Towards Knowledge Building: From Facts to Explanations in Primary Students' Computer Mediated Discourse

Educational institutions are required to find new pedagogical and cognitive models and practices to cope with the challenges of an emerging knowledge society. In creating a theoretical and practical model for future education, Scardamalia and Bereiter have proposed the concept of knowledge building. An early implementation of this idea was in the networked classroom software and ancillary structures known as Computer-Supported Intentional Learning Environment (CSILE). The present study aimed to explore the indicators of knowledge building in computer-mediated discourse among 26 11-year-old Finnish students. The data were collected during a four-week course on Energy, and consisted of students' postings stored in the CSILE database. Analysis revealed three pedagogically and cognitively different modes of discourse: social-oriented, fact-oriented, and explanation-oriented. These modes differed essentially from each other in the nature of the knowledge which students constructed during discourse and in the object and focus of students' communication. During explanation-oriented discourse, students actively used abstract and scientific concepts and the objects of their comments were theories, ideas and methods of research. Such activity is a component of knowledge building.