Knowledge building and technology

This chapter introduces Knowledge building (Scardamalia & Bereiter, 2014), an approach to learning that leverages students’ collective responsibilities to work on shared inquiry tasks. The students work collaboratively by asking questions, looking for resources, proposing explanations and, most importantly, improving one another’s ideas. Their learning is made visible by knowledge artefacts that capture their ideas and learning, including notes that they contributed knowledge building technology and platforms. On the surface, it might look like any other collaborative learning approaches, but there are distinct characteristics of knowledge building that set it apart: engaging students directly in knowledge work supported by technology (Tan et al., 2021).

We shall illustrate knowledge building and technology through a vignette of knowledge-building lessons.