Skip to main content

5.5.4 On knowledge building

In this section of my learning, I have broadly realised - building from my background knowledge as an educator - that there are no proven methods of educating people to be producers of knowledge. Knowledge creators of the past have been too few and too exceptional in their talents to provide much basis for educational planning. In what is coming to be called the “knowledge age,” the health and wealth of societies depends increasingly on their capacity to innovate. People in general, not just a specialized elite, need to work creatively with knowledge. 

Knowledge is socially constructed, and best supported through collaborations designed so that participants share knowledge and tackle projects that incorporate features of adult teamwork, real-world content, and use of varied information sources. This is the most widely supported approach at present, especially with regard to the use of information technology.

Knowledge building provides an alternative that more directly addresses the need to educate people for a world in which knowledge creation and innovation are pervasive. Knowledge building may be defined as the production and continual improvement of ideas of value to a community, through means that increase the likelihood that what the community accomplishes will be greater than the sum of individual contributions and part of broader cultural efforts. Knowledge building, thus, goes on throughout a knowledge society and is not limited to education. As applied to education, however, the approach means engaging learners in the full process of knowledge creation from an early age. 

In knowledge building, ideas are treated as real things, as objects of inquiry and improvement in their own right. Knowledge building environments enable ideas to get out into the world and onto a path of continual improvement. This means not only preserving them but making them available to the whole community in a form that allows them to be discussed, interconnected, revised, and superseded.

A shared workspace for knowledge building enables a self-organizing system of interactions
among participants and their ideas and helps to eliminate the need for externally designed organizers of work.  Advances within this communal space continually generate further advances, with problems reformulated at more complex levels that bring a wider range of knowledge into consideration. Thus there is a compounding effect, much like the compounding of capital through investment. The main challenge in building knowledge building environments is, however, supporting such compounding effects and social responsibilities that emerge. I strongly believe that the rest of this course, when pursued will augment knowledge already gained in addressing this challenge.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Bring Your Own Device 7.5.4

I was not so familiar with BYOD until after this lesson. It was something that I associated with the corporate world (and not the classroom) - with big organisations allowing their employees to bring their own devices to work as a measure of motivating them with the feeling of greater contribution to the company. BYOD assumes many models in classroom learning which generally allow learners to bring their own devices to school. The devices brought may or may not be dictated upon by the school but, ideally, must be those that support the teaching and learning process. Looking at BYOD now in the classroom context,it is to me more of a challenge than an idea to implement. I see it as something that is long over due and I consider myself little bit behind schedule with a lot to get done. I have particularly taken interest in the cell phone as a device I feel would bring more success in meeting teaching and learning objectives in my classroom. Why you may ask? Well, it is a device that I ...

THE GOOD ABOUT COURSE #3 -- 3.9.4

Course #3 has generally set me well aligned with what the feature of lesson planning looks like. This course was generally less demanding compared to the previous one but had its ways of stretching you to limits. A reluctant student can actually have significant challenges in this course because it requires you to apply what you know as a trained teacher in the context of ASSURE (acronym for a list of things you need to do when preparing for a lesson i.e. lesson planning). This rather comprehensive model enables one to clearly envision ones lesson and probably more accurately discern pitfalls in the lesson or, on the bright side, look forward to a really exciting lesson. My knowledge in lesson planning has been rather shallow in the light of the ASSURE model of lesson planning. I could say that the only aspect of ASSURE model I identified from my previous list was the lesson objectives and methods of teaching but now I see the importance of Analysing learners, Stating objectives, Selec...