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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making them available to the whole community in a form that allows them to be discussed, interconnected, revised, and superseded.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.


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