addressing these questions will be important if we are to address the gaps between research and practice in understanding how to orchestrate communities of learners beyond small-scale research and development projects. We need to address both the tensions and relations between individual learning, important in the current climate of educational practice, and collective knowledge building or group cognition that is considered to be so important for communities of learners (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 2006; O’Donnell & O’Kelly, 1998; Salomon, 1993; Stahl, 2006). This presentation will examine research at the intersection of communities of learners, social knowledge construction, and research methods for analyzing collaborative learning to synthesize what kinds of evidence we need to identify well functioning communities of learners and to be able to examine both positive and negative trajectories towards that end. It will also consider research on how to facilitate and scaffold such learning communities in terms of teacher practices, participant structures, and technology support for the keys aspects of communities of learners that Ann Brown pioneered. References Bereiter, C., & Scardamalia, M. (2006). Education for the knowledge age: Design-centered models of teaching and instruction. In P. A. Alexander & P. H. Winne (Eds.), Handbook of Educational Psychology (2nd ed., pp. 695-713). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Bransford, J. D., Brown, A. L., & Cocking, R. (2000). How people learn. Washington DC: National Academy Press. Brown, A. L. (1995). The advancement of learning. Educational Researcher, 23(8), 4-12. Brown, A. L. (1997). Transforming schools into communities of thinking and learning about serious matters. American Psychologist, 52, 399-413. Brown, A. L., & Campione, J. (1994). Guided discovery in a community of learners. In K. McGilly (Ed.), Classroom lessons: Integrating cognitive theory and classroom practice (pp. 229-270). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books. Brown, A. L., & Campione, J. C. (1996). Psychological learning theory and the design of innovative environments: On procedures, principles, and systems. In L. S. R. Glaser (Ed.), Innovations in Learning: New environments for education (pp. 289-325). Mahwah NJ: Erlbaum. Engle, R. A., & Conant, F. R. (2002). Guiding principles for fostering productive disciplinary engagement: Explaining an emergent argument in a community of learners classroom. Cognition and Instruction, 20, 399-484. Herrenkohl, L. R., & Guerra, M. R. (1998). Participant structures, scientific discourse, and student engagement in fourth grade. Cognition and Instruction, 16, 431-473. Hmelo-Silver, C. E. & Barrows, H. S. (2006). Goals and strategies of a problem-based learning facilitator. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning, 1. 21-39. Hmelo-Silver, C. E. & Barrows, H. S. (2008). Facilitating collaborative knowledge building. Cognition and Instruction, 26, 48-94. Hmelo-Silver, C. E., Duncan, R. G., Chinn, C. A. (2007). Scaffolding and achievement in problem-based and inquiry learning: A response to Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006). Educational Psychologist, 42, 99-107. O'Donnell, A. M., & O'Kelly, J. O. (1994). Learning from peers: Beyond the rhetoric of positive results. Educational Psychology Review, 6, 321-349. Salomon, G. (1993). No distribution without individual cognition: A dynamic interactional view. In G. Salomon (Ed.), Distributed cognitions (pp. 111-138). New York: Cambridge. Stahl, G. (2006). Group cognition: Computer support for building collaborative knowledge. Cambridge MA: MIT Press. Tabak, I., & Baumgartner, E. (2004). The teacher as partner: Exploring participant structure, asymmetry, and identity work in scaffolding. Cognition and Instruction, 22, 393-429. |
| Keywords | Collaborative Learning Computer supported Learning Environments Social Interaction in Learning and Instruction |
| Appendices | |
| Authors | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Surname | Institution | Country | EARLI Number | Presenting | |
| Cindy | Hmelo-Silver | Rutgers University | United States | cindy.hmelo-silver@gse.rutgers.edu | * | |
