Yuan, Guangji

The Learning Sciences investigate all aspects of learning, key to which is a consideration of all ecological factors and establishing the ecological validity of research in authentic settings. Educational Neuroscience has surfaced micro-level evidence to the various constructs explored in the Learning Sciences but with quite distinct methodologies and interpretations. The rapid development in both Learning Science and Neuroscience research presents new opportunities to amalgamate these two fields. This workshop invites researchers from both fields to discuss the potential and gaps in the integration of the research processes, the related theoretical and methodological perspectives of these two fields. We will discuss and demonstrate methods to measure cognitive, psychological, and neurological data in an authentic Knowledge Building classroom, mapping constructs and variables to integrate the intricate research processes across both fields.

Knowledge Building (KB) is an established learning sciences theory that seeks to promote innovative ideas and idea improvement among students via collaborative engagement in productive discourse. KB discourse supports students to make constructive discourse moves such as questioning, explaining with evidence, adding new information and so on, to advance the collective inquiry. However, current understanding on KB discourse remains limited to students’ online participation. Although small group discussion is a common practice, there is little understanding on the role of verbal discussions to support KB discourse. This paper attempts to address this line of inquiry by assessing student engagement in KB discourse supported by both online and verbal discussions. Data is retrieved from a group of six students in a Grade 6 Social Studies class. The group participated in a 2.5hr lesson designed with opportunities for discussions on the Knowledge Forum (online) and in small groups (verbal). Group talk was transcribed, and Knowledge Forum notes were coded for its semantic level of contribution, with the codes being analysed for weighted connections using Epistemic Network Analysis (ENA). The ENA analysis revealed clear differences in both group and individual engagement between the online and verbal discourse. Notably, students’ contributions on Knowledge Forum showed an apparent pattern of stronger connections among codes of higher semantic levels, suggesting that students were more cognitively engaged in the online discussion than their group verbal talk. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

The theory and practice of knowledge building is one of the most well-known and influential educational approaches seeking to foster a culture of creativity, collaboration, and innovation in classrooms. To date, knowledge building research has focused on the sociocognitive and technological dynamics required to sustain knowledge building but has not focused specifically on the unique infrastructures that enable them. To contribute new ideas that can advance our understanding of what and how infrastructures enable knowledge building, this workshop will explore and synthesize ongoing research that includes a variety of examples that deal with and conceptualize knowledge building infrastructures. The workshop is organized into four sections, with both pre- and post-activities, and have three types of participants: invited speakers; key contributors; and active participants. Ultimately, the goal is to find ways to widen participation in knowledge building endeavors within existing or new implementations across the world.

This paper explores the application of a framework for idea novelty in students’ discourse for knowledge building. Knowledge building promotes collaborative discourse among students and supports them in expanding collective community knowledge. However, students often go beyond the sharing of information, and they contribute novel ideas that are vital to deepening community knowledge and expanding collective inquiry. Novel ideas not only reveal the character and quality of the discourse but also show how the conversation may extend to deepen the understanding of a challenging topic. This study attempts to illuminate novel ideas from students as they engage in knowledge building using the analytical lens of novelty. Data analysis from exploratory analysis and multiple correspondence analysis revealed patterns of how students contribute novel ideas to sustain their conversation. Utilizing advanced Machine Learning techniques, this study effectively identified and quantified patterns of idea novelty and complexity in student discourses, enhancing the understanding of collaborative knowledge construction.

In this paper, we analyze a case of teacher-cross-community collaboration and knowledge-building professional development in an online space named Metaspace. Teachers from multiple regions of two countries, China and Singapore, shared their knowledge-building practices and student artifacts in metaspace. The analysis of teacher interviews illustrated how the metaspace design enhanced the professional development of teachers as a collaborative infrastructure. Researchers identified salient themes to review a more conceptual understanding of teacher knowledge-building, professional development, and network-building as a multi-level dynamic process.

Investigating how students collaboratively advance online discussion has much value in understanding the mechanisms of novelty. Extending creative discourse by broadening adjacent novelty with new ideas is an essential benchmark to expand the community’s knowledge in a knowledge building community. This study aims to continue the investigation of the mechanisms and novelty momentums behind the discourse in students' knowledge building online discussion, with a new novelty framework to understand students' collaborative discussions. Results show a promising understanding of the discussion patterns from this new perspective.

Despite the wide implementations and extensive research base that has developed on knowledge building communities, continued efforts are required to address the challenges of implementing innovations in diverse contexts as well as sustaining them over time. In this paper, we draw on the idea of infrastructuring as an emergent, multilevel approach that can shed new light on ways to do this. After defining the notion of infrastructuring and showing its unique potential to sustain knowledge building, we examine three cases of infrastructuring within the context of efforts to grow knowledge building innovations in existing educational ecologies. This paper offers some new insights into how infrastructuring can be conceptualized to expand and sustain knowledge building innovations.

As a hallmark of authentic science practices, students need to enact epistemic agency to shape/reshape the key aspects of their inquiry work as a collaborative community. This study elaborates an emergent temporal mechanism for engaging students' epistemic agency: “reflective structuration” by which members of a classroom community coconstruct ever-evolving inquiry directions and group structures as their collective inquiry work proceeds. Using an interactional ethnography method, we examined how students (n = 22) in a Grade 5 classroom coconstructed shared inquiry directions and flexible group structures to guide their sustained inquiry about human body systems over 7 months supported by a collaborative online environment. Rich data were collected to trace the work of the eye inquiry group as a telling case. With their teacher's support, students took agentic moves to construct an evolving set of wondering areas as a way to frame what their whole class needed to investigate. Flexible groups, such as the eye inquiry group, emerged and evolved in the various areas, leading to progressively deepening inquiry and extensive idea exchanges among students. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Designing Informal Knowledge Building spaces requires intentional designs and effort. This paper presents a case study of designing a learning environment for cultivating collaborative knowledge creation with student agency for sustaining ideas. In the design-based studies, the datacomes from three consecutive iterations of the students’ Knowledge Building Design Studio (sKBDS), an out-of-school research program, as an immersive learning environment for knowledge building. With a sciencerelated theme, we gathered 86 elementary and secondary students (32, 32, and 22, respectively) and 1964 students’ online notes(642, 721, 601, respectively) in three iterations. The results demonstrate that students enjoyed the high-level agency in co-creating the inquiry structure, exploring diverse ideas, and deepening their understanding, and sustaining knowledge creation in sKBDS.